Documenting DXWrapper's AntiAliasing With & Without DXVK

[missingnoXXVI]

I came upon this both by accident and because of sheer mad science curiosity. With permission from Elisha, I am committing to test out as much as I can for however long. If anyone else gets the hang of the process and has access to a ddraw on up to DX9 game that I haven't posted yet or don't have access to which could really use the extra crispness? Feel free to join in with your results.

For the sake of ease, I first narrow down which stub can be used to activate DXWrapper alongside DXVK instead of the documented "proper" way of going about it. When just using DXWrapper by itself I use ddraw,d3d8, etc. The NVIDIA app doesn't always mesh well with the chosen game and these 2 mixed together, so sometimes I have to record with RTSS and MagicYUV encoder.
If there is no serious progression with a nightly release, I usually use the latest official but currently I am on one of the most recent nightlies as FullscreenWindowedMode got further improvement. Had to use WindowedBorderlessGaming otherwise. Apologies for the quality of the second video.. only so much to be done with free Github limitations.

ADVENT RISING:

[Compatibility]
D3d8to9 = 1

[d3d9]
AnisotropicFiltering = 1
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1
FullscreenWindowMode = 1

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wAA.Off.DXWrapper.w.DXVK.and.AA.On.mp4

[missingnoXXVI]

ALICE: MADNESS RETURNS w/ MadnessPatch by Wemino

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1
EnableWindowMode = 1
HideWindowFocusChanges = 1

Rare instance of being a game that still mostly works with DXWrapper's AA on without help though with some quirks that unfortunately quality limitations won't be able to show as cleanly. And I wouldn't let the DXVK video fool you. That was recorded on a relaunch the day after and it caught me by surprise. The first launch? Was hell. I have tested Madness Returns with DXVK before but this setup was the longest that I had ever seen the shader compiling process take thus far for any game I have tried it on and there were initially visual anomalies that I don't even think limited upload quality could have hidden. They're still kind of present but for some reason that 2nd run was much cleaner. The stacked AA effect is so subtle (IMO) that most probably shouldn't waste the time and resources for it. Unless you have the processing power and patience.

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wDXVK.and.AA.On.Off.mp4

[missingnoXXVI]

ALPHA PROTOCOL:

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1
FullscreenWindowMode = 1

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wDXVK.and.AA.On.mp4

[missingnoXXVI]

ALIENS VS. PREDATOR 2010:

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1

This game is a massive pain in the ass to try and play in Borderless Fullscreen.

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wDXVK.and.AA.On.mp4

[missingnoXXVI]

AREA-51 (2005):

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1
FullscreenWindowMode = 1
HideWindowFocusChanges = 1

I sometimes forget that some of the free games I have installed on my secondary nVME SSD are also of the D3D9 variety. This game is actually sitting in limbo for me because it was initially being worked on by 2 different interested parties — one with a less than stellar reputation by now — for "Project Dreamland" only for that to seemingly stall out. One of them eventually got their hands on the source code but didn't really do anything with it, only for another coder by the name of gabenga to go absolutely nuts with progress over recent months. I am in fact only waiting for a new release build to have an updated exe because apparently a long standing physics issue may have been ironed out. Originally you can't go above 90FPS or you can't jump and some traversals can launch and kill you.

Up till before the start of the Dr. Cray chapter, you seemingly don't actually need any fixes outside of an exe to bypass the drm, at least for Windows 11 and decent modern hardware. At the start of it though? The rendering just craps out and trying to play in the dark is obviously untenable. Forcing either DXVK or a combination of it and DXWrapper. I say that to say that having DXWrapper's AntiAliasing on by itself isn't necessarily the issue in this case.. probably just exacerbating an already present issue. Here is to hoping that in the process of gabenga working on finishing the coding on a graphics menu that was never present in the original release, FSAA will be included naturally.

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wDXVK.and.AA.On.Off.mp4

[missingnoXXVI]

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1

This was more of a "Why not?" choice despite it being another DX9 title that is lacking in the (decent) native AA department. Even though it has pretty much everything else, hence the fewer needed options from DXWrapper.

No.AA.mp4

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wDXVK.and.AA.On.mp4

[missingnoXXVI]

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1
FullscreenWindowMode = 1
HideWindowFocusChanges = 1

I won't lie, this was genuinely disappointing because this is a playthrough that I am quite looking forward to at a later point. The FXAA is visibly disappointing from the main menu, so I had hope that this would surprise me like Condemned: Criminal Origins ended up doing so.

DXWrapper.By.Itself.wAA.On.mp4

DXWrapper.wDXVK.and.AA.On.mp4

[mirh]

Those are all d3d9 games, which famously started to require hacks for MSAA to work properly:

• advent rising and area-51: TREAT_OVERRIDE_AS_APP_CONTROLLED (can't remember the difference between override and enhance)
• alice and alpha protocol, GoW (and generally UE3): FORCE_AA_ON_A8R8G8B8_TEXTURES_OF_PRIMARY_SIZE | FORCE_AA_ON_X16B16G16R16F_TEXTURES_OF_PRIMARY_SIZE | DISABLE_AA_ON_PRIMARY
• Gunslinger and Castelvania: TREAT_OVERRIDE_AS_APP_CONTROLLED | TREAT_ENHANCE_AS_APP_CONTROLLED (effectively forced off?)

[missingnoXXVI]

Those are all d3d9 games, which famously started to require hacks for MSAA to work properly:

• advent rising and area-51: TREAT_OVERRIDE_AS_APP_CONTROLLED (can't remember the difference between override and enhance)
• alice and alpha protocol, GoW (and generally UE3): FORCE_AA_ON_A8R8G8B8_TEXTURES_OF_PRIMARY_SIZE | FORCE_AA_ON_X16B16G16R16F_TEXTURES_OF_PRIMARY_SIZE | DISABLE_AA_ON_PRIMARY
• Gunslinger and Castelvania: TREAT_OVERRIDE_AS_APP_CONTROLLED | TREAT_ENHANCE_AS_APP_CONTROLLED (effectively forced off?)

The combination just allows me to be functionally lazier because I find NVIDIA Profile Inspector to be far too cumbersome and problematic to be worthwhile. Using it on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time made me want to chuck my computer out the airlock.

Is Advent Rising more DX9 under the hood than its PCGamingWiki listing has detailed?

[missingnoXXVI]

Condemned: Criminal Origins

[Compatibility]
EnableD3d9Wrapper = 1

[d3d9]
AntiAliasing = 1
ShowFPSCounter = 1
FullscreenWindowMode = 1
HideWindowFocusChanges = 1

As far as I can tell, this game is even more problematic with Borderless than F.E.A.R in as far as trying to use either AA or Shadows at all. Because of that, I got curious and while I still hope that some day Wemino will get bored enough to work his much on this game too, got some surprisingly positive results that I wish I had known of the first time I played.

No.AA.mp4

DXWrapper.DXVK.withAA.and.Soft.Shadows.OnOff.mp4