How to fix this? Small horizontal lines becoming distorted far away.

I know this is just how pixels work, but what are some workaround for this?

Close:

Far:

You can see on the stairs the banding starts to happen. What are some ways to fix this/workarounds?

Maybe you can use some level of detail and when you get far away, change the stairs to a ramp. Maybe put a texture that will make it look more like stairs.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe this is called the Moiré effect, happens in real life too :slight_smile:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/moire-effect
You need to avoid thin repeating lines, maybe make the steps thicker?

Is this with or without MSAA?

This is with FXAA. Using deferred rendering. I noticed no difference with or without any AA. This issue does not show up in 3ds max though if I render it. (I know their renderer is very different)

Deferred rendering can’t handle MSAA for the deferred part.
And you have checked that this occurs also without FXAA?

It occurs with and without FXAA.

Looks like it also does it with MSAA in forward rendering. It’s very slightly less with MSAA, but it still occurs. I might have to just use an LOD group to replace the stairs with a flat textured plane after a certain distance since there doesn’t seem to be an obvious solution.

You can see how extreme it gets at large distances. It’s really distorting it and it seems to spiral depending on the distance. The more you zoom out it keeps rotating the lines.

The problem is from what I understand one of resolution, basically it needs to choose a pixel (MSAA will blend them instead), and for some interesting reason it’s causing it to choose a spiraly style.
As you say, LOD’s are very likely the way to go long term, but I also suggest you post this on NVIDIA and/or AMD forums, as it could be related to the graphics cards themselves.

Only other thing I can suggest trying/testing, what happens if only the staircase is in a empty scene, and/or without shadows?

Also: Is this alpha clipped or a 3d model?