SGSSAA and Sharpness options?

Hello,

Half year ago I was playing Tales of Berseria on steam and I couldn’t stand jaggies, esp on grass. I luckily found the “fix” which was done with Special K SKIM. 2 options completely fixed jaggies for me. The first one was sharpness level which I could set, the second one was SGSSAA activation. I recently installed Half-Life 2 and some jaggies are terrible. Overall jaggies make games unplayable for me and I was searching for any solution over years but the only one that I have found is the one that I have mentioned above. I would love to have those options at HL2 however after installing Special K there are no such options and I don’t know if there is any possibility to unlock them. I would really apreciate if you could help me with that.

SGSSAA is a driver hack and I thought was broken in Win10 unless you modified Nvidia’s Drivers. I used to use that all the time for dx9 games. And oldies. very aggressive AA and heavy. Can’t exactly help you on that anymore since I moved to AMD since I wasn’t interested in the 2K series of Nvidia. I think the way SK works is it disables MSAA features in some games. Not 100% sure. Or some games don’t play nicely with it when using nvidia hacks like the one you are using with nvidia inspector.

Should point out that SGSSAA only works in Dx9 games not DX11. That’s something that was something you can’t force even with Nvidia inspector. I know this b/c many DX11 games I couldn’t use that very specific thing. It will show for DX11 games but wont’ do anything at all. Except put your memory way up and fps way down. lol.

Thank you for your response.
So I guess Tales of Berseria uses DX9? It shows DX11 but for sound on any site with requirements.
Do you mean that if I use Nvidia Inspector on such old games like mentioned HL2 then I will be able to force SGSSAA via it? Already tried but I don’t know if it’s working. I mean it propably does but the effect I had in Berseria was stunning and I felt huge motivation to play games and enjoy them again.

Would like to correct a little bit:

  • SGSSAA works with both DX9 (override/enhance in-game MSAA) and DX11 (enhance in-game MSAA). But very few DX11 games have MSAA implemented. Also they often have problems when enhancing, such as super low framerate.

  • For ToB, the broken feature is HBAO+, SGSAAA still works. This is a DX9 game. The specific build of SK for this games still allows SGSSAA.

Okay valid point but even enhance mode isn’t override and not as good either. But does slightly work. On side note he is referring to HL2 that isn’t working.

Edit: also he mentioned he downloaded latest SK build. So maybe that’s why?

@Cypek
Sometimes its very hard to notice difference in some games. Don’t know what type of game HL2 is. Is it openGL? or DX game?

If opengl would explain why you don’t see a difference at all.

From what I have found at some forums it seems that HL2 is DX9 game.

Then should be able to use SGSSAA in it. Just not sure if SK is messing with the driver hack though.

I think I can see a little bit difference, there are still some jaggies but maybe the “sharpness” is causing them? I mean at Berseria I could reduce sharpness but I think enabling SGSSAA via SKIM was enough to get rid of jaggies. However those HL2 jaggies are acceptable now.

I remember playing some old games back in 2000s and I had literaly 0 jaggies (I am 100% certain of it). and those were times of very low resolution like 1024x768. Nowadays at 2560x1440 in some modern games like Witcher 3 I am having visible jaggies. In Witcher 3 nothing could help me, I was testing tons of shaders and all of the AA options weren’t working (like 0 difference).

I will also use one of the worst possible (jaggies) example that I have experienced. Burnout Paradise (old one, not remsatered). Back in 2011 I was playing this game on old PC with CRT monitor and I had literaly 0 jaggies (propably 1024x768 res, maybe bit higher but I doubt since I was CRTs were 4:3). After I move to completely new pc and monitor this game became total nightmare, literaly worst jaggies I have ever seen, everything is flickering.

Some games require specific AA bits to be put in the AA slot for AA Override. There is a database somehow on web for each game to use better SGSSAA for game.

Here is link: 3DCenter Forum - NVIDIA compatibility bits master thread and IQ guide

Has quite a few threads where you can find specific AA settings for games.

And here is one: NVidia Anti-Aliasing Guide (updated) | guru3D Forums

Just gotta find the profiles for each game.

Edit:
This is the list you want:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ekUZsK2YXgd5XjjH1M7QkHIQgKO_i4bHCUdPeAd6OCo/pub?output=html![Screenshot_1925|768x55](upload://zMEWaw4FbDMKIaUcdcxKMBeVk4u.jpeg)

Using Nvidia Inspector in the DX9 AA compability bitcode thing put that 0x00 whatever thing. And then turn on SGSSAA as you are supposed to. This will maximize the effect and give better clarity and sharper look.

“You may see aliasing still when objects pass under under certain light sources or volumetric effects. Also with Half Life 2 update there may be a conflict with bloom causing some softness compared to the vanilla game”

Thank you so much for the help, I will try it out. Hopefully it’s gonna help me.