Comparision of performance with incorporated super-sampling and without.

scene rendered without super-sampling scene rendered with super-sampling

xml file used to create images

In the above scene we can see a marked difference in the appearance of the two scenes. The background lines of the left scene are much less smooth, and we can observe much greater alias effects. The lines of the geometries, in addition, are smoother in the super-sampled image. The super-sampling is done by considering several samples (the exact number is specified in the xml file) within the pixel. My specific implementation roots the [0,0] of the pixel at the centre (compared to for example the top-left corner), and then uses a polar coordinate form to sample within the pixel.

That is, where i, j are the pixel coordinates in question, I consider pixel co-ordinate i', j' where

i' = 0.5*Math.cos(theta)
j' = 0.5*Math.sin(theta)

and theta ranges over [0,2*PI].
However, we can still observe alias effects within the super-sampled image, and to reduce these effects we further consider jittered rays

Using Jittering to Remove Alias effects