It would probably not be hard for someone to keep the config alive in a fork of dxvk if there was a strong desire for that. The dxvk license is very permissive.
If you had read the previous issue that complained about the removal of this feature, you'd know that the option didn't work with most of your examples anyway.
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/issues/5075#issuecomment-3076014089
Also somewhere around 2004-2005 year a lot of games still using D3D9 stoppped to support MSAA due of HDR and some incompatibility between two.
Half or more of games release since 2005 up to 2013 (one of the most infamous examples is GTA4, biggest game of era prior GTA5, and yet absolutely no AA except very poor edge blur that was not even working properly on PC!).
The option, that we removed, didn't work in any of those because it only impacted the swapchain and most games that are newer than 2004 render to some intermediate render target first. It was extremely primitive and very prone to causing rendering issues.
Lesser ammount of games releases since 2014 had no AA options and supported D3D9, but there stil was quite a lot of games that had no other options but to force MSAA via drivers. Mostly this was low budget indie and japanesse games
The DXVK option certainly didn't work in those games anyway.
The purpose of DXVK is to make games run (well) on Linux. Anything beyond that is out of scope.
If you had read the previous issue that complained about the removal of this feature, you'd know that the option didn't work with most of your examples anyway.
Also somewhere around 2004-2005 year a lot of games still using D3D9 stoppped to support MSAA due of HDR and some incompatibility between two.
Half or more of games release since 2005 up to 2013 (one of the most infamous examples is GTA4, biggest game of era prior GTA5, and yet absolutely no AA except very poor edge blur that was not even working properly on PC!).
The option, that we removed, didn't work in any of those because it only impacted the swapchain and most games that are newer than 2004 render to some intermediate render target first. It was extremely primitive and very prone to causing rendering issues.
Lesser ammount of games releases since 2014 had no AA options and supported D3D9, but there stil was quite a lot of games that had no other options but to force MSAA via drivers. Mostly this was low budget indie and japanesse games
The DXVK option certainly didn't work in those games anyway.
The purpose of DXVK is to make games run (well) on Linux. Anything beyond that is out of scope.
It worked in some games
I forgot to mention that on Steam Deck and in Steam OS in general, due of lack of AMD driver control panel and any kind of user profiles, there is no other way to force AA in old games than use d3d8-d3d9 wrapper with ability to force MSAA.
And unfortunatelly Steam OS running short on such wrappers with MSAA support - dgVoodoo since several versions ago started to crash under proton and its author does not want to fix it, dxwrapper adds stutters and lower fps in some old games, and DXVK seems like last solution, now decided to ditch MSAA, so old games would look ugly without any way to force it.
Before removing at least partially working MSAA you better should implement more universaly MSAA or SSAA forcing to replace it.
You are closing discussion way too early.
should implement more universaly MSAA
It's pretty much impossible to implement more universal forced MSAA due to techniques like deferred shading. Even when exclusively focussing on games that use forward shading, it still needs some heuristic to find the primary geometry pass and that heuristic needs to be tweaked on a per-game basis. That's simply not something we're interested in doing.
So please, reconsider your bad decision!
The only bad decision, IMHO, was to expose it in the first place. As @K0bin mentioned, the implementation we had was very crude and unreliable.
if something aint broken dont fixed, if it works just leave it alone for backwards compatibility!
Right, but it didn't work in most cases. If we, say, had supported d3d7 and below, we could have kept it around for those APIs, since it would have indeed worked, but ever since d3d8 MSAA typically needed rendering engine compatibility to work properly, which is why you'll find some games supported it, while others did not.
should implement more universaly MSAA
It's pretty much impossible to implement more universal forced MSAA due to techniques like deferred shading. Even when exclusively focussing on games that use forward shading, it still needs some heuristic to find the primary geometry pass and that heuristic needs to be tweaked on a per-game basis. That's simply not something we're interested in doing.
Man, can you please star seeing WIDER PICTURE? Whole generation of D3D8 and at least half of D3D9 generation games prior 2006-2009 did not use any deffered shading, and could easily work with MSAA or SSAA,and most of them did not have any built in MSAA option!
This cant be ingored and given low priority, AA is a vital feature, without which all those games looks ugly and jaggy! Also many various MSAA or other AA solutions for deffered lighting, like it was said it was impelemented in Nvidia and AMD drivers that was able to force MSAA or SSAA in almost every game up to the 2010-2013 years, until which most of games was still D9. And after which games in general started to move to D3D10+ with introduction of Xbox One and PS4.
