Fidelity Super Resolution in 2021

[Hotwired]

I'm fascinated to see all these comparisons using the DLSS highest quality setting and the second highest quality FSR setting...

What is the comparison exactly?

Is it as dumb as using DLSS quality vs FSR quality because its the same name because I gotta bring up the fact that FSR settings have one higher than "quality" and the labels are somewhat arbitrary.

 

[Grim5]

That happens at all resolutions for FSR because it cannot reconstruct the fine details. DLSS restores the fine detail because its temporal. There is more fine detail than native in the DLSS image, again because of the temporal reconstruction. FSR is basically limited to the information in one frame and thus cannot add new detail. So when a developer sets up FSR they need to make sure to preserve as much detail as possible. Like using AMD Cauldron TAA and not TAA.

Reguardless the small fine cables are the same data from the lower internal resolution with FSR. Native does better but DLSS has multiple frames of information to reconstruct the fine detail for the cables thus it looks better than native. The bridge just makes it impossible to objectively state FSR is better and like native. It can be clearly seen DLSS is the best image quality here, beating native. This is not to state DLSS is perfect or it truely beats native. Or that a still image is not better than an moving one. Just that the scene just plays to the strength of DLSS in a way that cannot be denied.

DLSS is objectively better looking than both native and FSR. With FSR clearly last in image quality. This is needed because already people are stating FSR is as good as native. That you cant see the difference. Its on power with DLSS 2.2.11. Better than DLSS 1.x.... That DLSS is dead, long live FSR.

That all makes sense and I suppose what it means is that the quality of FSR depends solely on how much information can be preserved in the native frame and for developers wanting to use FSR in their game during development they need to alter their game for this - something that was already confirmed during a recent developer interview where the developer said FSR was easy to implement but he had to completely change the game's rendering pipeline to deliver enough information to FSR otherwise the output was bad.

So that's why with what we have now (FSR being added after the fact into games) the implementation quality varies massively from game to game. If FSR is to become an industry standard it means all developers will need to build their games from the ground up targeting the FSR image output so that they design their game for that

 

[StarShock]

I think its safe to say that at this point if you find your 3090 isn't giving you a playable frame rate and the game supports dlss you should probably use it, and be grateful for the opportunity. Everyone else can just enjoy having fsr if they want to, as it seems to be a pretty good way of boosting frame rates without too much damage to the graphics quality

 

[ICDP]

I have no issues comparing FSR and DLSS, it's just the pages of waffle that come from people telling us why DLSS is superior and FSR sucks. We know, we get that and for the umpteenth time we accept that DLSS is a technically better solution. For those of us who have paid attention, it was made clear right from the start that FSR is (currently) not Temporal based and cannot rebuild missing data. FSR does a very good job of matching native as long as native looks good, FSR will look good. But if you plug FSR into some game that forces horrible TAA that is actually worse than native, FSR will look like crap as well. Garbage In Garbage Out.

What I do find dishonest are the people who purely focus on how it looks in these games where the image at native also sucks. While ignoring the other benefits that FSR brings. It's the same cringeworthy crap from people who come here claiming DLSS is dead.

So to make it clear as I have been saying for pages now, how FSR looks will depend on how the devs implement it and what the "native" source image looks like. It does not replace or kill off DLSS and was never intended to do this. It does exactly what AMD set out to do and gives developers an option to provide more FPS with minimal loss to image quality for a wider userbase.

My only worry is that devs end up using FSR as a quick way to "optimise" and get their game out the door. The same way so many of them adopted horrible TAA as a "quick fix" for the same reason. Hey look we know TAA causes ghosting and massive blurring but it meant we didn't have to spend time and money implementing proper anti aliasing and it's hitting 30 FPS on a PS4.

 

[nvidiamd]

That all makes sense and I suppose what it means is that the quality of FSR depends solely on how much information can be preserved in the native frame and for developers wanting to use FSR in their game during development they need to alter their game for this - something that was already confirmed during a recent developer interview where the developer said FSR was easy to implement but he had to completely change the game's rendering pipeline to deliver enough information to FSR otherwise the output was bad.

So that's why with what we have now (FSR being added after the fact into games) the implementation quality varies massively from game to game. If FSR is to become an industry standard it means all developers will need to build their games from the ground up targeting the FSR image output so that they design their game for that

This is funny, if you want your game to look fine on FSR then you should make your native image look as good as you can. Jeez i thought they did things different in the past.

 

[ICDP]

This is funny, if you want your game to look fine on FSR then you should make your native image look as good as you can. Jeez i thought they did things different in the past.

