Missed Temporal Anti-Aliasing for transparent textures (water, fog)

Wicked Bug Reporting
,
1

Issue Description:
The animation anomaly concerns the waterfall feature within the game. The animation does not appear as intended looks more like sand than water, and the particles within the waterfall exhibit characteristics more akin to a visual glitch rather than a natural waterfall effect.
The top of the waterfall lacks sufficient details.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Launch the game.
  2. Navigate to the area featuring the waterfall animation. (Nameless Pass)
  3. Observe the waterfall animation and particles closely.

Expected Behavior:

  • The waterfall animation should display a natural and visually appealing cascade of water that fits into the environment
  • Particles within the waterfall should resemble water droplets or mist, contributing to the realism of the animation.
  • The top of the waterfall should exhibit detailed characteristics, conveying a natural starting point for the water flow.
  • The transition from the top of the waterfall to the cascading water should appear seamless and visually coherent.

Actual Behavior:

  • The waterfall animation appears distorted or unnatural, deviating from the expected cascade effect.
  • Particles within the waterfall exhibit irregular movement or patterns, resembling a visual glitch rather than natural water droplets or mist.
  • The top of the waterfall lacks sufficient detail, resembling placeholder water or a simplistic rendering.
  • The transition from the top of the waterfall to the flowing water appears abrupt and visually disjointed.

Impact:

  • Affects user experience: The abnormal waterfall animation detracts from the immersive quality of the game environment.

Additional Information:

2

Hi,

I have this problem in this game, a kind of depth of field fx, when objects/elements begin to disappear.

When it happens, grass, or below waterfall remain “vaporous”, with a “dots render”, is it only me, or a driver problem ?

I have a RTX 3080 ti

exemple : (zoom on this image to see the problem on the waterfalls, …)

Sewer’s waterfall

3

another image :

Sewer’s waterfall

4

My character when in main menu or in game equipment window is very blurry, and all falling water is very “pixelated”. I think it was caused by playing with graphics setting, but at the moment failing water stay “pixelated” the same regardless setting changes.

I got screen shots but can’t post (new user)

[System Summary]

Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer Alienware
System Model Alienware m15 Ryzen Ed. R5
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU 0A6F
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with Radeon Graphics, 3201 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Alienware 1.12.1, 18/04/2023
SMBIOS Version 3.3
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer Alienware
BaseBoard Product 0F8CRX
BaseBoard Version A00
Platform Role Mobile
Secure Boot State On
PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = “10.0.19041.3636”

Time Zone GMT Summer Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.4 GB
Available Physical Memory 8.67 GB
Total Virtual Memory 30.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 19.6 GB
Page File Space 15.5 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualisation-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

[Display]

Item Value
Name NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2560&SUBSYS_0A6F1028&REV_A1\4&C337064&0&0009
Adapter Type NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, NVIDIA compatible
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
Adapter RAM (1,048,576) bytes
Installed Drivers C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdmig.inf_amd64_ff6e08dd363b224c\nvldumdx.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdmig.inf_amd64_ff6e08dd363b224c\nvldumdx.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdmig.inf_amd64_ff6e08dd363b224c\nvldumdx.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdmig.inf_amd64_ff6e08dd363b224c\nvldumdx.dll
Driver Version 31.0.15.5222
INF File oem117.inf (Section318 section)
Colour Planes Not Available
Colour Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1920 x 1080 x 239 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xD0FFFFFF
Memory Address 0x0000-0x1FFFFFF
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967229
Driver C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERSTORE\FILEREPOSITORY\NVDMIG.INF_AMD64_FF6E08DD363B224C\NVLDDMKM.SYS (31.0.15.5222, 57.30 MB (60,078,600 bytes), 18/04/2024 19:34)

Name AMD Radeon™ Graphics
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_1638&SUBSYS_0A6F1028&REV_C5\4&20C24D55&0&0041
Adapter Type AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x1638), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. compatible
Adapter Description AMD Radeon™ Graphics
Adapter RAM 512.00 MB (536,870,912 bytes)
Installed Drivers C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0395457.inf_amd64_6fc32bba3062df4d\B394313\aticfx64.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0395457.inf_amd64_6fc32bba3062df4d\B394313\aticfx64.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0395457.inf_amd64_6fc32bba3062df4d\B394313\aticfx64.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0395457.inf_amd64_6fc32bba3062df4d\B394313\amdxc64.dll
Driver Version 31.0.21024.5
INF File oem100.inf (ati2mtag_Cezanne section)
Colour Planes Not Available
Colour Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1920 x 1080 x 60 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0x10000000-0x201FFFFF
Memory Address 0x20000000-0x201FFFFF
I/O Port 0x00001F00-0x00001FFF
Memory Address 0xD1500000-0xD157FFFF
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967253
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967252
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967251
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967250
Driver C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERSTORE\FILEREPOSITORY\U0395457.INF_AMD64_6FC32BBA3062DF4D\B394313\AMDKMDAG.SYS (31.0.21024.5, 95.13 MB (99,746,184 bytes), 07/12/2023 18:23)

5

I think its just the graphics, i had it as well the pixelated waterfall and blurry character.

