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20140814 - HRAA And Coverage and Related Topics
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Michal Drobot's HRAA Slides, great talk, I've read it a few times now. Really good seeing people get serious about solving the aliasing problem.
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Coverage Fail Case?
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+Start with a simple example of two color and depth samples {N,S} (with associated coverage samples). And two extra coverage samples {w,e}. In the following pattern,
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.N..
+...e
+w...
+..S.
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+Starting with all cleared (unknown) case,
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._..
+..._
+_...
+.._.
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+Render a triangle in the foreground which covers {S,w,e},
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._..
+...s
+s...
+..S.
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+Now render a triangle in the background which covers {N,S,w,e}, this for instance could be a skybox.
+The N sample passes the depth test, the S sample fails the depth test,
+and the {w,e} coverage samples get set to unknown
+(coverage samples have no depth, raster unit does not know which triangle is in front,
+because a coverage sample's associated depth sample won't work in sloped cases).
+The result being the same as if there are no coverage samples,
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.N..
+..._
+_...
+..S.
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+Front-to-back drawing order (the best order for performance) clears out coverage information.
+Only back-to-front draw order (the worst for overdraw) builds coverage as front triangles evict and optional replace coverage sample association.
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+This is ultimately why I abandoned the idea of using coverage samples for reconstruction.
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+Since then I've learned that coverage might work if there is a front-to-back full z-pre-pass, followed by rendering back-to-front with depth test passing if depth is nearer or equal. This process would likely re-restore coverage. This likely explains why EQAA and CSAA actually seemed to work when they were first introduced, because engines did do z-pre-passes at that time. Back when I tried coverage based reconstruction I never did a z-pre-pass (couldn't afford to submit the geometry again).
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+The CRAA LUT in Michal Drobot's paper is a great idea for a z-pre-passing engine working on a platform which provides coverage information.
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FLIPQUAD
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+For any hardware which provides programmable sample locations in a granularity of 2x2 pixels (or beyond), one can do better than the flipquad setup. On slide 70, notice blue samples of two pixels {0,2} and {1,3} align on vertical lines.
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BFCEE
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+Tried before a few times, never found it to work well as just blending in more of the source as a function of approaching full pixel offset, perhaps I did something wrong, going to need to try this again!
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