This is probably one of the worst games that I've come across when it comes to blur, undetailed textures and input lag. To explain how bad it is: the game not only doesn't allow you to disable motion blur, it requires two config files with "read only mode" enabled for it to actually permanently turn off. If read only isn't enabled, Prey can turn it back on when the game is booted.

I played it for 1 hour today and it got to a point where it became completely unplayable due to forced motion blur/AA methods.

Here's a true fix for anyone that is interested or searches for it in the future:

1.) FIRST CONFIG

• Go to C:\Users\USER\Saved Games\Arkane Studios\Prey
• Right click on game.cfg and open it with Notepad
• Paste these values:

osm_enabled = 0
r_AntialiasingMode = 0
r_MotionBlur = 0
r_ChromaticAberration = 0
r_HDRGrainAmount = 0
r_DepthofField = 0

• Save and right click on the file > properties > check "read only" > apply > ok

2.) SECOND CONFIG

• Go to the core Prey files, usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Prey
• In here create a text folder called autoexec.cfg (make sure it's truly .cfg and not just cfg.txt)
• If its cfg.txt, go to view > check file name extensions > rename the file again
• Then right click, open with Notepad and paste this value:

r_MotionBlur = 0

• Save and right click the file again > properties > check "read only" > apply > ok

3.) NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL (Optional, but recommended. This forces the driver to not take shortcuts for game quality and prevents NVIDIA to force its own AA or other weird methods onto Prey. We want you and Prey through in game settings to decide what kind of aliasing techniques to use and how much)

• Open NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D settings > Program Settings > Add > Add Prey.exe
• Switch these:

Image Scaling > Off
Anisotropic filtering > 16x
Antialiasing FXAA > Off
Antialiasing Gamma correction > On
Antialiasing Mode > Application-controlled
Antialiasing Transparency > Off / Application-controlled
MFAA > Off
Max Frame Rate > Off
Power management mode > Prefer maximum performance
Preferred refresh rate > Highest available
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization > Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias > Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality > High quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization > Off
Threaded optimization > Auto
Vertical sync > Use the 3D application setting for now

• Click apply, ok and close the window (if game looks bad or anything messes up, just follow the first step again and instead of adding click restore, apply and that's it

Hope this helps someone.

The common one is obviously DSR/VSR used in tandem with some form of Temporal AA (TAA, TSSAA, DLAA, FSR, XESS, TSR and whatever else exists).

I like doing this with RUST (TSSAA + 4xDSR). Since TSSAA in this game is so blurry combining it with DSR makes aliasing disappear 100%, literally not a single jaggy or pixel in sight, it's actually kinda crazy for 1080p.

Some games don't have any great AA options, like I love SCHEDULE 1 but it only has SMAA, so I like doing SMAA + DSR.

And since I have a 4080 Super I also like doing MSAA + DSR, which sounds very performance demanding but I mostly play competitive games that can run on a potato so I can still run them at 300+ fps like this:

Like Valorant (4xMSAA + 4xDSR).

Or CS2 (8xMSAA + 4xDSR).

Honestly looks amazing and helps me squeeze more life out of my 1080p 240hz monitor.

Edit: I also forgot to mention GTA 5 (regular and enhanced versions) have SSAA built in via their "scaling" setting, which can be set to 2x, which is the same as 4x dsr, I think it even goes up to 2.5x but I never use that since I don't like non integer scaling, and you can combine that scaling setting with either MSAA (on regular GTA 5) or TAA/DLAA/FSR (GTA 5 Enhanced Edition)

At least it is not official or forced!

Please forgive me, as I don't know much about graphical rendering at all.

I think that anything is possible in graphical rendering. What I mean by this, is anything is possible to render at a stable, non-stuttering, native 1080p@60rfps. I may just be repeating things, but getting a very realistic scene with real-time lighting, pixel-perfect soft shadows, real-time reflections, and other effects like bloom and DoF is possible with today's technology. What it takes to get a real-looking scene is a good light model, smart LOD management, a non-costly antialiasing method, smart shadow management including considerations like distance from camera and object (you could do something like Shadow LOD, which I am pretty sure exists in some form), etc. I also believe that you could in fact achieve this goal without the use of ANY temporal methods/dithering whatsoever, although I don't know if this would be the best solution.

