What do the different DOOM 4 antialiasing settings do and how do they impact performance relative to each other
doom-2016
Here is what I am seeing, I have no clue what each of them mean:
FXAA
SMAA
TAA (1TX)
FXAA (1TX)
SMAA (1TX)
TSSAA (8TX)
Best Answer
That list you're seeing is a list of different technologies for anti-aliasing the game. They're by no means exclusive to DOOM.
Different technologies perform anti-aliasing in different ways and thus achieve different results.
Usually the game lists them in order of less processing power consumption to more processing power consumption. The technology in the top is the one that requires less processing power and the one in the bottom is the one that requires the most processing power.
Generally the less processing power an anti-aliasing technology uses the less aliasing it reduces and/or introduces more blur or other defects in the image.
The more processing power it uses the more aliasing it reduces without introducing many defects to the image.
There are, however, a few exceptions to theses generic rules. I just gave them to use as a rule of thumb when you don't know what they mean.
Now let's go over a few of the technologies you mentioned:
TAA - Temporal Anti-Aliasing - a technique to prevent temporal aliasing which is caused by framrates being too low in comparison with moving objects in a scene.
TSSAA - Temporal Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing - same as TAA but uses supersampling to achieve better visual results.
All of these technologies come in varying strengths indicated by their multiplier. The multiplier is the number with the TX in front of if. in TSSAA (8TX) the 8TX is the multiplier.
The higher the number the more processing power it will require and the better the results it will achieve.
Confirmed directly by the man himself, John Romero, and ID Co-founder Tom Hall in a twitter conversation on January 30th of 2018, prompted by comments on the billboards for the then-new Wolfenstein game:
There's a theory going around that Blascawiz is Keens father and keen is Doomguy's father. this was later confirmed in the doom RPG series, but I need confirmation from the Legend himself.
John Romero: Blazkowicz is Keen's grandfather. Which makes you wonder: why is Keen's Dad not some badass hero? Who IS he? WHAT is he? Only @ThatTomHall can say.
Best Answer
That list you're seeing is a list of different technologies for anti-aliasing the game. They're by no means exclusive to DOOM.
Different technologies perform anti-aliasing in different ways and thus achieve different results.
Usually the game lists them in order of less processing power consumption to more processing power consumption. The technology in the top is the one that requires less processing power and the one in the bottom is the one that requires the most processing power.
Generally the less processing power an anti-aliasing technology uses the less aliasing it reduces and/or introduces more blur or other defects in the image. The more processing power it uses the more aliasing it reduces without introducing many defects to the image.
There are, however, a few exceptions to theses generic rules. I just gave them to use as a rule of thumb when you don't know what they mean.
Now let's go over a few of the technologies you mentioned:
All of these technologies come in varying strengths indicated by their multiplier. The multiplier is the number with the TX in front of if. in TSSAA (8TX) the 8TX is the multiplier.
The higher the number the more processing power it will require and the better the results it will achieve.
For more on anti-aliasing please visit Anti-Aliasing Wikipedia, Spatial Anti-aliasing Wikipedia and Anti-aliasing article.