• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

BF3 FXAA VS MSAA

S

spaceman

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Jan 7, 2005
Messages
14,959
I find myself not liking the FXAA with this game. At least the in game. It seems blurry. What have you found works best for getting a clear picture? In game or forcing it through NV control panel or ? I just want to get rid of the fuzz.
 
Have you given SMAA a shot yet, I consider that superior (just my opinion) to FXAA or MLAA? I don't have BF3 so I don't know if it would even work...
 
The game itself is blurry man. It's not just the FXAA. Motion blur hurts a lot too.
Plus, compared to past bf games, everything on the screen looks like it has been miniaturized.

To put this in perspective, I have 700 hours in bfbc2. The models were bigger on screen in bc2, and generally easier to see, even when sniping. Hell, looking back, it seems that the character models had more detailed textures on them than BF3. Fast forward to BF3, i was hating the blue wash because my eyes have trouble focusing on blue (as do most people, thus yellow hunting glasses exist), and I was hating how the models all looked smaller on screen. It is much harder to see and hit people because at long ranges they're reduced to 10 pixels instead of a decently sized model. Everything really amounts to making the picture blurry and more difficult to see in BF3.

My one solution which has worked somewhat is that I got a 1080p, 27 inch screen so the pixels were bigger. I can tell it has helped a lot because I am no longer squinting and leaning into my screen to see people far away, but at the same time, people far away are just a few pixels.

My answer to your question: I use the in game FXAA, but I have always found it blurry/fuzzy.
 
Yeah I am reduced to a tiny 19" dell trinitron crt from 2000 atm. I had a nice 22" Sony CRT but it is all washed out and then tried my old 37" LCD tv which did ok but ultimately was way too slow for this game.

Hmm. So there really is no way to clear it up entirely? Pretty sure Super sampling would kill fps. I am running all high w/ low effects, no motion blur, 2XMSAA and HBAO at 1280X1024. Game looks good but man alive it can get blurry.
 
I don't use the ingame FXAA, I hate the way it makes everything blurry and dull. I have been using this injector with 4xMSAA and BF3 has never looked better.

There's a 1.30 version floating around, I didn't like the color of it, so I stuck with v 1.25. Try it out and see what you think...its the way the game should look IMO.

http://www.enterbf3.com/topic/6929-fxaa-injectorcolour-enhancer/
 
SKL1 said:
I don't use the ingame FXAA, I hate the way it makes everything blurry and dull. I have been using this injector with 4xMSAA and BF3 has never looked better.

There's a 1.30 version floating around, I didn't like the color of it, so I stuck with v 1.25. Try it out and see what you think...its the way the game should look IMO.

http://www.enterbf3.com/topic/6929-fxaa-injectorcolour-enhancer/
Click to expand...

Cool. That is just the kind of thing I was looking for thanks. I can't go to sites like that at work so my search is kind of limited.
 
spaceman said:
Yeah I am reduced to a tiny 19" dell trinitron crt from 2000 atm. I had a nice 22" Sony CRT but it is all washed out and then tried my old 37" LCD tv which did ok but ultimately was way too slow for this game.

Hmm. So there really is no way to clear it up entirely? Pretty sure Super sampling would kill fps. I am running all high w/ low effects, no motion blur, 2XMSAA and HBAO at 1280X1024. Game looks good but man alive it can get blurry.
Click to expand...

I would love to know a way to clear it up. And SSAA would absolutely murder your fps.

SKL1 said:
I don't use the ingame FXAA, I hate the way it makes everything blurry and dull. I have been using this injector with 4xMSAA and BF3 has never looked better.

There's a 1.30 version floating around, I didn't like the color of it, so I stuck with v 1.25. Try it out and see what you think...its the way the game should look IMO.

http://www.enterbf3.com/topic/6929-fxaa-injectorcolour-enhancer/
Click to expand...

Wut. I'm trying this.
 
SKL1 said:
Do you think the color is way different in 1.30 ? something about it didn't look as good as 1.25 IMO.

Its still WAY better than the vanilla BF3 no matter what version you use.
Click to expand...

