Nvidia unveils AI-powered downscaling DLDSR and ray tracing filter

[SPARTAN VI]

Nvidia revealed this week that its January 14 Game Ready Driver will bring a new feature to RTX graphics cards that improves the company’s Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) function, improving image quality without the same performance hit.

Dynamic Super Resolution is Nvidia’s method for letting users easily downsample games. It renders a game at a higher resolution, then shrinks it back down to the native resolution of your monitor. This results in extremely effective anti-aliasing but only performs well if a GPU has the extra horsepower to run at that higher resolution. It’s a good way to make older games with outdated anti-aliasing technology look cleaner.

Deep Learning Dynamic Super Resolution (DLDSR) uses RTX graphics cards’ Tensor cores to make this process more efficient. Nvidia’s announcement claims using DLDSR to play a game at 2.25x the output resolution looks as good as using DSR at 4x the resolution, but achieves the same framerate as 1x resolution.

Techspot Article: https://www.techspot.com/news/92952-latest-nvidia-drivers-reveal-ai-powered-downscaling-feature.html

And here's Nvidia's own comparison webpage for showcasing these features: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...r-resolution-prey-dldsr-ssrtgi-comparison-01/

 

[Lakados]

Thats actually a really cool use of the technology. Lots of older games look less than awesome even at 1440p, I’d rather try this than playing with AA methods.

 

[cybereality]

Okay. This is actually cool. That comparison on Nvidia's website looks sick. It looks like real ray tracing.

 

[NattyKathy]

Okay. This is actually cool. That comparison on Nvidia's website looks sick. It looks like real ray tracing.

it is real Raytracing, albeit limited to screenspace. It's based on Pascal Gilcher's RTGI shader for ReShade which I have several years experience using and can confirm the results can be stunning when well configured.

 

[TrunksZero]

Sorta, yes. But because it's screen space based and doesn't have access to off screen information it only partially achieves what allot of people might be expecting. Also while it tends to look great in stills... it can look awkward in motion. Awesome add though as you can just click it on now, which is absolutely pretty damn sweet.

I'm more interesting to learn about DLDSR and what it's actually doing, because DSR was already pretty awesome.

 

[GotNoRice]

Are they actually going to open this up to all RTX cards? Or are they going to shit on their users again and artificially limit this to 3000 series RTX cards like they did with Resizable BAR, etc?

 

[cybereality]

Well this is a software driver feature, I don't see why they would limit it to anything after the 2000 series, as they all technically support the hardware (and even 1000 series cards could emulate it, but probably slowly).

 

[cybereality]

I haven't played with ReShade by I saw the pictures it looks great. This is the kind of thing we need, more easy support so more games can get ray tracing.

 

[ChosenUno]

Wow, free AA. I imagine removing any form of in-game AA and using this would actually be better IQ wise, and you'll gain performance too.

 

[cybereality]

No you still want traditional AA since newer techniques can add detail that is not in a single frame (temporal anti-aliasing). But using them both will look a lot better.

 

[Armenius]

Sorta, yes. But because it's screen space based and doesn't have access to off screen information it only partially achieves what allot of people might be expecting. Also while it tends to look great in stills... it can look awkward in motion. Awesome add though as you can just click it on now, which is absolutely pretty damn sweet.

I'm more interesting to learn about DLDSR and what it's actually doing, because DSR was already pretty awesome.

I have the same opinion. I'm not at all interested in "screen space" GI, but I am extremely interested in DLDSR.

 

[TrunksZero]

No you still want traditional AA since newer techniques can add detail that is not in a single frame (temporal anti-aliasing). But using them both will look a lot better.

The blurry line between AA and Reconstruction techniques. I really like regular Super Sampling style AA that you get with something like a downsample. That said if they can continue to refine temporal solutions to get greater and great levels of stability... ah, new graphics features are fun

 

[cybereality]

Well even FXAA is a form of reconstruction. It is just conceptually simple, but it is still adding additional pixels where there were none before.

 

[Randall Stephens]

Will this work in vr games? I know sometimes the vr stuff isn’t compatible with stuff you see on the regular screen.

 

[Lakados]

Will this work in vr games? I know sometimes the vr stuff isn’t compatible with stuff you see on the regular screen.

I would think yes but then not only would you be rendering at something to 4K but then having to render it twice. Maintaining 70+ FPS under those conditions could be problematic for most systems.

 

[Armenius]

The newest GeForce driver is out now, adding DLDSR support.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/results/185108/

 

[SPARTAN VI]

The newest GeForce driver is out now, adding DLDSR support.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/results/185108/

Can't wait to try it with Warhammer 2, which is a grand strategy game that has horrible AA implementation.

 

[sleepeeg3]

Overall better. Sharpens up things nicely.

Adds some slight jagginess to the cable over the original 1080p. Was there already AA on that, I wonder.

