ReShade vs TAA

This thread will mostly serve as a log of my attempts to match TAA-level quality without its quirks (namely, shimmering) using ReShade routines. I'm currently playing Dishonored 2 on the Very High preset, with built-in AA disabled.

The current theory I'm running on is a pre-pass of SMAA since it catches sharp edges better than FXAA, followed by a fairly aggressive FXAA to round things out, and then a relatively light sharpen pass to pull the image back into focus. The closest I've come so far to TAA quality is this combination:

I'll post some screenshots tomorrow for comparison.

I still haven't found any good way to eliminate the "escalator" effect visible on diagonal lines though. I will continue experimenting with the shaders, and if anyone has a suggestion, I'm more than happy to try it or hear about the results.

Obviously good luck, but screenshots might not do much justice i think. I mean, TAA supposed to combat shimmering and shader aliasing and those are noticeable primarily in motion. I think the best way to combat those types of aliasing is by increasing resolution i.e. via DSR. It will likely be more taxing, but smaa+fxaa can be pretty heavy combo as well, depending on the game and hardware. Also last time i was messing with SMAA and FXAA in 1080p i ended up using just FXAA with #define FXAA_QUALITY__PRESET 39 and Subpix=0.000000, EdgeThreshold=0.000000, EdgeThresholdMin=0.000000 in the end. SMAA would catch some additional edges here and there, but for me they were hardly noticeable and it wasn't worth the additional blur and performance impact from it. It's all subjective ofc, as i said good luck.

The weight of the pair running in tandem is definitely noticeable - I'm gaming on a Ryzen 5 2600X + GTX 1660 Ti (gogo RedGreen combo lol) and typically getting between 75FPS and 130FPS (which is an acceptable range since I have a 48-144Hz freesync display). I do notice though that the shaders are eating a solid 1.2ms each frame, which translates to a significant drop in the actual framerate.

That said though, TAA is also a fairly costly routine in and of itself, so I figure I do have at least some wiggle room with the shaders if I assume I'm willing to let them use as much processing time as TAA would have.

That's very similar to what i have, for the exception of R5 1600 on my part and a much worse monitor, 75hz, no freesync. You can maybe save a little(tiny?) bit of performance by using sharpening in Nvidia control panel introduced with the latest drivers, instead of LS. Check it our if you haven't alrdy.