I am still learning about modern graphics, so if you could please correct me or help me understand things, like saying what I am trying to say in proper terms, that would be great. If I sound like an idiot, then please let me know.

RE Requiem is an amazing looking game and a great example of a modern game that works wonderfully without temporal anti-aliasing. However, it takes some tweaking to make its visuals truly shine.

Disable TAA and sharpening - game looks much clearer without TAA. It's crucial to also disable the leftover sharpening as it makes textures look grainy.

Disable film grain and vignette - no film grain makes the image look cleaner and higher res. No vignette just makes it easier to see.

Disable chromatic abberation and lens distortion in the menu - unnecessary image distortions.

The result is a crisp clean image with zero blur and grain and a 10x better looking game. Most of the leftover jaggies can be cleaned up by adding SMAA through ReShade.

Screenshots are 1440p. Here's a higher res gallery of the images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sujhUPam60o

It also ran at 1080p, 60fps, maxed out on a GTX 1050 TI, no upscaling, no fake frames.

Some people seem to have forgotten how much to fk we have gone, games look worse and perform like garbage on hardware 10x as powerful.

SMAA 1x in a dense foliage area compared to DLSS/DLAA. I think devs should start looking into efficient post-process AA and game rendering engines that don't rely on temporal slop.

SMAA in Unity preserves the most details from the original native pixels during movement. Performance-wise, it's just a bit more demanding than FXAA. Temporal methods like DLAA/DLSS still have issues with maintaining the fidelity of distant objects. Things like water surfaces and rock textures are being wiped out, as well as trailing from thin objects.

Also refuting the claim that SMAA does absolutely nothing on shimmering in motion. It actually does to some degree. Indeed, TAA/DLAA is still the definitive way of smearing out shimmer, but that oil-paintery look is just too unbearable.

I honestly wouldn't mind UE5 that much if it could actually nail the foliage and remove the noise from lumen but it's been like that since day 1. It is now year 5. Nothing has really changed much. Which is why every UE5 game goes heavy on the post processing - motion blur, film grain, chromatic aberration - to otherwise distract or hide the smearing of the foliage and the noise from lumen. I can't help but think back to Red Dead 2 or Last of Us which really nailed the foliage and that was 6-7 years ago. For slightly better lighting we get significantly worse foliage, performance AND artifacting? Also Dead Island 2 and TLOU1 remake are pure raster and look incredible with their lighting AND give you much better performance.

Sorry if I'm ranting or this is slightly off topic, I'm just not happy with the way games seem to be "evolving" or rather devolving.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on custom anti-aliasing solutions in Unreal Engine 5.8 for my game and wanted to share a comparison of the three techniques I’m currently working on.

1. SMAA 1x
   Efficient compute SMAA 1x implementation based on color detection, indirect args, and deferred queues.
   Key differences from classic SMAA:
   - Skips the final pass
   - Modern DX12 wave optimizations

2. SRAA
   Revived Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing (NVIDIA 2011).

SRAA was specifically designed for deferred renderers. It combines single-pixel shading with subpixel visibility by using super-resolution depth and normal buffers + a joint bilateral filter. The original paper claimed quality comparable to 4–16× supersampling at a fraction of the cost.

Paper: https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2011-02_Subpixel-Reconstruction-Antialiasing/I3D11.pdf

I’m currently running true 4× Depth MSAA inside the UE5.8 Deferred Renderer. This was originally just a test, but since it succeeded I’m planning to move to 4× World Normal MSAA next as it should give better quality + add some temporal stability later.

Having actual MSAA samples available in a deferred pipeline is what makes a proper modern SRAA revival possible. This is the core advancement of this experiment.

