Anti-Aliasing
Smoothing jagged edges
Also known as: AA · Anti aliasing methods · MSAA vs TAA · FXAA · SMAA · Supersampling
Definition
Anti-aliasing smooths the jagged, stair-stepped edges that appear when a 3D scene is drawn on a grid of pixels. Methods include supersampling, which renders at a higher resolution and scales down, MSAA, which samples extra points along geometry edges, FXAA and SMAA, which blur edges in a post-process, TAA, which blends several frames over time, and upscalers such as DLSS and FSR that combine reconstruction with anti-aliasing. Each method trades quality, sharpness and performance differently.
In production
Forward renderers, common on mobile and VR, usually use MSAA, while deferred engines such as Unreal Engine 5 rely on temporal methods. TAA gives the best coverage of thin detail and shading but can ghost or soften the image. Pick the method with the performance budget, and test with thin geometry, foliage and fine textures, which show the differences. In offline renders, higher samples remove aliasing.
Tools that use Anti-Aliasing
See also
MSAA
Hardware-level edge anti-aliasing
TAA
Temporal anti-aliasing
DLSS / FSR
AI / spatial upscaling for higher framerates
Jagged Edges in Games
Stair-stepped outlines on geometry
TAA Ghosting and Blur
Smearing trails and soft images from temporal anti-aliasing
Forward Rendering
Shade each fragment per light, in one pass