Amnesia - SSAO Explained

[shootingNmissing]

SSAO isnt worth the lag I normally get 60+ fps with it turned off and some other settings SLIGHTLY downgraded but with SSAO on even on 4 it lags really bad. Another one of those great games but has a poorly optimized side of it.

[suleymankirali]

what is he doing?

[JimmyCougar]

@suleymankirali Showcasing the problem SSAO has. Look it up on Wikipedia. It has some great advantages, but its biggest drawback is the "bleed" effect it has when you have contrasting colors and near\far objects resulting in the ugly black aura shown here. It's a Post-Processing effect that fills the screen.

[sgfinzane1987]

@Travaillons you're right. SSAO uses the already rendered image of the scene and thus is geometry-independent. That's why it's called "Space Screen."

[MindSeeR666]

So, what would be the best option for this? 4x 8x ect?

[jakie1789]

when i try to play amnesia i get to mane menu but when i try to play it its just a black screen what do i do

[Veeshush]

@jakie1789

What's your hardware? Maybe your video card has bad support. Could always try updating the drivers.

[jakie1789]

@Veeshush i have fully updated drivers and i did the backround check and it still doesnt my laptop was made in late 2011

[Veeshush]

@jakie1789

Could try their support forum. I found this on there, maybe it'll do something: Laptop OpenGL Troubleshooting Guide. I'll send the link as I can't seem to post it.

[KissedTHEBullet]

@Veeshush uninstall and reinstall if you see a background in the main menu its fixed(had the same problem)

[TheMightyJKK]

@Veeshush Dude i have gtx 570 8gb ram quad core 3.1 GHz and it still lags

[Spartan54232]

@jakie1789 go to control panel find your graphics card hit find update from internet wait for update and it should work unless your graphics card is REALLLLLLLLLLY SHITTY

[jovantheun1337]

Agree completely with Veeshush. I set it to lowest settings or just off entirely. Even at lowest settings it can lower framerate in large areas (such as the parlour after the Shadow water chase). I would have appreciated decent real-time shadowing effects from dynamic light sources (candles, torches, fires, etc.) more. The windows and certain light sources that are already on give this effect, but it's a shame you can't light that candle and see the vases's shadow projected on the wall.

[Travaillons]

@jovantheun1337 I'm pretty sure the impact of SSAO on performance does not depend on how complex a certain view is. (How many objects and such)

[henrygouk]

@Travaillons You're right. It is applied as a post-processing effect. The main things that impact the performance are the screen resolution and number of samples.

[RedofYellow]

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion FTW!

[FrankDodd]

Nice demonstration, there seams to be a lot of static objects in this scene though and a simpler, faster solution would have been to bake it into a texture rather than use SSAO imo. Perhaps thats not true elsewhere in the game.

[arashjot2]

lol now i know what to turn off for la noire. i was lagging..

[craezee247]

i see no freakin difference, cant spot ssao in games if my life depended on it. i just disable it

[jony1710]

@craezee247 at the borders of objects, it gives a black aura/shadow that looks kinda weird.

[ferna2294]

What´s your GPU?

[Veeshush]

@ferna2294

I think I recorded this with my old evga 260gtx (192 cores). I'm using a 480 gtx now. Regardless, I get the same frame rate with the 480.

[ferna2294]

@Veeshush Nice, I´m playing it with a 550ti (192 cores but kinda faster than the 260), and I maxed it out with SSAO at 16 without FPS problems (maybe not 60, but totally playable :) ), anyway the next time I´ll see how it looks without it...

Thank you :) ...

[Veeshush]

@ferna2294

The 550ti is a great card. I've got a MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone in my fiancee's machine, and it's funny you made the comparison between that and a 260 because I literally thought the same exact thing. Hell, I probably would had kept my 260 if it had Directx11 support. Both are really good performers.

[ferna2294]

@Veeshush Yeah, the Cyclone is awesome, very good cooling. Mine is an EVGA FPB Edition. And yes, maybe it sounds ridiculous to compare a 2008 card vs a 2011 card, but they are both very popular for their performance/price relation and they have the same count of CUDA cores, but as the 550ti is newer and has got bigger clocks and faster memory (GDDR5) it´s a bit more powerful, and it supports DX 11 :) ...

[Psyblader501]

thx for this vid!

[koroxlover]

Ok, someone PLEASE tell me how to disable this (SSAO) from the launch menu. when it first opens up and asks you for your preferred settings?

[Veeshush]

@koroxlover

I can't say if it's different for the Steam version, but you should be able to just go to "Show Advanced" under "Graphic Options" and just un-check SSAO. Then just restart the game.

[koroxlover]

@Veeshush thank you ill try that

[songofyesterday]

all that shadowy glow doesn't look right...less realistic is how I see it

[MrJacko66]

its called Ambient Occlusion

[fishfrog90]

4 or 8 samples is good enough. 16+ samples knock my fps below 60

[yellowflash345]

looks like you turned off shadows then turned them on, thats not SSAO!

[Veeshush]

@yellowflash345

Shadow setting was never changed. I only changed SSAO.

[TheFailing1]

@yellowflash345 dude look up what ssao is lol....it creates shadows when things are close enough together that there should be a shadow...

[thousandsunny627]

@Veeshush please check wikipedia Screen Space Ambient Occlusion as it says No CPU usage – it can be executed completely on the GPU.

[thousandsunny627]

@Veeshush then it should work great becuase i have i7-860 oc to 3.8 ghz it hink its an amazing processor

[thousandsunny627]

man you have said it even my gtx 580 gets ownd by this games at ssoa 128 every thing max out i get like 25 to 30 fps

[robdoubletrouble]

you should've done it on a split screen... i can't see the difference ... :-w

[Veeshush]

@robdoubletrouble

To be honest there isn't much difference. It just makes a false shadow type of effect.

[OwnerDutchie]

So Medium/64 is the best to play with?

[Veeshush]

@OwnerDutchie

So far it seems the best.

[YetcenOmega]

Ty for the explanation. :]