So I got The Force Unleashed 2 today on PC. It has an AA option and it ends up it is some new post-processing technique called MLAA that uses a more refined pixel blur to remove jaggies with no performance cost.

It works.

It works well.

Unlike some other attempts at this like in STALKER or GTA4 it does not make the game look like a blurry mess, it actually looks rather crisp and nice. If you pay real close attention you can see some blurry aspects, but it's well within the tolerable threshold. Some really complex jaggy areas like say a grate or grill are still shimmery, but not that bad.

Ends up this technique, used natively in The Force Unleashed 2, is a new option for ALL games on ATI video cards from the 5000 series and up? Really? If that is true, and it works as well in other games as it does here, then I may have to ebay my GTX 480 and get an ATI card. It's that impressive.

This article: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-mlaa-360-pc-article

Also, there is this [url=page]http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/5[/url] explaining what MLAA is.

As I play The Force Unleashed it becomes less impressive... eventually the jaggies that remain are more apparent and the whole image still shimmers like a jaggy image, despite the lack of actual staircase lines.

Still, it's neat, and for games with no native AA and a large performance hit when you force AA it would be nice to have.