Yeah I waited for the punchline, don't know what he said really.
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Mass Effect 3 |OT| Space Jesus Returns (tag all spoilers)
- Thread starter Blue Ninja
- Start date
Yeah I waited for the punchline, don't know what he said really.
razgriz417
Member
Different ppl trying to jack your shit?
Might have been mentioned, haven't really followed ME3 whatsoever as I wasn't planning on picking it up until now. Is there anything like Mass Effect 2's Genesis DLC that would let me pick all the major decisions and have them carry on to ME3 on a new save-game? I don't have my saves any more but I'd like to play with the decisions I did actually make in ME1/2
Can anyone clue me in on this quest in the citidel? Regarding getting the mercs on your side:
Found my answer. Whoops.
I decided not to let the Eclipse leader go because she's... welll, psycho. But the quest isn't over yet. Was hoping I could just take her out and bring her impressionable second in command, but I can't seem to find any clues.
Found my answer. Whoops.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
It's probably already been posted, but here is Jarrett Lee's explanation, over on the BioWare forums, of the Galactic Readiness and how it effects your ending;
BigJonsson
Member
I keep freaking out whenever the Reapers make the BRRRR sound, reminds me of War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise version)
Calisto Glory
Banned
Cant decide which class i want to play 
Thought iam going with infiltrator, but engineer is tempting too....
... even if i go with infiltrator i can use every weapon or?
Thought iam going with infiltrator, but engineer is tempting too....
... even if i go with infiltrator i can use every weapon or?
Last Hearth
Member
4 hours into the game and this game is so awesome. It's much more like ME1 than ME2 in terms of storyline and RPG elements. And whoever said there isn't a lot of conversation is wrong. There are plenty of conversations and investigates. Yes, there are less of the "world building" variety dialogue, but over all there are a lot of people to talk to and find out their individual situations and backgrounds.
Castor Krieg
Banned
Cant decide which class i want to play
Thought iam going with infiltrator, but engineer is tempting too....
... even if i go with infiltrator i can use every weapon or?
Widow II is in the game, that's all you need to know. From the description it looks like they improved number of shots/thermal clip.
Also, played 3hrs, just started From Ashes to get this out of the way first. Great to play ME game again.
So how does scanning work? I fly around and ping stuff? Then I orbit the planet and still have to launch drones? Does each planet only require one drone?
Gonna jump into MP today, need to boost my READINESS!!!
LabouredSubterfuge
Member
There better be working anti-aliasing compatibility bits by the time I start playing.
BoobPhysics101
Banned
There are. But they take a heavy, heavy toll on performance. I get like 50-55 FPS @ 1080p with 4x MSAA + 4x SGSSAA with this compatibility bit:
0x000000C1 Give it a shot. Cleans up jaggies by 98%. Just annoying that it won't stay at a constant 60 FPS.
I am not seeing that in the pulldown. Do you have to enter it manually?
And if so, in which field:
Antialiasing compatibility (DX1x) or Antialiasing compatibility ?
BoobPhysics101
Banned
Yep, manually. The latter: AA compatibility. It is a custom SGSSAA bit, pretty much the best. Set SGSSAA to 4x + 4x MSAA and the jaggies go away.
For those of you with less uber hardware, 2x MSAA + 2x SGSSAA is also very effective at killing the jaggies and maintaining 60 FPS at all times.
Who are you and what have you done with Dennis?
BoobPhysics101
Banned
Can you take pics, please? I am too lazy to take the time. I'd like to use them in my thread as demonstration pics. Take it away, DennisK.
Skel1ingt0n
I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
I'm sorry, do you mind sharing exactly how to do this? I'd love to enable some better AA.
Thank you!
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Anybody know a working VPN so I can unlock the damn thing? I've tried two. FlyVPN has too many users connecting, and VPN Autoconnect works for my browser, but keeps giving a release date check error (not incorrect date, as it does locally, just an error). What do GAF?
ashbash159
Member
The game dispatched from ShopTo at 9:30 AM today. Hopefully I'll get it a day early. I have tomorrow off for an interview, too!
I used FlyVPN and just spammed the hell out of the free login. Must have taken about 5 - 10 minutes of just mashing the enter key over and over and then I eventually got in.
