TAA (temporal anti-aliasing): how it works, why it blurs and what to replace it with
TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) is an anti-aliasing method that accumulates colour samples from several previous frames, re-projects them along motion vectors and averages them with the current frame. It has been the most common AA in games since about 2015 and is the foundation of the upscalers DLSS, FSR 2+ and XeSS.
Temporal Anti-Aliasing · TAAU · TSR
Key figures
From the FPSHQ database, as of Oct 13, 2026
How temporal accumulation works
Each frame the projection is jittered by a fraction of a pixel following a pattern. The same surface point therefore lands in slightly different grid positions over 4–8 frames, giving several samples per pixel — like supersampling but almost free. To match samples of moving objects the engine stores motion vectors that say where every pixel came from in the previous frame.
History is validated against the current frame: if the old colour differs too much (object revealed, lighting changed) the sample is rejected. The quality of this "history rejection" decides whether moving objects leave trails.
Pros and cons
Pros: it smooths everything — geometry edges, alpha-tested textures (foliage, fences), specular shimmer, thin objects; it costs 1–3 % of FPS; it works with deferred rendering. That is why Unreal, Unity HDRP, Frostbite and RE Engine use TAA by default.
Cons: ghosting (trails behind objects that lack motion vectors — particles, transparency), blur in motion and loss of fine detail, textures "dissolving" during fast camera turns. Developers compensate with a sharpening filter; players switch to DLAA or community mods.
TAA, TAAU, TSR and AI upscalers
TAAU (temporal upsampling) is TAA that accumulates samples from a lower-resolution frame and outputs a higher one — the same mechanism as DLSS 2 / FSR 2 without a neural network. TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) is Unreal Engine 5's built-in upscaler. DLSS and XeSS replace hand-written history heuristics with a network, so they ghost less for the same number of samples.
Practical advice: if the game offers DLAA or "FSR Native AA", use it; otherwise TAA with mild sharpening. Disabling TAA completely in a modern game is almost always worse: shimmering explodes, and effects designed for accumulation (SSR, hair, foliage) fall apart.
On your PC
Enter your GPU (and CPU) — we calculate the effect of "TAA" with the unified FPSHQ model using Cyberpunk 2077 as the example.
Save your PC in the account · Detect hardware with the app · Unified FPSHQ model estimate, not a measurement.
Where to use this on FPSHQ
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What is TAA?
TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) is an anti-aliasing method that accumulates colour samples from several previous frames, re-projects them along motion vectors and averages them with the current frame. It has been the most common AA in games since about 2015 and is the foundation of the upscalers DLSS, FSR 2+ and XeSS.
- games with DLSS in the catalog
- 183
- games with FSR
- 383
FAQ
What is TAA in game settings?
Why does TAA blur the image?
Should I disable TAA for FPS?
How does DLSS differ from TAA?
Sources
FPSHQ Team · methodology · methodology · Updated
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