How can I force anti-aliasing in GTA IV?

My GTA IV version is 1.0.7.0 and I am trying to enable anti-aliasing but I am unable to find a setting in the game to do this. The image preview below looks fine but if you click on the image and see its bigger size, you can see clear aliasing.

Screenshot of GTA4
Click image preview above to view higher-resolution, original-sized image.

My graphics card is a GTX560ti and I am trying to force anti-aliasing within the nVidia Control Panel but it's not taking effect.

How can I force anti-aliasing for Grand Theft Auto IV?


AFAIK, the driver software for both Nvidia and AMD/ATI can't force non-post processing AA in GTA IV due to how GTA IV's graphics engine was made (or rather, how it was ported to the PC from the console platform).

You can however, force post-processing AA on it, like FXAA (in Nvidia driver software settings), Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA; in AMD/ATI driver software settings) or SMAA (which I believe provides better visual quality than the former post-processing AA methods). SMAA can be used in GTA IV through injectSMAA:

Description:

  • adds "Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing" to an application
  • is based on "injectFXAA" (written by "some dude")
  • is supposed to work only with directx 9, directx 10, directx 11, x86 applications
  • may be incompatible with any other form of antialiasing
  • may be incompatible with overlays (Steam Overlay, MSI Afterburner, Fraps, ...)

SMAA is a very efficient GPU-based MLAA implementation, capable of handling subpixel features seamlessly, and featuring an advanced pattern detection & handling mechanism.

http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/

Screenshots (from http://mrhaandi.blogspot.com/p/injectsmaa.html):

Click image previews below to view higher-resolution, original-sized image.
No AA:
No AA

With SMAA:
With SMAA


You can also use the nVidia Control Panel.

Under Manage 3D Settings, select the GTA IV profile or create a new one (for the GTA 4 executable). Then put Anti-aliasing FXAA "ON" and apply. You might also have to switch Anti-aliasing control to "enhance the application setting" and select what level AA you want (ie 4x).


Forcing AA in Nvidia control panel doesn't work. The FXAA option should reduce aliasing and soften the image (textures get blurred) and isn't perfomance-heavy.

I've looked into this myself and the only methods of AA i discovered are.

  1. FXAA in control panel
  2. inject SMAA (as above)
  3. SweetFX (google it, don't use with enb)