[w]tech - SMAA and HeightFog  by mind in a box   

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Date Added: May 13 2012 06:56 AM



Before concentrating on the gameplay of Pulsedrive we want to implement some graphics features we would like to use in our game. Both new effects - SMAA and HeightFog - are techniques used by modern games like BF3 or Crysis 2.

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SMAA
"Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing" is a screen spaced post procession effect which uses the contrast of the scene to smooth edges. This is also the reason why it outrules MSAA in deferred renderers, where MSAA can't be used in many cases. Also it is said that SMAA performs faster and better than Nvidias FXAA.



Because it is a post processing effect and it uses the contrast of the the scene it even works with masked shaders like fences or grids:




We have also decided to run the SMAA before our Depth-Of-Field effect. This enables very fine bluring without too much flickering as you may know from other engines.
Learn more about SMAA here: http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/

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HeightFog
"Exponential HeightFog"  is a great effect to create a homogenous atmossphere. For practical reasons we have integrated as global effect which is specified for each map and completely controllable via scripting.




If you want to know more about the technique we are using, go here: http://developer.amd...ts_in_Games.pdf (Page 15)

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Visual Studio 2010 C++ Express Edition