And later SGSSAA was a good alternative for most of post D3D9 games no matter what techniques they used. Also there was DSR, and prior it there was GEDOSATO that basically cheated game to believe it gets rendered in requested resolution, but actually rendered them at higher resolutions without affecting UI scalling and downsampled it back to natively requested resolution, which worked universaly in most of games (you can get idea of how it worked by looking at it sources here https://github.com/PeterTh/gedosato ).
Actually dgVoodoo does almost all of that and more than that, it can apply MSAA and higher resolution to any requested render targets resolutions, increasing quality of various mirroring and display surfaces that utilized rts and it very useful for all pre D3D9 games... however its author does not care for linux and steam os and recent versions crashing games via proton and he does not want to fix this and its not open source.
But point is - its all implemented, its already exist, you dont need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to implement existing one or two, or maybe 4 alternative wheels to solve the lack of antialising problem in most of D3D9 games. Maybe start from examining GEDOSATO (dgVoodoo would be better solution, but i dont know how to make dege do the right thing and reveal the code of his briliant tool for benefits of whole humanity) code and impelementing most easy solution - downsampling. But catch is is not like you have to choose higher resolution in game (like i said in causes UI scaling issues in many old games designed for 640x480 or 720x480 resolutions), game should believe its rendered at requested resolution while its actually should be rendered at much higher one, to keep UI scaling and avoid other issues. Gedosato handled it pretty well so its a good starting point for more universal solution.
Seriously guys - its 2025 year and having no AA forcing option and forgetiing thousands of old games that has no AA is not the way to go for any graphical wrapper.
Ok you removed broken implementation, but please replace it with working one, this is absolutely needed feature due of lack of abilityt to force AA via video driver control panel in Linux.
Ok you removed broken implementation, but please replace it with working one, this is absolutely needed feature due of lack of abilityt to force AA via video driver control panel in Linux.
PRs are welcome. It would be nice to have a working implementation, but, as @K0bin explained, it's hardly trivial (quite the contrary), and no, it's not "absolutely needed". Much to the chagrin of anti-aliased line enthusiasts everywhere, AA is a cosmetic feature. Any game will render fine without AA (aka is entirely functional), however it might not look pretty at low resolutions.
If you're really unhappy about this, we've suggested various alternatives in the past. Dismissing all of them as "unequal to MSAA" doesn't mean there aren't options to address the situation, it means you are not willing to accept them.
As for SSAA, we might actually have something one day, since it actually was a genuine D3D9 vendor hack on Nvidia, but the goal is not to make it available for all games. dxvk, as we've repeatedly said, is not a modding tool, and it also doesn't have the same goals as dgVoodoo 2 or dxwrapper.
Yeah Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 the same. I wont use any version higher than 2.6.2 now. NFS HP2 looks a ton better with 8x MSAA and 16x AF
If you're really unhappy about this, we've suggested various alternatives in the past. Dismissing all of them as "unequal to MSAA" doesn't mean there aren't options to address the situation, it means you are not willing to accept them.
unequal to MSAA because the quality is worse than MSAA
Ok you removed broken implementation, but please replace it with working one, this is absolutely needed feature due of lack of abilityt to force AA via video driver control panel in Linux.
PRs are welcome. It would be nice to have a working implementation, but, as @K0bin explained, it's hardly trivial (quite the contrary), and no, it's not "absolutely needed". Much to the chagrin of anti-aliased line enthusiasts everywhere, AA is a cosmetic feature. Any game will render fine without AA (aka is entirely functional), however it might not look pretty at low resolutions.
If you're really unhappy about this, we've suggested various alternatives in the past. Dismissing all of them as "unequal to MSAA" doesn't mean there aren't options to address the situation, it means you are not willing to accept them.
As for SSAA, we might actually have something one day, since it actually was a genuine D3D9 vendor hack on Nvidia, but the goal is not to make it available for all games. dxvk, as we've repeatedly said, is not a modding tool, and it also doesn't have the same goals as dgVoodoo 2 or dxwrapper.
wow, really?
You consider antialising non vital optional cosmetic feature without without which any game will render fine?
Functional but non intentionally ugly without vital graphical options is your way to go with in 2025?
Did you even play games on PC in late 90th and entire 2000th or you was just playing with code on Linux and did not know what windows games are?
Because you seems to have lack of understanding that Nvidia and AMD graphical driver control panels options with all sorts of forced antialising and anistropy WAS VITAL AND NECESSARY PART OF PC GAMING EXPIRIENCE since late 90t and earlies 00th!
