Improving SMAA in IL2 Cliffs of Dover

Firstly, thank you so much to the devs for releasing this wonderful piece of software. IL2 Cliffs of Dover is one of the most graphically impressive flight sims on the PC, yet its terrible anti-aliasing support ruined the overall look. SweetFX doesn't work with it, but Reshade does.

My question is how I can improve the SMAA or FXAA antialiasing via Reshade? I've turned both on via the main config file, and they've definitely helped, but the game still has a bit of an aliasing issue. I remember with SweetFX there was an Ultra preset for SMAA, but I can't seem to find that anymore?

Any tips guys?

GunSlingerAUS wrote: Firstly, thank you so much to the devs for releasing this wonderful piece of software. IL2 Cliffs of Dover is one of the most graphically impressive flight sims on the PC, yet its terrible anti-aliasing support ruined the overall look. SweetFX doesn't work with it, but Reshade does.

My question is how I can improve the SMAA or FXAA antialiasing via Reshade? I've turned both on via the main config file, and they've definitely helped, but the game still has a bit of an aliasing issue. I remember with SweetFX there was an Ultra preset for SMAA, but I can't seem to find that anymore?

Any tips guys?

Settings i use:

SMAA

//>SMAA Anti-aliasing settings<\\
#define SMAA_THRESHOLD 0.05 //[0.05:0.20] //.
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS 98 //[0:98] //
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG 16 //[0:16] //
#define SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING 0 //[0:100] //
#define SMAA_ToggleKey RFX_ToggleKey //[undef] //

//>Advanced SMAA settings<\\
#define SMAA_EDGE_DETECTION 2 //[1|2|3] //
#define SMAA_DIRECTX9_LINEAR_BLEND 0 //

//>SMAA Predication settings<\\
#define SMAA_PREDICATION 1 //
#define SMAA_PREDICATION_THRESHOLD 0.002 //
#define SMAA_PREDICATION_SCALE 2.0 //
#define SMAA_PREDICATION_STRENGTH 0.4 //

//>Debug SMAA settings<\\
#define SMAA_DEBUG_OUTPUT 0 //


FXAA

//>FXAA Anti-aliasing settings<\\
#define FXAA_QUALITY__PRESET 9 //[1:9] //-Choose the quality preset. 9 is the highest quality.
#define fxaa_Subpix 0.875 //
#define fxaa_EdgeThreshold 0.006 //
#define fxaa_EdgeThresholdMin 0.004 //[0.000:1.000] //
#define FXAA_ToggleKey RFX_ToggleKey //[undef] //-

Quentin-Tarantino wrote: #define SMAA_PREDICATION 1 //

Just a note on predication -- only enable it if you have the depth-buffer working, if the depth-buffer isn't accessible this will add an overhead for no return.
You can also probably set SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS to 64 and not notice a difference but again reduce the overhead of SMAA.

#define fxaa_Subpix 0.875 //
#define fxaa_EdgeThreshold 0.006 //

That must be super-soft This is purely opinion here, of course, as everyone likes something different but for using FXAA and trying to retain some detail a value of around 0.200-0.600 works well for Subpix, and EdgeThreshold between 0.033-0.166 (the default, I believe).

Martigen wrote:

Quentin-Tarantino wrote: #define SMAA_PREDICATION 1 //

Just a note on predication -- only enable it if you have the depth-buffer working, if the depth-buffer isn't accessible this will add an overhead for no return.
You can also probably set SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS to 64 and not notice a difference but again reduce the overhead of SMAA.

#define fxaa_Subpix 0.875 //
#define fxaa_EdgeThreshold 0.006 //

That must be super-soft This is purely opinion here, of course, as everyone likes something different but for using FXAA and trying to retain some detail a value of around 0.200-0.600 works well for Subpix, and EdgeThreshold between 0.033-0.166 (the default, I believe).

Yea i rather a softer blur screen then one with jaggies

Thanks for the tips - how I can tell if the depth-buffer is working?

GunSlingerAUS wrote: Thanks for the tips - how I can tell if the depth-buffer is working?

In the 1.0.0 release of ReShade and the Framework shader pack you open BasicFX.cfg and change #define USE_DisplayDepth 0 to 1

This allows you to press a key which will display the depth buffer.
(Configured by the setting just below the above one, F12 by default I think.)

If when pressing the key the screen turns entirely white or entirely black the depth buffer is not being detected properly, in some newer games this can sometimes be because they use logarithmic depth which you can set in Common.cfg via the #define RFX_LogDepth setting by adjusting it from 0 to 1, as far as I know this will however break depth detection in games that do not use this particular method so it's on a per-game basis.

Anyway if the detection is working properly then when you press the key for it you should see a black, gray and white colored version of the current displayed image showing depth.