 

[cybereality]

So does the ray tracing just work with any game, they didn't specify what was needed?

 

[SPARTAN VI]

Pretty solid. I'm using the 1920P DLDSR factor and downscaling to my monitor's 1440P. Looks heads and shoulders better than 1440P w/ 4x AA and performance is basically the same. As expected, the SSRTGI looks like complete ASS in WH2. I still haven't found a real gaming use case for that filter that doesn't completely shit the bed; maybe for still screen shots / digital photography, but not for in-motion gaming.

So does the ray tracing just work with any game, they didn't specify what was needed?

You turn it on with the Nvidia GFE overlay, ALT+F3, then enable the filter. Historically, that overlay wasn't supported by all games, so I doubt it's really global.

 

[Dayaks]

I’ve always loved DSR, I found it better (high perf/better visuals) to have 2x MSAA and a slightly higher res rather than using 4x MSAA native. If they improved it further that’s fantastic.

I haven’t looked at a review in basically years but I wonder if AMD would great crushed in a [H] review these days when accounting for things like this and DLSS.

 

[Brackle]

I cannot wait to give DLDSR a shot. I have a few games I have been wanting to test this on. They are older games and at 4k there is PLENTY of performance left on the table.

Hopefully its worth it.

 

[cybereality]

Okay, so I tried it out tonight. Good news, it works amazing.

Bad news is I tried a bunch of games and the only one that worked was Far Cry 5. Even games that were supposed to work had glitches or the button wasn't there.

So my hope of all games suddenly having ray tracing, well this isn't it. But it does look really nice, maybe Nvidia can work on the software support.

 

[RJ1892]

DLDSR is really impressive, I just wish they didn't deceptively advertise it. They really didn't need to.

Now please add DLAA at the driver level. There has only been one game to support it as far as I know.

 

[cybereality]

I just tried it in Portal 2. It looks insane.

 

[GotNoRice]

I'm having really good results with World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has it's own built-in Resolution Scale, which I usually run at 133% on my 1440p monitor (3413x1920) which is basically the same as 1.78X DSR. I tried 1.78x DLDSR (3413x1920) instead, leaving the in-game resolution scale at 100%, and performance was about the same as what I had before but it looked better. I then tried using a DLDSR factor of 2.25x (4K) but the performance hit was too noticeable. Then I tried experimenting a bit using the game's built-in resolution scale in conjunction with DLDSR. With DLDSR set to 2.25x (4K), I set the in-game resolution scale to 67%, which means it's actually rendering the game at my native resolution of 1440p while still using DLDSR, and there was almost no performance hit over native 1440p while still looking a whole lot better. I'm actually really surprised that using both together worked so well and gave me the option of being able to use DLDSR at my native res thereby maintaining performance.

On the left is native 1440p, no DLDSR, 100% in-game resolution scale.
On the right is 2.25x DLDSR (4K) combined with 67% in-game resolution scale (bringing resolution back down to 1440P).

Just look at how much easier it is to read the nameplates, and how much more clear the rock face in the distance is. GPU temps did seem to increase, I guess because the tensor cores are actually being used.

 

[OutOfPhase]

I just tried it in Portal 2. It looks insane.

Portal 2 has the advantage of being kinda stylized (like the WoW example) so even though a bit long in the tooth, still holds up pretty darn well even without augs.

But yeah, adding a modern GI pass really makes it pop. I think I need to reinstall this old friend.

 

[TrunksZero]

Gotnorice... wait... how is the native image on the left so crap? It's not crisp and everything is blurry. You sure that was rendering at native? Because I've never seen a native resolution image be that blurry. (Even text is all messed up)

 

[LukeTbk]

Gotnorice... wait... how is the native image on the left so crap? It's not crisp and everything is blurry. You sure that was rendering at native? Because I've never seen a native resolution image be that blurry. (Even text is all messed up)

Zoom to show the difference more clearly ?

 

[TrunksZero]

Zoom to show the difference more clearly ?

That has gotta be it. But doing that makes it look worse, as your not seeing the native bit at native. Your seeing it upscaled by whatever image editor is used? It shouldn't be that blurry.

 

[GotNoRice]

Gotnorice... wait... how is the native image on the left so crap? It's not crisp and everything is blurry. You sure that was rendering at native? Because I've never seen a native resolution image be that blurry. (Even text is all messed up)

There are a few things at play. One screenshot was native 1440p, the other screenshot was 4k (image size). On the 2nd screenshot, even though I was running at 4K resolution, the in-game resolution scale was set to 67%, meaning the GPU was still only rendering at 1440P, not 4K. But the screenshot still came out as a 4K screenshot in terms of the size of the screenshot image. So I had to zoom the 1440p image for the purpose of the side-by-side comparison.

