Nvidia has published a new paper from siggraph 2008 about hbao horizon based ambient occlusion, an innovative improved form of screenspace ambient occlusion ssao. Im not sure what hdao and hbao is, ive tried toying with them both and so far ive seen no picture quality improvement at all. Ive turned on hbao,mlaa and msaax2 by the nvidia control panel. If youre going to use hao, from what i understand you should select hdao if you have an ati card or hbao if you have an nvidia card. Hdao slightly more demanding than ssao but totally worth it, cleans up and improves upon ssao. I actually cannot find a reference of nvidia specifically using older hbao in driver, but in most places where ssao is mentioned in regards to driver implementation, the siggraph 2008 hbao document was linked. Nvidia corporation and its licensors retain all intellectual property and proprietary rights in and to this software, related documentation and any modifications thereto.
The algorithm is based on hbao bavoil and sainz 2008, with the following differences. Imagespace horizonbased abi tambient occlusion nvidia. What do all the graphics options in pc games settings do. At first, i thought that hbao was simply a step up from ssao. High definition ambient occlusion or hdao is a new ambient occlusion technique well see when amd directx 11 graphics cards will be available. In little less than a day the whole thing was already working inside son of nor. A french version of this presentation is also available. High definition ambient occlusion hdao nvidia forceware 185. Ambient occlusion adds a layer of depth to a games visuals, but what do all these acronyms mean. Ssao is the worst, hbao for nvidia, hdao for the other maker this is generally the case, but not quite so for fc3. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts.
As such it is designed n best on nvidia cards though i have not heard the same level of annoyance over pared to physx on amd cards. In comparison with hdao and hbao, they are nearly the same except for who distributes them both, namely amd and nvidia, respectively. Unlike previous ssao variants, hbao uses a physicallybased algorithm that approximates an integral with depth buffer sampling. Both screenshots come from amd dx11 sdk but i dont know if hdao is a driver feature like ambient occlusion in forceware or a post processing shader that exploits new functions. Most commonly, games use screen space ambient occlusion ssao for the rendering of ao effects. Without hdao, the demo runs at around 188 fps 2560. We used the latest nvidia and amd drivers at the time of writing. I really liked the ssao option, made the shadows nice and deep. Discussion in graphics cards started by buchtis, mar 29, 2010. Ambient occlusion, ssao, hbao, vxao pc graphics settings explained fake shadows have never looked so good. It renders in full resolution the different samples of normally darkened areas, adding an extra, subtle visual punch to your game. The nv driver cant just insert ssao in any old game, because ssao has to go in the middle of the frame, and the games lighting shaders have to factor in the ssao value, etc. We always want to see how a new game performs at max settings, but when games are constantly updated to add more and more visually impressive features, from high resolution texture packs to even entirely new features like physx or new aa options.
Gaming gpus use ssao, hdao, hbao, vxao, or any number of. Of course, it also depends on certain gpu and driver optimizations, but you. Turning off ao seems to fix the issue, but i really want to keep ssao on. The first was hbao, which rendered at full resolution but uses only 4 samples per.
Hbao and hdao are essentially the same thing but different vendor specific implementations. Another technique, hdao, is optimized specifically for amd gpus, but is used. Zoso its not going to be a driver implementation its not like fxaa. There are many variants, though all are based on early ao. Amd and nvidia both have their own ambient occlusion drivers. Screen space ambient occlusion ssao using our horizonbased algorithm with perpixel normals. Screen space ambient occlusion ssao is a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating the ambient occlusion effect in real time.
So to improve that nvidia in 2008 introduced the upgraded to ssao varient called horizan based ambient occlusion hbao. Unfortunataly many devs render ssao hbao and other shader effects in 2d meaning they need to be switched off. Of course you want all the settings in the graphics menu set to highest but in some cases, these settings do need to be turned off when gaming in 3d. Image rendered in 1600x1200 at 91 fps on geforce gtx 280, with halfresolution ao, 8x8 depth samples per ao pixel, and a 15x15 cross bilateral filter. Here are the plain english versions of pc gamings most technical graphics settings, and how best to. Nvidia control panel ssao not working game development. Any use, reproduction, disclosure or distribution of this software and related documentation without an express license agreement from nvidia corporation is strictly prohibited.
Gaming gpus use ssao, hdao, hbao, vxao, or any number of other realtime ambient occlusion solutions. At the 2008 siggraph tech conference nvidia introduced an upgraded ssao variant called horizon based ambient occlusion hbao. It was developed by vladimir kajalin while working at crytek and was used for the first time in 2007 by the video game crysis, also developed by crytek. Rise of the tomb raider nvidia vxao ambient occlusion. Instead, the algorithm uses an interleaved rendering approach, generating the. Ssao uses what is considered pixel depth and not the real space or geometry within the scene, this means it is less demanding on the hardware and gave a decent sense of ambient occlusion well for back in 2007 it did. But then i noticed a kind of whiteish aura or glow around my character that seemed more apparent when looking at him against a dark background.
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