6

Water falls look really pixelated. The mist looks pixelated too but less.

VIDEO

1
11919Ă—1079 199 KB

7

I noticed that clouds have the same issue.

1
11919Ă—940 84.9 KB

8

I noticed something similar on the water, when water is on the far edges on the screen, it becomes pixelate. I’m using HDR and fullscreen window display mode, best quality 4k.

9

I have been watching gameplays and everyone has this problem. I think they will probably fix it in the future.

10

I partially solve this problem puting the render at 140% in the settings… Fortunately, I am in UHD so it’s bearable and remain fluid at 60fps, I have a master race PC… I imagine that other people with low or middle config will encounter lag problems…

11

Thank you for the report, this is on our radar!

12

Thanks for the answer :slight_smile:

13

Here another pic. The waterfall looks really pixelated.

1
11919Ă—1079 199 KB

14

There are transparent textures in Witchfire. For example, trees. They look bad without TAA. However, when I enable a temporal-based anti-aliasing (DLSS is also counted as it) trees and other transparent textures looks nice.

Here is the screenshot:

WitchFire-1-x2
WitchFire-1-x21868Ă—1218 273 KB

WitchFire-2-x2
WitchFire-2-x21920Ă—995 261 KB

However, it’s broken in No Rest For The Wicked.

Fog, water (waterfalls), walls/trees (when they disappear (it’s not a “special” effect, it’s a bug — graphical artifacts of “checkerboard rendering”)) and fishing rod line have no anti-aliasing. With any setting. Even with enabled DLAA.

Here are the screenshots (Also, I did the integer upscaling of them to save the images quality after the forum’s converting png to jpg):

The fishing rod line without AA, water is too noisy:

fishstick
fishstick1523Ă—416 376 KB

Fog artifacts:

fog-1
fog-11920Ă—523 81.3 KB

fog-2
fog-21457Ă—618 64 KB

The object vanishing artifacts (a wall and a tree):

wall-1
wall-11580Ă—1880 91.6 KB

wall-2
wall-21668Ă—1896 229 KB

tree
tree652Ă—1644 104 KB

Waterfalls totally look bad:

water-1
water-11920Ă—1567 315 KB

water-2
water-21920Ă—1505 304 KB

Also, I would like to see some CPU-optimisations.

I have good performance with RTX 4060 and i7-7700 in the start island location, but in the location between the bridge and the first boss my FPS notable (almost 2 times) goes down to 45-55. Changing the settings in the game does almost nothing. GPU is loaded only by 65 %.

15

It’s just broken TAA:

Well, it was reported a year ago, and still not fixed.

16

Related:

Hashed Alpha Testing

https://forum.norestforthewicked.com/t/waterfall-animation-anomaly-waterfall-top-simplistic-rendering-nameless-pass/5288

A video example of the correct TAA implementation for alpha-tested textures in Spider-Man: Miles Morales:

17

RX 7800, game was tested on both 23.5.1 and latest 25.5.1 drivers. There is visible pixelation, it’s the worst on effects like blood (in opening cutscene), fog and water. Here is an example:

sd
sd1919Ă—1079 239 KB

No matter what I change in settings (FSR on/off, upscale percentage, resolution, sharpness etc.) the problem is always there. Other than that game works perfectly fine, any suggestions?

18

Here is an another more extreme example, couldn’t upload more than 1 pic

dd
dd1919Ă—1079 473 KB

19

Bump
We’ve made a handful of topics on this already and it still seems unresolved (writing as of The Breach Hotfix #4)

This issue also afflicts a bunch of other assets with transparency like grass & moss textures (pay attention to how noisy the moving blades look on cuttable grass and the occasional moss clumps with artifacts all over) as well as smoke effects and plenty of hair/fur textures. If you crouch the camera zooms in a bit, helps notice these better.

Must be as you say, it is as if these particular assets completely avoid using anti-aliasing or use some form of dithered transparency/ checkerboard rendering, maybe for performance reasons. Would be appreciated if we got some answer by the team, weird that this hasn’t been fixed a year after EA release and counting.

20

i noticed that too, when using “upscaling method AMD FSR”. try using TAA and CAS