Well, these are my Nvidia Inspector settings for HDR Off:

 

 

and in X-Plane 10 Rendering Options I have:

 

I was going to say that AA doesn't seem tot have any effect no matter what setting I use. Amy reason you compress VRAM?

Nope :blush:   - I wasn't even aware it was checked... Duh !  Thx for pointing it to me .....

 

My Shimmerings gone, another question is why enable overide application setting, but you set 8x in-sim. Why not none?

Hahahahahaha!!!! Finally the evil shimmer-monster is dead!!

 

@ohsirus yes, I set none in sim as well, and left V-sync at full.

 

THANKS J!!!!!
 
(Now I can actually concentrate on the sim rather than clenching my teeth at all the shimmering)

 

 

Hmmm, I still don't like the way HDR works :-( even with these settings...

 

 

 

Hmmm, I still don't like the way HDR works :-( even with these settings...

Thanks J.C.  I have to agree with you here.  For night flight, I just cannot turn HDR off.  Btw, should this topic also be pinned?  When not in HDR mode, I turned off X-Plane AA and AF and push all of it out to my GTX680.  Fantastic performance and the visuals are now stunning! no more shimmering,

J.C. and others, I spent some time reading, and decided to try some of the other combinations of AA modes on XPX.

 

What I am seeing so far is that 16x [16x CSAA (4 color + 12 cv samples)] offers a very similar shimmer reduction with a much lower frame-rate impact on my system. The documentation from Nvidia seems to say that 16x CSAA has a performance impact about the same as 4X MSAA but with significantly better quality.

 

I'm seeing good results but could anyone confirm on their system? Thanx!

HiFlyer, juyst one question...

 

You set Antialiasing Setting at 16x [ 16x CSAA ( 4 color + 12 cv  samples)]

but what do you chose for AA- Mode ? Enhance app settiongs? Override?

and in X-plane? What do you set under HDR AA ?

I choose enhance just because, but override would do just as well, I guess. I also found that switching to 32x added almost no additional overhead. There is still some slight shimmer, but it might be an acceptable trade-off for some to get a good shimmer reduction that doesn't also kill framerate.

 

This is part of one of the articles I was looking at:

 

I'm ignoring HDR for now.

 

CSAA (Coverage Sampling Antialiasing) is one of the key new features of the GeForce Series GPU.

 

In summary, CSAA produces antialiased images that rival the quality of 8x or 16x MSAA, while introducing only a minimal performance hit over standard (typically 4x) MSAA. It works by introducing the concept of a new sample type: a sample that represents coverage. This differs from previous AA techniques where coverage was always inherently tied to another sample type. In supersampling for example, each sample represents shaded color, stored color/z/stencil, and coverage, which essentially amounts to rendering to an oversized buffer and downfiltering. MSAA reduces the shader overhead of this operation by decoupling shaded samples from stored color and coverage; this allows applications using antialiasing to operate with fewer shaded samples while maintaining the same quality color/z/stencil and coverage sampling. CSAA further optimizes this process by decoupling coverage from color/z/stencil, thus reducing bandwidth and storage costs.

 

CSAA can be enabled in one of the two following scenarios:

• When the application specifically enables CSAA. 
• When CSAA is turned on in the control panel by the end user. The control panel offers users one of two options:

  • “Enhance” mode: All application-created MSAA surfaces are converted to CSAA surfaces using the control panel-specified CSAA mode.
  • “Override” mode: The control panel forces a CSAA-enabled backbuffer. Note that this mode only works for applications that render directly to the backbuffer.

It is recommended that applications enable CSAA directly. The process of implementing CSAA is incredibly simple (almost exactly the same as implementing MSAA), and the benefit to your users is enormous; they get much higher image quality at almost zero performance loss, without the fuss and hassle of manipulating the control panel.

 

And another:

 

I believe MSAA is better overall sampling, and CSAA is an NVIDIA proprietary sampling method on cards from the G80/G92 series on up.

 

CSAA is supposed to use less memory buffer because of the way it takes samples and uses its coverage, and it provides comparable image quality to MSAA but not quite on the same level. It does, however, improve performance.

 

For example, 4xMSAA is roughly equivalent to 8xCSAA, and 8xMSAA is equivalent to only 8xQCSAA, so you need to turn up the CSAA about twice to match standard MSAA. The "Q" denotes "true" multi-sampling like MSAA.

 

Technically, running 8xCSAA gives you comparable image quality to 4xMSAA and may provide a performance boost depending on your card/game.

