Quick answer:
- Open Project Settings > Engine > Rendering > Default Settings and set Anti-Aliasing Method to Temporal Super-Resolution (TSR).
- Set the screen percentage to 100, and set Anti-Aliasing to High or Epic in Settings > Engine Scalability Settings.
- Shiny surfaces sparkle? Raise their roughness, or bake normal map detail into roughness (Step 3).
- Thin wires and fences shimmer? Make them a little thicker, or use a masked texture on a wider card.
Which anti-aliasing method should I use?
| Method | Good for | Drawbacks |
|---|---|---|
| TSR | The UE5 default. Best overall quality, and can upscale | Costs GPU time and can ghost on moving objects |
| TAA | Older and cheaper temporal method | Softer, and ghosts more than TSR |
| FXAA | Very cheap, and sharp in motion | Doesn’t stop shimmering and misses small detail |
| MSAA | VR and forward-shaded projects | Forward renderer only, no Lumen, and doesn’t fix shiny-surface sparkle |
| None | Comparing and debugging | Jagged edges everywhere |
DLSS, FSR and XeSS are available as plugins. They’re worth testing, and each needs a supported GPU.
Step 1: Check the basics
Most shimmering comes from rendering at too low a resolution.
- Set Anti-Aliasing Method to TSR, as above.
- Set the viewport’s Screen Percentage to 100 (the ☰ menu at the top left of the viewport).
- In Settings > Engine Scalability Settings, set Anti-Aliasing to High or Epic. Low and Medium give TSR less to work with.
Step 2: Thin details shimmer
Wires, fences, grass blades and distant railings can be thinner than one pixel. No anti-aliasing method can fully recover something that only lands on some pixels in some frames.
- Make thin meshes slightly thicker, or use LODs that thicken them at a distance.
- Use a masked texture on a wider card instead of very thin geometry. The texture’s mipmaps fade the detail smoothly with distance.
- Nanite foliage (UE 5.1 and later) keeps dense plants stable better than classic LODs.
Step 3: Shiny surfaces sparkle
A detailed normal map on a smooth, shiny material creates tiny highlights that jump from pixel to pixel. This is called specular aliasing. Fix it in the roughness texture:
- Open the roughness texture.
- In Compositing, set Composite Texture to the material’s normal map.
- Set Composite Texture Mode to the channel that holds roughness (for example Add Normal Roughness To Green).
Unreal now makes the surface a little rougher where the normal map is busy, so the sparkle goes away at a distance. The quick alternative is to raise the material’s roughness a little.
Step 4: Shimmer only on lighting or shadows
If geometry edges are steady but shadows or bounce light crawl, the cause is Virtual Shadow Maps or Lumen, not anti-aliasing. See UE5 flickering: find the cause.
FAQ
Is MSAA better than TSR?
For VR with the forward renderer, often yes: edges are crisp and there’s no ghosting. For deferred projects that use Lumen, it isn’t available.
Why are edges jagged only far away?
Distant objects get fewer pixels, so their details are smaller than a pixel. Use LODs, thicker distant geometry, and textures with mipmaps.
Why does TSR shimmer more at low FPS?
TSR builds detail across frames. At low frame rates, objects move further between frames, so it has less matching history to use.