While many games did not have built-in AA options they all relied on presence of such options in graphical driver that was able to force these options, so devs did not bother to add in-game options. Yet even official promo screenshots of many games for PC that did not have built-in antialiasing, featured antialising forced by graphical driver, to name a few of biggest examples - GTA 3 and GTA Vice City, Need For Speed Underground. Developers of games intended that we would force AA via graphical drivers! And only in sequeles like GTA San Andreas or NFS Underground 2, they started to add built in AA options for more comfortabel expirience.
I remember playing them in early 2000th with Geforce 2 and Geforce 4 and forcing antialising via Nvidia driver control panel! Also because games was different, some game can run find at 8x, some at 4x, some at 2x, so Nvidia added per-game profiles that allowed to force different AA (and other) settings for different games.
All my friends who had recent video cards of era also forced AA in every game possible!
It also applied to almost every game, until some rare exception was too buggy with forced AA.
So back in whole 00th decade even when games did not have AA option buil-in, you can always force it via driver, and it was not super elite rarely used feature for rich kids, majority of people with hardware of recent 3-5 years, except those unlucky with very old and weak pc - always used AA in majority of games.
And it was just optionalal cosmetic feature! It was necessary replaced for one missing thing...
Since most of games back then was initially designed for PS2, GC and Xbox and later on for PS3 and Xbox and Wii, with SD 480p and HD 720p tvs and composite and component cables as primary and most common yet - all of those games was expected to hide their aliasing with help of composite and component analogue blur of most common tvs of that era.
But when those games was ported for PC, with its sharp and clean VGA or DVI cable provided picture, they lost all the tv blur they was designed around, so on PC they looked uglier and more jaggy and more shimmery than they did on consoles, and it was intentional look of those game, it was side effect.
And forced AA and AF was the solution to this problem to compensate lack of tv blurring that was consolish pre AA\AF way of smoothing things. While PC could compensate lack of AA with higher resolution it was not offten best performing solution and in many games it was easier to keep better look and performance by playing them with 640x480 and 2-4x MSAA tha playing at 1024x768 without AA.
Plus most of us back than still had CRT tvs and CRT displays which has the light bleeding natural interpolation effect between pixels, so it did not look as jaggy and as ugly as same games looks nowadays at same resolutions.
So raw non antialiased picture DXVK provides is not equal to picture we actually had in 90th and 00th and its looks way uglier now because we lost part of natural pseudo-antialiasing from old analogue CRT tech, and now we even lost ability to force AA we had entire 00th era. So basically games are lacking functionality they relies on to look intentionally good!
This is why AA is not unncessary enhacnment, this is necessary fix and restoration of intentional smoother look!
You really have to rethink whole thing and take all of this into consideration ASAP!
You really have to rethink whole thing and take all of this into consideration ASAP!
If someone can come up with a properly working implementation, that has the same quality/reliability as the driver option and isn't a nightmare to maintain, I'm sure it will be considered. Until then, we've already provided a series of alternatives you can use in case you really can't stand playing games on modern resolutions without AA.
This is why AA is not unnecessary enhancement, this is necessary fix and restoration of intentional smoother look!
P.S.: If that "smoother look" was indeed "intentional", then the game developers would have integrated MSAA support in their game engine. The option was available and some games chose to include it, while others (for various reasons) did not. Nothing that you have to force/override is truly "intended".
Anyway, we've had this conversation already on various other threads and at this point it feels like beating a dead horse. I think our opinion on the matter is clear, and we can certainly understand yours, but a proper implementation can't materialize out of thin air just because you feel there's a need for it. Somebody has to put in the time and effort and come up with a working solution to a very complex problem that is also mostly out of scope in the context of dxvk. Which is why I said PRs are welcome.
P.S.: If that "smoother look" was indeed "intentional", then the game developers would have integrated MSAA support in their game engine. The option was available and some games chose to include it, while others (for various reasons) did not. Nothing that you have to force/override is truly "intended".
NFS HP2 on max graphic uses only 4x AF. The game looks a ton better on 16x AF
no MSAA in HP2 at all. Game looks a ton better with 8x MSAA.
Option not present in game does definitely not automatically mean it will hurt the game to force it. Definitely not the case with HP2 and many other titles.
we've already provided a series of alternatives
Like said - which are worse looking than MSAA.
in case you really can't stand playing games on modern resolutions without AA
playing HP2 in 4k doesnt mean you have 4k textures from the game. So yes you need MSAA for it despite 4k.
I still dont understand why you remove something which was a working option for so many games. Make it default disabled as it was the whole time - and then comment in dxvk.conf the risks you see in using it. Where is the problem? Instead you remove an entire feature. Thats absolutely annoying
For other games I can just use dgvoodoo2. this one has MSAA too.