I didn't notice any difference over 1.25 tbh. But yes, either way... its much better than Vanilla.
 
been using it for awhile. I havent heard of anyone getting banned. All it's doing is adding saturation to the colors and using a higher level of FXAA.
 
I haven't tried the new beta drivers which are supposed to have FXAA improvements but I have the same opinion of FXAA in Skyrim. When it's enabled the game looks blurry. I suggest checking for a tweak guide to BF3 at geforce dot com. They have one for Skyrim and it made a big difference. Using MSAA over FXAA may take a performance hit but it looks a hell of a lot better.
 
spaceman said:
I find myself not liking the FXAA with this game. At least the in game. It seems blurry. What have you found works best for getting a clear picture? In game or forcing it through NV control panel or ? I just want to get rid of the fuzz.
Click to expand...

That's what FXAA is, blur. You basically sacrifice image quality and texture sharpness to KIND OF get rid of jaggies. MSAA will always give better image quality.
 
Here's the BF3 tweak guide.

UPDATE:

Uh, for whatever reason Kyle appears to be blocking the above mentioned web site. I can't post the link directly. I did see a BF3 guide there though.
 
That is why FXAA isn't a very good option unless you need performance over quality.

It always make texture/images blurry. MSAA on the other hand is far superior in terms of quality.
 
I used to use FXAA on my GTX 480 but now that I've moved to a GTX 680 I use 4xMSAA and set FXAA to off. At 1920x1200 I find it provides plenty of AA and things looks sharp like i'm used to.
 
I use 4X MSAA + Low FXAA. MSAA is superior in BF3 by far, FXAA blurs too much for this title IMO. But low FXAA cleans up the shader aliasing enough without blurring the rest of the image badly, so I use that.
 
spaceman said:
I find myself not liking the FXAA with this game. At least the in game. It seems blurry. What have you found works best for getting a clear picture? In game or forcing it through NV control panel or ? I just want to get rid of the fuzz.
Click to expand...

I'm using the injector mod I posted in this thread. I use it in combination with 4x MSAA, seems better to me although it could also be the placebo effect on me ; ) There are some example pics as well if you wish to take a gander at them. Only problems seems to be that OSD stats from afterburner don't work. Dont know if it works with the other injector mods.
 
If you do want to use the in-game FXAA, only use it on Low or Medium (I prefer medium). High is too blurry, but medium gives you pretty much the same antialiasing without nearly as much blurring.
 
Are there any reports of users getting banned? I'm scared to use any type of injector with BF3 because PunkBuster is such a complete piece of unreliable crap (that doesn't even prevent cheating) and dealing with support trying to get unbanned doesn't sound fun.
 
I've been using the FXAA injector for months with no issues, but I'm sure there's always a risk.

Personally I use 4x MSAA now that I have a GTX 680 that can handle it, no FXAA because I hate the damn blur.
I'd use a small amount of SMAA if I could without blurring/distorting the HUD and text.

Feels so good to not need FXAA anymore, like a really bad screen filter's been taken off (even coming from Medium).

Also, I'd try the game without using an injector with color changing first. The most recent patch changed some of the coloring and made it better, IMO no need anymore.
 
The ingame Post Processing AA (FXAA) for BF3 is not to my liking as well. I just use 4x Deferred AA (MSAA) with 16x AF, Ultra on everything, no HBAO/SSAO, Blur OFF. The game looks fantastic this way, much more crisp and clear. Even if FXAA is set to 'Low' it's just too much of a distraction for my eyes.

The FXAA Injecter some people like to use in other games is great, but BF3 really doesn't need it in my opinion.
 
BM00 said:
The ingame Post Processing AA (FXAA) for BF3 is not to my liking as well. I just use 4x Deferred AA (MSAA) with 16x AF, Ultra on everything, no HBAO/SSAO, Blur OFF. The game looks fantastic this way, much more crisp and clear. Even if FXAA is set to 'Low' it's just too much of a distraction for my eyes.