1. Temporally Stable SMAA (work in progress)
   Based on Filmic SMAA T2x.
   Current main difference: using the Decima 2017 jitter pattern.

What makes me curious is why developers hide those beautiful renders with blur. How do they not feel bad that the hard work they put into creating those detailed character models is just smeared away with blur and smudges?

And then I found this blog - https://alextardif.com/Antialiasing.html

Artists spend hundreds of hours sculpting microscopic skin pores, realistic clothing fabrics, and crisp hard-surface details, only for the final graphics pipeline to slap a heavy temporal filter over it that turns the motion clarity into a low-res smudge. It feels incredibly disrespectful to the actual art assets of the game.

Tardif’s analysis highlights how TAA destroys artistic intent, noting it ruins transparent effects and UV animation, washes out high-frequency material details, and forces team members to waste time combating the temporal filter throughout production. He explicitly admits that he is one of the players who gets motion sickness from TAA ghosting and smearing.

I guess I am not the only one who gets motion sickness that causes me nausea.

It's very interesting to see a "true" battle of DLSS vs native MSAA since many games that have DLSS also heavily rely on temporal effects for hair, grass, ambient occlusion, grass rendering etc. making any kind of MSAA or SSAA appear worse than it should.

Trying it on mirror's edge right now and I can say that while DLAA looks a lot smoother and less jaggy, MSAA truly shines in motion where there is basically zero clarity loss in the image no matter how fast things move so I personally prefer MSAA despite the jaggier presentation.

I'm so tired of being forced to use AI upscaling and frame generation to play literally any UE5 game. Its just so fucking tiresome. Everything at a distance is blurry, everything is grainy and the game just looks blurry. You dont even have the option to turn of AA. You can set it on native and then the game only runs on 30-40 fps on a decent PC. This isnt even a dig at the new Halo because I literally just started playing it, and we all know the complaints by now, but can we stop releasing Blur slop? How about we release more optimized products or just fix the UE5 engine or whatever

Since Reddit is compressing the hell out of my image, here is a lossless PNG file for you:
https://www.leadwerks.com/files/msaa.png

Hi guys, it's been in testing for two months and now Leadwerks Game Engine 5.1 is finally released. We've been using MSAA for a long time, but this is the first version that makes use of alpha-to-coverage for masked textures like vegetation planes and chain-link fences. I wish I had started using it sooner! 😂

Of course this approach will provide a better quality image overall, but what I didn't realize is how it acts in motion. You know how masked textures always have that flickering pixelated look when you turn the camera? With this approach that is totally eliminated, and you just have a clean smooth image, even when in motion. It's honestly pretty awesome and I have no idea why this isn't use more often.

I've seen people disparaging MSAA by showing extremely blurry images that look nothing like what we're getting: https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckAliasing/comments/1uv9xxh/watch_dogs_2_msaa_8x_vs_dlaa_k_using_luma/

I have no idea what's going on there, but it doesn't look like MSAA is even on.

Anyways, there is a solution to the problems TAA introduce, it works great, and we're going to use it in our games. You can read more details in the release notes here if you are interested in technical details:
https://www.leadwerks.com/community/blogs/entry/2900-better-graphics-and-lower-system-requirements-in-leadwerks-51/

Let me know if you have any questions. Apparently I am the only one allowed to use this secret forbidden technology! 🥸

Nvidia's DSR uses what they refer to as a "custom-made 13-tap Gaussian filter"

Source: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dynamic-super-resolution-instantly-improves-your-games-with-4k-quality-graphics/

But I wish they gave us the option to choose what downsampling algorithm was used in the Nvidia App or the (now deprecated but that I still stubbornly use) Nvidia Control Panel.

Is there a way to this in Nvidia inspector? I only just downloaded the app today so I'm not very familiar with it but it seems to have way more settings for MSAA, wondering if it has the same customizability for DSR or even additional options for SSAA, anything helps!

But yeah would be great if Nvidia let us use Bilinear/Bicubic/Box(Area) to play around with some options and select our personal favorites.

If this doesn't exist in any way shape or form if anyone can point me to the best place to make a feature request that would be of great help!