MrCookiepants
Member
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Finally got FlyVPN working using the "click until it works" method. Thanks guys.
Can't you use TOR and Mgeni to set ip range to U.S only.
BoobPhysics101
Banned
I already have, in my tweaking thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=33974105&postcount=83
Quoted for this page:
BP101's Simplified Guide to Proper Sparse Grid Super Sampling AntiAliasing (SGSSAA) Usage... 101
Note about this guide: I do my absolute best to clear up confusion about certain aspects of using SGSSAA. I hate reading explanations about something and thinking 'hm, but where's the rest of the info? Why does this guy say 'just do this' but never gives an underlying reason or how he came to that conclusion?' Basically, if you hate reading and just want to do things willy-nilly, this guide isn't for you. But if you enjoy reading a clear, detailed guide, I hope this is right up your alley.
What is SGSSAA? See NaturalViolence's awesome, detailed guide to the forms of antialiasing here: http://naturalviolence.webs.com/nvidia.htm. He does a great job demonstrating and explaining the various types of AA available. For the purpose of this guide, I will be demonstrating how to effectively use SGSSAA for your favorite games.
Why SGSSAA? SGSSAA is an Nvidia-only form of transparency antialiasing that when combined with MSAA, gives stellar picture quality and squashes jaggies in trees, fences, edges, shaders, and much more. It is not nearly as performance-draining as Super Sampling AA, but gives very similar image quality/jaggie reduction. The downside is that it causes blur, but thanks to LOD bias, that can effectively be eliminated. Also, SGSSAA works on Direct X 9/10/11 games if you've got a GTX 4xx/5xx series card (GTX 480 or GTX 560 Ti, for example), and DirectX 9 if you've got a 2xx series card (GTX 280, for example).
Let's get down to it:
Open up Nvidia Inspector. Go to your games profile manager. Pull up a game from the list that you want to try SGSSAA on. For simplification purposes, I have made an image of a properly setup NV Inspector profile with SGSSAA applied. I will be using the highlighed areas (marked with red boxes) to explain what each one does/why it's important. The game in question we'll be using is Hot Pursuit 2010, a game that benefits greatly from SGSSAA and also stays locked at 60 FPS during gameplay, even with 4x MSAA + 4x SGSSAA at 1920x1080.
First, let's look at the top highlighted items, called 'antialiasing compatibility.' These are 'special bits' that the drivers use to determine how to apply AA to a game. Why are these important? Well, because every game (and even some on the same rendering engine) uses AA differently, so your drivers need this specified. Another issue: not all compatibility bits work with SGSSAA! While Game A might work with regular MSAA with Compatibility Bit A, but not SGSsAA. However, Game A may work with SGSSAA if Compatibility Bit B is used. This explains why I'm not using the normal Hot Pursuit 2010 antialiasing compatibility bit that Nvidia automatically applies: it works for forcing MSAA in Hot Pursuit 2010, but the custom bit I used (0x004010C5) gives even better image quality when using SGSSAA.
Some games come with special bits already built into their profile, thanks to Nvidia, and others need you to apply them. How do you find them? The absolute two best resources for this are at these two links (warning: one is in German, so don't be alarmed. It's pretty easy to understand):
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=490867 (Absolute best resource on the web for AA and SGSSAA compatibility, go here first. They have links to the post where each bit was discovered/proven, and even have pictures!)
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=336854 (You'll have to search the topic for specific bits, the OP isn't updated anymore and therefore is extremely outdated)
Also, I'm sure you've noticed there are both a regular 'aa compatibility' section and a 'DX1x' section. DX1x section is for DirectX 10/11 games. This section isn't as widely used because so many games are still DX9, so don't worry too much about it right now.
Now that we've talked about compatibility bits, let's move on to the next section of the picture: Antialiasing Mode/Setting/AA - Transparency Supersampling. The first section, AA - Mode, determines how to use the AA in combination with the engine. The two modes you need to concern yourself with are "Enhance This Application Setting" and "Override Any Application Setting". Note: To ensure these are used properly, take a quick look above them and make sure 'Antialiasing Behavior Flags' is set to None, this is ideal for most games.
