Post
Smoothing jagged edges by blending information from previous frames, trading sharpness for stability in motion.
TAA works by jittering the camera position slightly each frame (sub-pixel offsets) and then blending the current frame with reprojected data from previous frames. Because each frame samples the scene from a slightly different sub-pixel position, combining multiple frames effectively supersamples the image over time. The result is smooth edges and stable specular highlights that do not flicker between frames. However, TAA's reliance on previous frame data means fast-moving objects or quick camera turns can produce ghosting (blurry trails) because the historical data no longer matches the current frame. Modern implementations use motion vectors to track where each pixel moved between frames, rejecting history samples that have become invalid. TAA has become the default anti-aliasing method in modern games because it also stabilizes other noisy effects like screen-space reflections and volumetric lighting.
Example
Unreal Engine 4 and 5 use TAA as their default and recommended anti-aliasing solution, and many of their rendering features (like Lumen and screen-space effects) are designed to rely on TAA's temporal accumulation to look correct. DOOM Eternal's TAA implementation is often praised for maintaining sharpness during fast movement, a notoriously difficult balance. Many players combine TAA with a sharpening filter to counteract the softness, which is why NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR (both temporal upscalers) include built-in sharpening passes.
Why it matters
TAA has become the foundation that modern rendering pipelines are built on. Effects like stochastic ray tracing, screen-space reflections, and volumetric fog all produce noisy single-frame results that rely on temporal accumulation to look clean. Understanding TAA explains both why modern games look so smooth and stable, and why they sometimes look softer or ghostier than older games that used simpler anti-aliasing methods.
Related concepts