But in case of NFS HP2, the fps performance is up to 10 times better which is insane. And with highpoly custom cars this makes them playable on full grid races without having to count the frames. So dxvk is quite some magic for this game. But the missing MSAA now is terrible so I will stay forever on 2.6.2 as long as it keeps missing in higher versions
Just going to close this because my god, everyone has made their point. Stick to 2.6.2 then, I don't care. The fact that it works in like two games doesn't mean it was a good idea to implement the option in the first place.
Maintaining this shit for all eternity and dealing with complaints that the old option doesn't do what people think it does isn't exactly free for us, either.
Seriosly, whats up with removal of features nobody asked to removed? Why do you decided for everyone whats useful, whats not?
Big amount of old D3D9 and wrapperd D3D8toD3D9 games NEVER HAD ANY AA OPTIONS BUILT IN GAME, some that has such options had them often limited to fixed amount or technique of AA and in most of cases it was better idea to force MSAA or SSAA via Nvdia or AMD controls panel to most of games.
This setting was effectively imitation of driver forced MSAA
Check your "facts" about MSAA popularity and availability in old games!
MSAA started to become popular in games somewhere around 2002-2003, most of games prior this era did not have any form of AA, and even in that era many games still did not have! It become popular after Far Cry, DOOM 3 and Half Life 2 setting it as new standart, but only for about half of popular releases, other half still missed it.
Also somewhere around 2004-2005 year a lot of games still using D3D9 stoppped to support MSAA due of HDR and some incompatibility between two.
Soon after xbox360 with next gen graphics arrived and we entered quite a dark and jaggy era for almost half of decade, where many games ported from Xbox 360 or PS3 had no AA at all due of defered shading, or had at best some custom edge blur filter, or even if MSAA was present it was too slow and barely used, until in around 2011 FXAA and SMAA arrived that for most of D3D9 games replaced any other AA for a while.
However around same time Nvidia somehow managed to hack in MSAA or some other forms of AA like SGSSAA into games by forcing it via drivers for games that did not have AA support
Until the point when some short renessaince of MSAA started to happen around same time some games started to provide TAA or nvidias TXAA somewhere around 2010-2013, but then again at least half of games did not have any MSAA or any real AA besides FXAA at all while still was using D3D9!
Basically what you just did by removing legacy option (jeez i hate this trend - if something aint broken dont fixed, if it works just leave it alone for backwards compatibility!) is stripped of any form of good AA hundreds if not thousands of games!
Just to name a few games that now cant be played with MSAA because they never had such option:
Basically almost every game since mid 1990th up to 2002-2004 from PS1 and PS2 era, with some exceptions ported from Xbox and few big pc exclusive games (GTA 3 and GTA Vice City and NFS Underground are most infamous examples of era). A lot of games of this era also had a bad habbit to use hardcoded list of very limited resolutions or be locked in 480p in menues while switching to selected resolution of whooping 1024x768 or 1600x1200 at best in stages of games (again NFS Underground is locked to 640x480 in menu).
Half or more of games release since 2005 up to 2013 (one of the most infamous examples is GTA4, biggest game of era prior GTA5, and yet absolutely no AA except very poor edge blur that was not even working properly on PC!).
Lesser ammount of games releases since 2014 had no AA options and supported D3D9, but there stil was quite a lot of games that had no other options but to force MSAA via drivers. Mostly this was low budget indie and japanesse games
And you call this a "most of games supported MSAA" and decides to ditch (without asking us! People who use it!) this useful features that saves hundrends of popular games from juggies?
Also alternative you suggest in form of gamescope or higher in game resolutions - does not work as proper antialiasing! It causes tons of issues, to name a few:
Tons of games has their UI designed around fixed resolution of 480-768p and some of them do not support higher resolutions and other while support does not scale UI and it becomes small and unreadable (Notable examples - basically any sims games, Deus Ex Human Revolution etc, Hitman games ). How do you expect higher resolution of gamescope to fix this???
Gamescope does not provide hack of internal rendering resolutions (like let game think it rendered in 480p to keep UI scale but actually let it get rendered at 4x of this resolution. Such thing could be done by dgVoodoo wrapper only), and games that works at 480p would still be 480p. Gamescope only can upscale them with fsr or nis, but this is ugly compared to real MSAA!!! This is not a replacement to real AA and suggesting it instead is dellusional or far fetched!
Removal of MSAA affects huge list of big famous games released in 3 daces, by removing most effective and good looking AA option, and its a huge mistake, which is why it must be restored with next release and never be removed again! So please, reconsider your bad decision!
Otherwise what else would be removed next? Anisotropic and trillinear or billinear filtering because some games has option to set it up? Single threaded rendering becauses games are multi-thread now?