The other big issue at play is that the game's built-in anti-aliasing options have little if any effect on transparent textures, such as the names over the heads of the NPC characters. That's why the green names look so terrible in the native resolution screenshot, and why I was running at 133% in-game resolution scale (3413x1920 on my 1440P monitor). Using >100% resolution scale or other forms of super sampling (such as DSR and DLDSR) is the only way to effectively anti-alias those transparent textures.

But before, I had to use 133% resolution scale and render the game at a higher resolution in order to fix that problem, which resulted in a noticeable performance hit compared to native 1440P. Now, using 2.25x DLDSR combined with 67% in-game resolution scale, I can render the game at 1440P, without the associated drop in performance, while still maintaining the anti-aliasing benefits from super-sampling. I could have done that before using 2.25x DSR (not DLDSR) and 67% resolution scale, but it wouldn't have looked as good because DLDSR simply looks better than DSR at the same resolution.

Here are the raw screenshots. Keep in mind that I have a 1440p monitor, and both images are the same size on my monitor when I'm actually playing the game, so I do not think resizing one of the images for the side by side comparison is misrepresenting anything.

 

[TrunksZero]

Ah, makes allot more sense. Awesome

 

[Lakados]

There are a few things at play. One screenshot was native 1440p, the other screenshot was 4k (image size). On the 2nd screenshot, even though I was running at 4K resolution, the in-game resolution scale was set to 67%, meaning the GPU was still only rendering at 1440P, not 4K. But the screenshot still came out as a 4K screenshot in terms of the size of the screenshot image. So I had to zoom the 1440p image for the purpose of the side-by-side comparison.

The other big issue at play is that the game's built-in anti-aliasing options have little if any effect on transparent textures, such as the names over the heads of the NPC characters. That's why the green names look so terrible in the native resolution screenshot, and why I was running at 133% in-game resolution scale (3413x1920 on my 1440P monitor). Using >100% resolution scale or other forms of super sampling (such as DSR and DLDSR) is the only way to effectively anti-alias those transparent textures.

But before, I had to use 133% resolution scale and render the game at a higher resolution in order to fix that problem, which resulted in a noticeable performance hit compared to native 1440P. Now, using 2.25x DLDSR combined with 67% in-game resolution scale, I can render the game at 1440P, without the associated drop in performance, while still maintaining the anti-aliasing benefits from super-sampling. I could have done that before using 2.25x DSR (not DLDSR) and 67% resolution scale, but it wouldn't have looked as good because DLDSR simply looks better than DSR at the same resolution.

Here are the raw screenshots. Keep in mind that I have a 1440p monitor, and both images are the same size on my monitor when I'm actually playing the game, so I do not think resizing one of the images for the side by side comparison is misrepresenting anything.

Your explanation and example are both excellent, as are the results but your UI, for shame!

 

[GotNoRice]

Your explanation and example are both excellent, as are the results but your UI, for shame!

In the 17+ years I've played WoW, I've never actually re-installed the game and started from scratch. I just backup the entire directory and move it from computer to computer. There is a lot of duct-tape and super-glue holding everything together at this point.

 

[Lakados]

In the 17+ years I've played WoW, I've never actually re-installed the game and started from scratch. I just backup the entire directory and move it from computer to computer. There is a lot of duct-tape and super-glue holding everything together at this point.

I can't play MMOs anymore, one of two things happen. I get angry all the time about everything, or I get so hooked I forget about a lot of basic things like work, wife, children, food. But yeah my internet is pretty shit I would do everything in my power to avoid a 60Gb download too.

 

[Krenum]

Okay, so I tried it out tonight. Good news, it works amazing.

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Bad news is I tried a bunch of games and the only one that worked was Far Cry 5. Even games that were supposed to work had glitches or the button wasn't there.

So my hope of all games suddenly having ray tracing, well this isn't it. But it does look really nice, maybe Nvidia can work on the software support.

Those screenshots look really good!

I will have to re install FarCry 5 again. I've been wanting to play it again and this will give me more of a reason to.

Do you have to have the Geforce Experiece for it to work? I usually install the driver package without it.

 

[NattyKathy]

Those screenshots look really good!

I will have to re install FarCry 5 again. I've been wanting to play it again and this will give me more of a reason to.

Do you have to have the Geforce Experiece for it to work? I usually install the driver package without it.

DLDSR is toggled in the regular NV control panel but the RTGI filter is thru Freestyle (or whatever they're calling it now) which does require GFE. There is a regular ReShade version of the RTGI filter though.

 

[GotNoRice]

Also keep in mind that simply toggling DLDSR doesn't automatically enable anything, it just makes that resolution available. Like on my 1440p monitor, with 2.25x DLDSR checked, I now have the option to set my monitor to 4K resolution. You have to change to the higher resolution otherwise DLDSR isn't doing anything. You can change your resolution in-game in most cases. Some full-screen windowed games don't have this option, and you have to change your desktop resolution before you launch the game instead.