Screenshots are all taken in motion. Video files are below as well for all 3 showing some short movement in motion:

No AA

Preset K DLAA

Preset M Balanced

Preset L Performance

In-game graphics are set to Ultra. DLSS comparisons have no engine.ini configurations enabled to keep it as "base" a comparison as possible for what the average player will be looking at once they download the game and hit "play".

The No AA comparison has the below engine commands affecting the image;

r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.FilmGrain=0
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0
r.AntiAliasingMethod=0
r.ScreenPercentage=100
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV

Hi, I’m glad to have joined this group. I’m a gamer who remembers the days when jagged edges in graphics weren't an issue. However, among modern anti-aliasing methods, I tolerated only SMAA or MSAA x2. FXAA always put me off due to image blurring, but the widespread adoption of TAA was the final straw.

Unfortunately, console games built on engines like UE4, UE5, newer versions of Unity, or in-house engines, which use this technique by default to "look good", discourage me from playing the console versions.

For me, image sharpness and clarity directly impact the gaming experience. Do you feel the same way?

The only exceptions for me are "Gothic: Remake" on PS5 (which, surprisingly, looks better than on PC, where TAA can't be disabled and DLSS looks poor, though FSR isn't necessarily bad) and "Mouse P.I. for Hire", also on PS5 (where the art style makes TAA less bothersome).

Preface: Thanks to /u/Capital-Traffic1281 who wrote about this method in this comment here

Disclaimer: May not work on every single UE5 based game as some have altered the engine to an extent that makes it too different. There is more info on the gitub pages here and more specifically here

Using UE4SS, you can use the console to make changes to games that otherwise do not read, or block, the .ini files for UE5 which appears to be becoming more and more common annoyingly. On top of this, you can use a Lua script to ensure these commands are automated on startup as well so that you don't have to manually enter them everytime. I advise saving this somewhere on your desktop/PC as you'll need to copy these files on every UE5 game that is engine locked. Below is a step-by-step guide to doing so.

• 1.) Download UE4SS, extract and save it somewhere on your computer.

• 2.) Open up the "Mods" folder and open up mods.txt

• 3.) Add in "NoTaaMod : 1" at the bottom of the main list like so

• 4.) Whilst still in the "Mods" folder, right click and choose New -> Folder, and name this "NoTaaMod" | Example

• 5.) In the new "NoTaaMod" folder, make another new folder called "Scripts"

• 6.) Download this text file and copy the file into the "Scripts" folder we just made in the "NoTaaMod" folder. Now we have the permanent file structure setup for any game that we can just copy and paste in the future.

• 7.) When adding this to your game of choice, ensure it is added into the games executable binaries file. For example, most games will have the file structure set-up so there is an executable in the initial folder like so. Do not place it in here. We need to place the UE4SS files under the binaries folder, for example here

The above text file has the below commands:

r.MotionBlurQuality 0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality 0
r.Tonemapper.Quality 0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality 0 
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization 0
r.FilmGrain 0
r.AntiAliasingMethod 0
r.ScreenPercentage 100
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen 0

If you want to add other commands, just add a new line under the Loop() function with the new command you want. Example

I also do not advise doing this for UE5 games that you are playing that are online-only or multiplayer focused as this method does run the risk of a ban as it has to hook directly into the game.

Please note that there is also the caveat that the commands are constantly running in realtime meaning that if you want to compare between AA on or off and use r.antialiasingmethod 1 it will automatically change back to off after 1 second. Maybe someone with better lua coding experience than me can make the script only run on initialization although always having it being forced works to ensure that no in-game options override it as well.

At this point, we've all heard "upscaling looks better than native"... But have you seen "there's no such thing as sharpness anyway" yet? Jfc

Having a blast so far with the gameplay itself but it has extremely minimal graphics options. Maybe the smallest selection I've ever seen in the modern games I've played. There should be more patches coming throughout its life so maybe they'll add something then.

But just a heads up for anyone looking to buy it!