Duke Nukem Forever and F.E.A.R. 3 (or F3AR ) have a new Antialiasing Mode called FXAA. This is an NVIDIA developed feature that stands for Fast Approximate Antialiasing.
 
What is FXAA?
FXAA is a shader based image filter that is done in post process (along with other items like motion blur/bloom/etc). It is 100% compatible with deferred rendering engines, and also can have a lower memory footprint and a performance advantage. The way that FXAA is implemented can vary from developer to developer and is an ingame option feature as opposed to an NVIDIA control panel option.
 
So with that being said, lets take a look at the image quality and performance!
 
First up, Duke Nukem Forever. I will compare the ingame FXAA setting to the ingame FSAA setting.
 
Lets take a look at this scene:

 
Now lets zoom in on the planter on the left.
 
FSAA:

FXAA:

Take a look at the gold diagonal lines underneath the plant, with FSAA there is very apparent jaggies, FXAA cleans those up really nicely compared to the ingame FSAA setting.
 
Now lets take a look at F.E.A.R. 3, for the FSAA setting I am using the 2X ingame setting. Lets look at the opening scene:

 
Now lets zoom in right above the doorway.
 
FSAA:

FXAA:

 
Very similar story here, the diagonal jaggies are virtually eliminated with FXAA.
 
So how about performance? Well believe it or not, FXAA provides BETTER performance!
 
Duke Nukem Forever:
FSAA: 160FPS
FXAA: 165FPS
 
F.E.A.R. 3:
FSAA: 132FPS
FXAA: 170FPS
 
Based on the testing in these two games, I believe that it is apparent that FXAA is an effective form of antialiasing, and I hope to see it used even more on upcoming games!
 
Update 8/18/2011!
 
Trying out the Trackmania 2 BETA, was very pleased to see FXAA support! Lets take a look.
 
Lets look at this scene, for this one we will compare FXAA On vs. Off and the performance difference:

 
There are actually a lot of places we can look at in this scene, but lets look at the car.
 
FXAA OFF:

 
FXAA ON:

 
Pay close attention to the top of the cars roof, where you can see the far track above it, the difference is pretty substantial.
 
An the best news of all? The performance! Less than a 10FPS performance hit:
 
FXAA OFF: 92FPS
FXAA ON: 80FPS
 
Can't wait to see what FXAA does in Battlefield 3
 
Update 8/23/2011!
 
Yes! Deus Ex: Human Revolution supports FXAA! Lets take a look.
 
Dues Ex: HR has several ingame AA options to choose from. None, Standard Edge AA, FXAA Low/Medium/High, and MLAA.
 
For this we will compare None, Edge AA and FXAA High, since the FXAA performance hit is pretty small.
 
Lets take a look at this scene:

 
There are a lot of places we can compare here, but lets focus on the cables in the background.
 
No AA:

 
Edge AA:

 
FXAA High:

 
The difference here is pretty drastic, FXAA cleans up the cables completely with virtually no jaggies.
 
And of course the performance hit is extremely minimal:
 
AA Off: 165FPS
Edge AA: 157FPS
FXAA High: 154FPS
 
Deus Ex: HR is a good example case for the benefits of FXAA.

Here is where you can see the biggest difference in the DNF pic:
 
 

Killmur

I actually see almost NO difference between either mode in those pictures. I do see what is noticeable lighting changes though. However the FPS gains look nice.

I can see a nice difference. In the first scene, look at where the gold trim meets the marble wall under it. In the second scene, look at the trim around the door. The jaggies are much better, pretty much gone.
 
Very nice.

Will have to try Fear 3 with FXAA when it gets here.

