Anti aliasing makes units blurry since last patch

Age of Empires III: DE III - Report a Bug
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:arrow_forward: GAME INFORMATION

:point_down: These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.

  • GAME BUILD #: 100.12.14825.0
  • GAME PLATFORM: Steam
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10

:arrow_forward: ISSUE EXPERIENCED

:point_down: DESCRIBE THE ISSUE IN DETAIL (below). LIMIT TO ONE BUG PER THREAD.
Temporal anti aliasing is making every unit blurry since the last patch, specially when using SSAA at 100%. Before this patch, TAA was the option that looked better, but now I have to use Fxaa to make everything look good, as models suffer from bad quality with TAA, more so when zooming out. I hope you can take a look at it and fix TAA, as it looked better than Fxaa before.

:arrow_forward: FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

:point_down: How often does the issue occur? CHOSE ONE; DELETE THE REST!

  • 100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)

:arrow_forward: REPRODUCTION STEPS

:point_down: List CLEAR and DETAILED STEPS we can take to reproduce the issue ourselves… Be descriptive!

Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. Set SSAA to 100% and anti aliasing to TAA
  2. Play a match

:arrow_forward: EXPECTED RESULT

:point_down: What was SUPPOSED to happen if the bug you encountered were not present?
Units should appear solid and not blurry and gosthly.

:arrow_forward: IMAGE

:point_down: ALWAYS attach a PICTURE (.jpg, .png, .gif) or VIDEO (.mp4, YouTube link) that highlights the problem.

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Fxaa

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TAA

3 Likes
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Same for me, before the last update everything worked well, but after it I noticed this issue

1 Like
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So that’s what it is! I thought I was imagining things, but there has been a marked decrease in visual quality for me as well. I tried changing driver settings, thinking that maybe I enable some setting that caused this, but your explanation makes more sense. I will change some AA settings and see if I can replicate the issue.

2 Likes
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Glad I’m not the only one! I have two videos to show the difference with both settings, but youtube makes them look the same because compression. Do anyone know how to upload videos here?

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So here is what I’m seeing. All textures in the game suddenly appear blurry to me, as though I’m running on lowest settings.
This is with every setting cranked up to max. Note how poor the texture quality is on animals and units, especially. I don’t remember it looking this bad when I first started playing.

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The only solution right now is changing the anti aliasing to Fxaa for the time being, as it seems it is a problem with temporal anti aliasing only. But yes, it didn’t looked as bad with that setting before, they did something in the last patch

2 Likes
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I suspect some of the work on performance improvement may have had unintended side effects.

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I have also noticed using fxaa rather than temporal aa is that it has more light reflections in the buildings and armor, ans it has been like this for some builds now I believe. Hopefuly they can make it work better.

1 Like
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Can confirm that FXAA looks much better from a crispness / clarity perspective. Unfortunately is not as good as TAA at smoothing out the jaggies.

1 Like
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The issue with units looking blurry with temporal anti aliasing and ssaa at 100% is still present, just to let you know. The last patch ( Update 18493) says it’s been fixed:

  • Fixed an issue with screen space calculations that led to the game looking blurry in certain cases.

but it hasn’t in those settings. 150% looks better but its more consuming

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There are new people coming to the game and finding it blurry and unapealling, please fix this issue, its very important for having a good impression of the game!

Screenshot_20210226-212817_Reddit
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1 Like
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Has anyone tested the latest fix yet? Does it resolve the problem?

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Update: It doesn’t. Using Temporal AA at 1080p still looks blurry.

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Another fix in the latest patch release notes. Hopefully this one does the job.

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Let us know if the fixes in this week’s build succeed in addressing the issue!

3 Likes
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This is the one that did it for me! Game looks amazing again!

3 Likes
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It’s fixed, at least for me. Game looks glorious and crisp, even at max zoom levels. Performance feels pretty good, too!

2 Likes
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This bug has appeared AGAIN in todays patch. PLEASE FIX IT. Units moving leave a trace behind and their models are NOT as defined. I think it has to do with the fact you can play in full screen, as the models are not as blurry as previous patches, but the blur is still noticeable