Doing my Homework! Found a little article from Mr Supnik

 

http://hacksoflife.blogspot.com/2011/04/so-many-aa-techniques-so-little-time.html

More playing around shows this as the sweet spot for non-hdr mode. Interesting is that one of the biggest hits is the super-sampling setting. Turning it off completely gets you noticeably more shimmering, (but still acceptable) and 2x seems more than sufficient. The biggest hit after that is your cloud settings in SkyMaxx (I had it all MaXXed, of course. :blush:

Turning down your world detail distance to high is another sweet spot.

Adaptive Vsync helps with framerate it seems, but can give slight tearing that I don't like.

Jcomm, you have Antialiasing fix set to "on" and I'm not sure why. The Nvidia inspector update page describes says:

• added FERMI_SETREDUCECOLORTHRESHOLDSENABLE as "Antialiasing fix"
• to avoid black edges in some games while using MSAA (R320.14+)

So not sure exactly what it does exactly in X-plane.

 

I have Texture filtering Negative LOD bias as "clamp" because my understanding is that in both DirectX and OpenGL that's a setting to help stop textures from shimmering.

 

If that's wrong, somebody please let me know!!  :blush: 

Here are my test settings so far.

Jcomm, you have Antialiasing fix set to "on" and I'm not sure why. The Nvidia inspector update page describes says:

added FERMI_SETREDUCECOLORTHRESHOLDSENABLE as "Antialiasing fix"

to avoid black edges in some games while using MSAA (R320.14+)

So not sure exactly what it does exactly in X-plane.

 

Well, it's a long story Devon. I was a great friend of Fermi, and once he told me: Jose, make sure you "SETREDUCECOLORTHRESHOLDSENABLE" all you Nvidia settings... These were his last words before I woke up this morning dreaming of this post of yours :-), which was the last thing I read before going to bed with at terrible sensation of ... let's call it "lack of knowledge..." :-)

 

OMG, I  :blush:  at the fact that I really don't understand a word of what most of you guys talk when the theme is graphics settings :-/  I should better know, read, try to learn and try different settings, but I am sooooo lazy :-(

 

I don't make the slightest idea why I choose some settings with Nvidia. At some time in the past, while trying to fight for the best settings for X-Plane, after having read that there was no point in trying to use NI with X-plane 10, I decided to start using what I was using for DCS, because both use HDR ( although I know they use completely different approaches - DX vs OGL...). Some of my settings are a pure random mix of settings I found working best with DCS World, recommended at their forums, while others are adapted from suggestions you and others have posted here at the forum.

 

So, a BIG THANK YOU to you Devon, and to all of those simmers who take their time to test, experiment, write down their findings and making it available for us!

 

Now, my task is extremely simple - I just have to go through the posts over the last month or so and collect the various suggested settings that users have found to give good results!

 

 

OMG, I   at the fact that I really don't understand a word of what most of you guys talk when the theme is graphics settings :-/  I should better know, read, try to learn and try different settings, but I am sooooo lazy :-(

 

Join the club! Approximately 3/4 of what you write makes me clasp my hands on the desk in front of me and attempt to look bright and attentive while most of it fly's over my head with a loud VROOOOOOOOOOOMM!!!!!  :lol:

Well I found out what your anti-aliasing fix does. When global shadows (melt your gpu) are selected, you can sometimes see a huge black shadow following your plane in some external view angles. The fix seems to correct that.

 

 

Well I found out what your anti-aliasing fix does. When global shadows (melt your gpu) are selected, you can sometimes see a huge black shadow following your plane in some external view angles. The fix seems to correct that.

 

Whow!  Beginner's luck - that's what I am great at :-) 

 

Anyway, I never even tried melting my poor GPU with such settings :-)

 

Great finding!  Thx Devon!!!

Ok, Thx to the various inputs all of you have provided so far in this thread, I spent some more time testing, specially Devon's latest findings regardin the use of CSAA in Nvidia cards,

an these are my settings right now, for non-HDR mode ( HDR Off ).

 

I tested in with a weak Geforce GTS 450 1GB GDDR3 graphics board. YMMV, specially if you own more powerful GBs...

You can increase you Antialiasing - Setting, and if you choose CSAA ( as Devon pointed out ) you know it should be double the value you would use if instaed of CSAA you went for MSAA!

 

Regarding Aintialiasing - Transparency Supersampling, if you use some entry like, for instance, 8xS Combined: 1x2 SS + 4 x MS, just make sure you choose for Aintialiasing - Transparency Supersampling a value that gives the same result as the SS setting ( 1x2 = 2 --> 2SS ), etc...

 

I didn't notice any effect from setting FXAA.

 

 

 

Some Notes:

==========

- There's a little performnace gain from running in full screen

- The shadow detail is a true FPS killer

- If you can, keep world detail distance and airport detail to "high"

- I believe water reflection detail can easily go uo to default

- my cloud detail has long been lowered to 33% because I actually found the clouds more plausibly designed at lower detail marks (?)

- I am now using Vsync