The FXAA Injecter some people like to use in other games is great, but BF3 really doesn't need it in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but I like HBAO.

I just wish they supported some form of "real" transparency AA, or even SMAA.
 
Forceman said:
If you do want to use the in-game FXAA, only use it on Low or Medium (I prefer medium). High is too blurry, but medium gives you pretty much the same antialiasing without nearly as much blurring.
Click to expand...

I've settled on medium as well, since my HD6950's simply cannot handle any MSAA at 2560x1600. I still get the crawling (temporal aliasing?), but it's not bad enough for me. I tend to focus on killing the bad guys :).
 
Tried the mod and it works well. I am still playing with it though. The performance version seems to work smoothly. With HBAO on the game seems a bit dark. Still playing around with it but I can say that my game jumped back to a dominant level as I led each server I played on for 4 rounds last night. I can see better now for sure. That is bad news b/c if I spot you first, it is not going to end well for you. Sneaky snake ftw!

Oh and I made the sweetest stinger kill on a jet last night on Caspian. From Russian main and the rocket followed forever almost to the other main before it got him. Pretty to see.

So the injector mod does clear and brighten up the game for sure. Still playing with settings but so far it is an improvement.

I suppose you can use the console command to see fps yes? Forgot to try that last night. need to turn msi off too as I think that causes some performance drag with it not working with the mod.
 
Last edited:
spaceman said:
Tried the mod and it works well. I am still playing with it though. The performance version seems to work smoothly. With HBAO on the game seems a bit dark. Still playing around with it but I can say that my game jumped back to a dominant level as I led each server I played on for 4 rounds last night. I can see better now for sure. That is bad news b/c if I spot you first, it is not going to end well for you. Sneaky snake ftw!

Oh and I made the sweetest stinger kill on a jet last night on Caspian. From Russian main and the rocket followed forever almost to the other main before it got him. Pretty to see.

So the injector mod does clear and brighten up the game for sure. Still playing with settings but so far it is an improvement.

I suppose you can use the console command to see fps yes? Forgot to try that last night. need to turn msi off too as I think that causes some performance drag with it not working with the mod.
Click to expand...

render.drawfps 1 in console to display FPS.
 
Yeah still playing with it. I have to give a thumbs up for the performance injection. I can just plain see better now. Especially at distance. The image is way less fuzzy now. FPS is staying above 90 for the most part which is great too bc the image has improved with no loss of fps.
 
Hmmm, using that fxaa injector, I think that you should put all settings to low. I say this b/c it seems to run best that way and I do not see much difference b/w high and low settings? Weird.
 
Hi, I posted this in a few other forums as well:

Here is an alternative method for antialiasing + sharpening BF3 graphics. It does not include any color correction - you can still fix colors via Nvidia Control Panel for instance or use the FXAA injector mentioned in the previous posts which includes color filters.

The method I use is only slightly different from the usual methods (DANOC FXAA injection, classic FXAA injection, SMAA injection,...) explained above. The trick I use is:

1) in-game Antialiasing post set to HIGH (yes I know it's blurry but read on)
2) and then applied classic FXAA injector but with disabled antialiasing AND enabled sharpening (and here is where "magic" happens)

Check the pics in the blog post + there are also my FXAA injector files available for downloading:

http://www.chromescreen.com/alternative-way-to-get-sharper-graphics-in-battlefield-3/

I like the results better compared to using only the FXAA injector antialiasing (and optionally sharpening). DANOC presets are just unnaturally sharp although there's obviously a lot of room for tweaking. The method explained in my post just removes more aliasing and sharpens the image just right, not too much, at least the way I see it.

Hope it works well for you,

P.S.: this obviously applies mostly to low-end machines where using 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA is not an option and where using some kind of low-impact FXAA is still acceptable. But then again, this sharpening tweak might be beneficial also when having all settings maxed out on a capable machine.

cheers
 
Last edited:
Interesting post. I have found that I get better image quality without the injectors but I do get a decent performance boost using them. The color correction also doesn't make much of an impact for me. I will keep testing though as this is very interesting stuff. Thanks chromescreen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top