I second this. While TAA works fine for many people, many others (including myself) find it severely degrades the games enjoyability.
I’d really love for 343 to see this and take it seriously, so if you don’t mind I’m going to give some examples and arguments that back up your point.
I strongly, strongly, request that Halo infinite include the option to disable TAA (temporal anti aliasing) on all platforms, in order to allow for more people to be able to play and enjoy the game to the fullest.
I believe that enforcing TAA across the board harms the game in 3 major ways:
1 - Image quality
2 - Visual accessibility
3 - Performance accessibility
1 - Image quality: TAA is infamous at this point for introducing blur while moving in a way that degrades the effective resolution and quality of game assets. At native resolution while standing still the game looks crisp and clear, like native resolution with anti aliasing should, but while moving my perception is that the game is being run at half it’s native resolution and then upscaled.
Lacking visual clarity in motion really detracts from the wow factor of the game. When the whole screen is blurred, it becomes difficult for anything to stand out from one another. It can even lead the player to believing that the game’s assets of textures are low quality when it’s far from the truth.
Overall, with this lower apparent resolution, my impression is that the game looks worse than it actually does, and that’s a disservice to the visual design of the game, and the artists that worked on Halo Infinite
TAA It also leads to an inconsistent visual experience, where the game can look drastically different when still, and this difference is visually distracting. You may argue that a more temporally stable image is less distracting for not having as much shimmering or instability, but shimmering (like screen tearing) does not bother everyone, and to many it’s an easy trade off for greater clarity and edge-contrast.
2 - Visual accessibility: I’m a visually impaired person. Glasses allow me to achieve fairly good acuity, but even they can’t reach the full clarity of normal vision. I play all the multiplayer games that I can with no anti aliasing because sharper edges helps me pick out objects from the background. TAA (and other forms of AA to an extent) soften the edges of models, and reduce their contrast to the background, and this becomes a major problem when picking targets out based on their value. Even outlines can’t fully correct this issue, as for colour-blind players the luminosity of these outlines can closely match the background at times, even if the colour itself is very different.
Contrast is obviously a huge part of visual accessibility, and edge contrast and clarity is an effective way of improving that accessibility, so that even those with low vision can more readily pick up on different objects.
A major component in target detection is visual movement, and TAA reduces the perception of that movement by smoothing it over, and so targets become even more difficult to pick out. Having to search harder for that movement and for the edges of players and objects creates more visual strain, and the softness makes it harder to focus. In a much less severe way, it simulates my short-sightedness without glasses, and as a result this of struggle I genuinely find it difficult to enjoy the game, I’m constantly plagued by the lack of clarity and and constantly feel as though I can’t quite see.
There is an argument to be made that enforcing TAA across all systems creates a more even playing field visually, but clearly Halo infinite looks to have great visibility in every other aspect of it’s design: outlines, lack of map clutter, colour contrast, etc. Having the option to disable TAA would only serve to increase that visibility, and would be there for those who prefer the option. For those that prefer playing with TAA, the existing design choices (player outlines, etc) should help keep that playing field even.
3 – Performance accessibility:
TAA has a performance hit, and while it may be small, many players with lower end systems stand to benefit from every last frame they can get.
More significant, is the fact that the reduced apparent resolution and detail leads those that run on a lower resolution to have even less clarity than they would expect, and therefore creates a higher barrier to entry to play the game enjoyably.
In order to reach the clarity (regardless of AA) that I would expect at my native 1440p resolution, I’ve found that even 4k is not enough. For those that feel similarly, they need to greatly raise their resolution and drastically lower their settings to reach acceptable performance, or simply put up with an experience that they struggle to enjoy.
For those that don’t mind the blur of TAA, but also don’t mind jagged or shimmering edges, they can play at a lower resolution, and achieve better performance for a cost in smoothness, but while retaining clarity.
To finish up a post that is already pretty long, please consider this 343. There are small communities dedicated to finding workarounds for TAA, groups of people that lament it’s forced inclusion in games, and they feel so passionately against TAA for good reason. It simply does not provide an enjoyable experience for everyone.
I wouldn’t ask for an alternative AA to be introduced, I realise the work and engine limitations of something like that. I also realise that TAA is tied to the look of certain effects, lighting and rendering techniques, but I have played games with those same limitations with TAA forcibly disabled, and like many, I was more than happy to deal with those artifacts.
