Anti-Aliasing
RimWorld's jagged sprite edges are pretty noticeable when you zoom in. I made Anti-Aliasing to give RimWorld a few ways to smooth them, with settings for different hardware and preferences.
The effects run as GPU rendering passes. They don't change the simulation, and the UI is drawn separately so text and controls stay crisp. There is still a rendering cost; supersampling in particular asks the GPU to do considerably more work.
The options
- FXAA is a lightweight post-process pass that smooths detected edges. It's the simplest place to start.
- SMAA uses the published reference implementation to handle edges with less overall blur.
- SSAA renders at 1.5×, 2×, or 4× scale and downsamples the result. It can smooth detail inside textures as well as their outlines, at a higher cost.
- CAS adds AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening after anti-aliasing when you want to bring some detail back.
I used the NVIDIA FXAA whitepaper, SMAA's paper and reference shaders, ordered-grid supersampling, and AMD's FidelityFX CAS as the implementation references. There are simple quality presets, with more detailed controls if you want to adjust things yourself. The mod supports RimWorld 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6.
Give it a try
You can get Anti-Aliasing on the Steam Workshop. It's also included in The Progression Modpack.
I've written about this and my other mods in Modding RimWorld.