Killmur

Too bad I use a AMD video card. Someday I'll switch back to Nvidia so I can test out this FXAA thing plus whatever else they add.

 
so FSAA is for AMD Cards and FXAA is for Nvidia?

very nice :)  I know what I will be using from now on!  Jacob needs a BR

I can see the difference even here on the powder-puff! :-)

yeah i saw that option in duke but i had no idea what it was lol
duke is the first game i couldnt run maxed out @ 1920x1200 on my gtx 470. still an old school core2 8400 @ 4ghz. cpu is up 100%, not realy sure if im pegging the cpu/gpu or both. but i like all the extras, enough that im rolling @ 1680x1050 so i can use em all on and maxed so i definitely need me some fxaa :D
 
cool tech. ill have to check it out in fear once i get that

MLAA somethin like that was for ati and fxaa for nvidia the fxaa as far superior to what amd has to offer  and JACOB! how do i enable FXAA? thanks

It is enabled in the in game options, it cannot be enabled from the control panel.

So Jacob, you are playing video games, is this why you don't respond to me?
 

 
Very cool though... about FXAA.

sengutso

_Nite_

Killmur

Too bad I use a AMD video card. Someday I'll switch back to Nvidia so I can test out this FXAA thing plus whatever else they add.

so FSAA is for AMD Cards and FXAA is for Nvidia?

MLAA somethin like that was for ati and fxaa for nvidia the fxaa as far superior to what amd has to offer  and JACOB! how do i enable FXAA? thanks

MLAA isn't actually FXAA
 

What is the MLAA?

In short, MLAA is a shape-based anti-aliasing method that uses post processing filters to reduce aliasing. Like the SSAO, MLAA can be hand-coded in a 3D app or added in graphics drivers.

 

What is FXAA?
FXAA is a shader based image filter that is done in post process (along with other items like motion blur/bloom/etc). It is 100% compatible with deferred rendering engines, and also can have a lower memory footprint and a performance advantage. The way that FXAA is implemented can vary from developer to developer and is an ingame option feature as opposed to an NVIDIA control panel option.

 
MLAA = Supersamling(Witcher 2)
FXAA = Multisampling(F3AR/DNF)

Killmur

So technically FXAA is much better than MLAA? If that's the case then gah I really hate having a AMD video card now.

MLAA and FXAA is non-partial
 
They can be run on both nvidia and amd gpus
 
Quality wise MLAA will be higher but at 2x Memory Footprint avg(GPU memory)
FXAA has frame buffer but it doesn't use Super Sampling like MLAA thus doesn't have a huge memory footprint
 
Both FXAA and MLAA beat FSAA 4x in rendering/execution times at much higher quality
 
FSAA 4x is =(X,Y)4 ,(X(4),Y(4))
X and Y being your resolution
 

Full-scene anti-aliasing by supersampling usually means that each full frame is rendered at double (2x) or quadruple (4x) the display resolution, and then down-sampled to match the display resolution. So a 2x FSAA would render 4 supersampled pixels for each single pixel of each frame. While rendering at larger resolutions will produce better results, more processor power is needed which can degrade performance and frame rate.

Trying out the Trackmania 2 BETA, and was very pleased to see FXAA support! Lets take a look.
 
Lets look at this scene, for this one we will compare FXAA On vs. Off and the performance difference:

 
There are actually a lot of places we can look at in this scene, but lets look at the car.
 
FXAA OFF:

 
FXAA ON:

 
Pay close attention to the top of the cars roof, where you can see the far track above it, the difference is pretty substantial.
 
An the best news of all? The performance! Less than a 10FPS performance hit:
 
FXAA OFF: 92FPS
FXAA ON: 80FPS
 
Can't wait to see what FXAA does in Battlefield 3

Yes! Deus Ex: Human Revolution supports FXAA! Lets take a look.
 
Dues Ex: HR has several ingame AA options to choose from. None, Standard Edge AA, FXAA Low/Medium/High, and MLAA.
 
For this we will compare None, Edge AA and FXAA High, since the FXAA performance hit is pretty small.
 
Lets take a look at this scene:

 
There are a lot of places we can compare here, but lets focus on the cables in the background.
 
No AA:

 
Edge AA:

 
FXAA High:

 
The difference here is pretty drastic, FXAA cleans up the cables completely with virtually no jaggies.
 
And of course the performance hit is extremely minimal:
 
AA Off: 165FPS
Edge AA: 157FPS
FXAA High: 154FPS
 
Deus Ex: HR is a good example case for the benefits of FXAA.

Nice followup video Jacob