Random_Coffee: What does ubersampling do? It seems to me like no system can run The Witcher 2 well with ubersampling :P
Super sampling: It's a form of AA and it quite useless in my opinion. Especially if you have a decent monitor.
eRe4s3r: There is imo
never an instance where scanlines, noise, motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration and SSAO make a game look better. Most of these also introduce really ugly artifacts especially up-close, SSAO in particular has a problem when you have lots of very fine details (on character faces for example). The problem however is not AO in itself, the problem is that engines that use HDR + GI + AO (HBAO) need to use way more samples to produce a proper image quality. And this stuff eats in FPS like nothing else. What game developers configure as Ultra quality is not even 25% of what is needed to produce a visually striking image quality with these features. So once GPU's become more powerful image quality at least with AO will improve tremendously. Games currently use 12 to 24 samples, required are 256 or 512.
So far in every game I own these were the first things I turned off (And in case of Dying Light for example, half the settings on OFF produces a far better image quality.. that's just absurd and even a waste of money by the devs.
I turn motion blur (and any other kind of in-da-face blur) off in ALL games. That "feature" literally makes me sick (as in physically sick). You can imagine how much fun I had in Dying Light, where you couldn't disable half the blur until mods hacked everything apart.
And speaking of SSAO, in modern engines, AO is often part of shadow casting and introduces a whole slew of new fun, where shadows do not connect with meshes properly anymore, because modern engines blur the shadow edges. Can be best seen usually whenever a game has ladders. Since ladders have tons of tiny connections to a wall you can see how AO shifts the shadow from the actual point where ladder+wall intersect. I find that
extraordinarily ugly. Imo even a drastic step back from "dumb" stencil shadows that we had in Doom 3, for example.
So yeah, there are plenty of settings that do not improve image quality in games. But I find some games definitely try to find a balance.. and this can only get better over time.
This post is quite excellent and informative thank you. Yes I agree with the artifacting. I was playing Shadow Warrior (2013) and noticed that there was some kind of fuzz on the walls and what I can only describe as some kind of halo around my guns. I turned off SSAO and everything looked loads better. I also turn off post processing and that helped reduce the glare as well. I think we are a long way off from true AO since that would require more processing power then I think any PC is cable of at this time.
As for blur I almost find it offensive to be honest. Why are you making my video card work harder to make the picture worse. Blur means less clear right.
mindaz3: It depends on the game.
Most of the time blur can be annoying and sometime even limit field of view.
Depth of Field can provide this more realistic feel in game surroundings, since it blurs objects depending on range or camera focus. Still depends on the game, sometimes it can be too much.
SSAO is a must, I would say if your rig can handle it, enable it. It gives more realistic feeling to in-game objects since it renders shadows around corners of the object.
Ubersampling in Witcher 2 is just a form of sampling technology used to reduce jagged edges of game world. So far it required a lot of hardware power and almost same effect can be achievemtn with other sampling methods without that much of a power requirements.
What games do you think use SSAO and DOA very well. My isue with DOA is ho does the game know what my eyes are focusing on. Sometimes I will focus on something in the background and it will look bury.