What are the differences/usage scenarios? In general, you want to 'enhance' if the game has built in antialiasing. So for example, if you want to use 4x MSAA + 4x SGSSAA, you'd go into the game's menu first, set the Antialiasing to 4x MSAA, then exit out and set up everything in Nvidia Inspector including Enhance, so that the driver antialiasing works together with the game's built in AA.
However, in some cases, the game's built in AA sucks or you just need to force your own AA (or the game doesn't have built in AA). In this case, use Override Any Application Setting. This forces your driver AA to take over everything. This has its downsides, as it can conflict with built in AA and/or cause performance losses, so I recommend turning built in AA to off if you're going to force driver AA. For Hot Pursuit 2010, I use Override because the game has no built in AA and so I need to ensure the driver applies my settings.
Underneath that, I've got my AA Setting. I chose 4x MSAA because that's what you want to match to 4x SGSSAA, always. There are other settings available, but that's what we want for SGSSAA. You'll also note that I chose 4x SGSSAA beneath that in Antialiasing Transparency Supersampling. The reason you want them to match is because SGSSAA is most effective when it's used with the corresponding multisample amounts. Here's the detailed reason why from Natural Violence's page:
Finally, underneath all of that, we've got Texture Filtering - LOD Bias (DX9) and TF - Negative LOD Bias. These are very important to counter the potential blur that SGSSAA can cause. Note: In some games blur may occur anyways due to post-processing, it's on a case-by-case basis however.
The rule of thumb for LOD bias is thus: For every doubling of MSAA + SGSSAA, subtract another -0.500 from your LOD Bias. Here's what you'd set for each level:
2x MSAA + 2x SGSSAA: -0.500
4x MSAA + 4x SGSSAA: -1.000
8x MSAA + 8x SGSSAA: -1.500
Last, we've got Negative LOD Bias set to 'Allow.' If this is set to Clamp, your LOD Bias won't work and you may get blur, so make sure this is set to allow (if not using SGSSAA or other supersampling methods, set this to Clamp).
And that's it. Those are the basics for setting up SGSSAA properly. You may need to do some googling to get the right compatibility bits/settings for each game, but the linked resources above should be a great start. As always, feel free to ask any questions.
As a bonus, let's see what SGSSAA does for image quality using Hot Pursuit 2010 as an example (pictures taken from the 3D Center forum SGSSAA HP2010 post):
No Antialiasing:
8x MSAA + 8x SGSSAA:
BoobPhysics101
Banned
*** Nvidia Inspector settings for 4x MSAA and 4xSGSSAA ***
I go from 60 fps locked to around 40 fps at 2560x1600. Removes essentially all jaggies. I have FXAA disabled in-game options.
Credit to BoobPhysics101.
You forgot to set Texture LOD Bias to -1.0000 to eliminate blurriness.
Vampire On Titus
Member
Thankfully, they happen infrequently enough. There's better ways to show Shep succumbing somewhat to the emotional toll of the reaper situation, for sure. I liked
the kid's death
It's odd because Shep has so many more legitimate nightmarish memories to plague his sleep that they could have chose from.
what you talk about
BoobPhysics101
Banned
SGSSAA doesn't have auto-LOD so the smoothing causes blurriness, sort of like FXAA.
Look:
Without LOD bias set properly:
http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=8xqaa8xsgssaa_default_aiwq.png
With LOD bias set properly:
http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=8xqaa8xsgssaa_0x004010cg5f.png
Defers from game to game, but most games suffer from at least minor blur without setting LOD.
Shepard Wake
You'll almost certainly get it tomorrow. The only time I've failed to get a game from them on a Thursday was soon after a postal strike.
Look at the screenshot I posted of Nvidia Inspector again. I know what negative LOD bias is for.
BoobPhysics101
Banned
BoobPhysics101
Banned
Radeon Pro/AMD in general doesn't have custom compatibility bits for antialiasing. That is one of Nvidia's big trump cards.
You can try forcing Supersampling AA via RadeonPro though.
There is nothing like that with AMD.
I forced SuperSampling for ME2 and it looked great, so it should work in ME3 too I guess (have not tried yet).
Hah. I knew someone would make a gif of this as soon as I started that level. The whole scene did seem very forced and out of place. What I loved even more was the close up of Shepard's face at the end.