JBeckman wrote:

GunSlingerAUS wrote: Thanks for the tips - how I can tell if the depth-buffer is working?

Anyway if the detection is working properly then when you press the key for it you should see a black, gray and white colored version of the current displayed image showing depth.

And just to add to this -- in-game MSAA of any form will prevent depth-buffer detection from working, so disable in-game AA if it doesn't appear and use Reshade's SMAA/FXAA instead. Also, though I haven't had a chance to test this, driver-based VSYNC forcing also prevents proper depth-buffer detection according to Crosire (maybe he can clarify, if you're reading this Crosire?). In which case you'd set driver-based VSYNC to 'application controlled' and set VSYNC in-game.

Finally, depth-buffer detection is a work in progress, and it may not work for a game no matter what you do. This important as Reshade shaders like DOF and AO depend on it. I think now that Reshade has reached version 1.0 Crosire may have more time to work on depth-buffer detection.

Yeah for some games getting depth detection to work properly can be a problem, I haven't had much luck with Dragon Age Inquisition to name one example but I'm pretty sure it worked in Battlefield: Hardline when I played through that so it doesn't seem to be a problem with the Frostbite engine, at least not entirely though I'd imagine there's a lot of different variables at play, more so with 64-bit and D3D11.
(Both games support MSAA so making sure that's disabled was the first thing I tried, driver forced AA won't work either just to mention that.)

EDIT: Oh and some games when you view the depth buffer they'll show a upside down image which will mean that depth dependent effects also won't display properly, from what I have read here on these forums that's a shader issue (So not a problem with the ReShade injector itself.) so to work around that you have to manually change / flip the depth texture in the related shader file though I believe a better solution is being looked into, also from my own experience with this the Unity engine games (version 4.x and 5.x both.) seem to have this behavior frequently.
(EDIT: Found the thread were this was discussed. -> reshade.me/forum/shader-troubleshooting/...de-down-depth-buffer )

Thanks so much for your assistance guys, the game looks absolutely incredible now. I'll spread the good word amongst the IL2 community.

Hey guys - very quick question. What's the benefit of enabling the depth-buffer in regards to SMAA? I just want to clean up jaggies, that's all.

I know this is an old comment... but if you haven't already figured it out SMAA can do depth edge detection.

In short the benefit of edge detection is a more accurate AA method. It smooths/blurs object edges as opposed to smoothing/blurring the whole image.

I just thought I'd chime in here since I spent a long, long time steeped in deep confusion over this very issue due to the dearth of information about how smaa's settings work regarding depth and predication. In deep, depth-dearth based derpitude! Ha! Sorry, I'm easily amused My future biographers will refer to this as my jaggie period. My enlightenment is recorded somewhere in a conversation in the bowels of these very forums.

Anyway, if confusion were a geometric 3d object, its girth along the z-axis would be fed primarily through these lines:

//>Advanced SMAA settings<\\
#define SMAA_EDGE_DETECTION 2 //[1|2|3] //-1 = Luma edge detection, 2 = Color edge detection, 3 = Depth edge detection
//>SMAA Predication settings<\\
#define SMAA_PREDICATION 1 //[0:1] //-Enables predication which uses BOTH the color and the depth texture for edge detection to more accurately detect edges.

My brand of confusion sprung from the thought: "hmm, if PREDICATION = (EDGE_DETECTION 2 COLOR + EDGE_DETECTION 3 DEPTH), then setting (#define SMAA_EDGE_DETECTION 1 LUMA + #define SMAA_PREDICATION 1 COLOR, DEPTH) would result in a trifecta of anti-jaggie triumph using all 3 methods!" or some similar eruption of nerdy faux-fascism.

Thing is, apparently the wording is a bit misleading because predication doesn't add COLOR and DEPTH, rather it adds DEPTH to whatever was chosen in EDGE_DETECTION setting. So you can have LUMA + DEPTH or COLOR + DEPTH or DEPTH + DEPTH(this last being redundant--not sure if this incurs additional overhead or just castrates SMAA to DEPTH only, as if one chose 3 for DETECTION and 0 for PREDICATION. I also heard that COLOR is slightly better than LUMA in general effectiveness as well as slightly faster on AMD. So my settings are as follows:

//>Advanced SMAA settings<\\
#define SMAA_EDGE_DETECTION 2 //[1|2|3] //-1 = Luma edge detection, 2 = Color edge detection, 3 = Depth edge detection
//>SMAA Predication settings<\\
#define SMAA_PREDICATION 1 //[0:1] //-Enables predication which uses BOTH the color and the depth texture for edge detection to more accurately detect edges.

I leave the other predication settings at default as I still have yet to find an explanation for them or even come across a preset that alters them.