One of FSRs strengths can also be seen as a weakness if used for the wrong reasons. If we look at how FSR is implemented in Marvel Avengers game for example. We can see that at native it looks like crap because it uses TAA but native vs FSR looks fairly similar and allows the dev to target more potential customers. There was a video from someone playing Marvel Avengers on a low end Nvidia GPU where the FPS went from mid 30s to mid 40s. So this is a good thing for many and it obviously didn't take the devs long to add FSR as an option.

This is fine if a dev has already optimised performance BEFORE adding FSR. If they cut corners on optimising and simply add FSR so they get that 30 FPS on lower end GPUs then the point of FSR has been lost.

 

[nvidiamd]

One of FSRs strengths can also be seen as a weakness if used for the wrong reasons. If we look at how FSR is implemented in Marvel Avengers game for example. We can see that at native it looks like crap because it uses TAA but native vs FSR looks fairly similar and allows the dev to target more potential customers. There was a video from someone playing Marvel Avengers on a low end Nvidia GPU where the FPS went from mid 30s to mid 40s. So this is a good thing for many and it obviously didn't take the devs long to add FSR as an option.

This is fine if a dev has already optimised performance BEFORE adding FSR. If they cut corners on optimising and simply add FSR so they get that 30 FPS on lower end GPUs then the point of FSR has been lost.

Yes you get nice gains on old hardware with minimal quality loss.. The fact that DLSS replaces the TAA in that game and looks "better than native" means nothing, for a guy who played that game at native settings he will also have a better experience using FSR. Of course if he has a DLSS capable card, he can use DLSS for a much better experience.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution on Marvel's Avengers (Ryzen 5 2600X | GTX 1660 6GB | 16GB RAM). FSR is amazing, what's your thoughts?
Oh no, he should buy an expensive card and try DLSS.
Fortunately that game has a lower playerbase than Godfall so it doesn't matter anyway.

 

[Nexus18]

Here's hoping FSR gets added to RDR 2 as that will really show the strengths and weaknesses of FSR, also would be a very good test for motion, below is DLSS quality vs native/TAA

Spoiler

 

[ICDP]

I have a 3080 and if DLSS o FSR is available and does not degrade image quality too much I will use it. For me the benefit is at 4K 58 FPS (locked for Freesync) the GPU runs much cooler and quieter with DLSS or FSR on. Though in a game like CP2077 or WD:L with RT effects DLSS is required to get acceptable FPS and my GPU is running full out most of the time.

So for many DLSS or FSR are not just all about getting fancy RT effects. This is where the open nature of FSR wins.

 

[ICDP]

Just a thought, can FSR be enabled in Avengers with FXAA or SMAA instead of TAA?

 

[doody]

This May be of interest / AMD FidelityFX FSR Source Code Released & Updates Posted, Uses Lanczos under the Hood | TechPowerUp

 

[henson0115]

Ah the old one rule for pro-AMD posters, another for people who aren't...

more like this is an fsr thread and not a dlss thread. take the dlss guff to the dlss thread.

 

[Rroff]

more like this is an fsr thread and not a dlss thread. take the dlss guff to the dlss thread.

As I said funny how there is such a one sided application of that.

 

[ICDP]

more like this is an fsr thread and not a dlss thread. take the dlss guff to the dlss thread.

There is no reason why DLSS cannot be discussed in here when comparing the merits or disadvantages compared to FSR in a rational and unbiased way. It's the people who ignore the advantages and focus only on the negatives that are the problem.

 

[timorous]

I have a 3080 and if DLSS o FSR is available and does not degrade image quality too much I will use it. For me the benefit is at 4K 58 FPS (locked for Freesync) the GPU runs much cooler and quieter with DLSS or FSR on. Though in a game like CP2077 or WD:L with RT effects DLSS is required to get acceptable FPS and my GPU is running full out most of the time.

So for many DLSS or FSR are not just all about getting fancy RT effects. This is where the open nature of FSR wins.

RT is an interesting use case. With FSR UQ you get a higher input resolution so you should also get better RT effects due to that higher res. Of course that will have performance tradeoffs though.

 

[Rroff]

There is no reason why DLSS cannot be discussed in here when comparing the merits or disadvantages compared to FSR in a rational and unbiased way. It's the people who ignore the advantages and focus only on the negatives that are the problem.

When I post something critical of DLSS in one of the other threads i.e. https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34947341 no one gets that upset about it, do similar for FSR in this thread and people lose their minds...

 

[doody]

There is no reason why DLSS cannot be discussed in here when comparing the merits or disadvantages compared to FSR in a rational and unbiased way. It's the people who ignore the advantages and focus only on the negatives that are the problem.

What good is dlss to me when my gpu is a rx6800xt

 

[ICDP]

When I post something critical of DLSS in one of the other threads i.e. https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34947341 no one gets that upset about it, do similar for FSR in this thread and people lose their minds...

My issue is that most of the negative posts (not just you I am singling out here) are focusing on nothing but the negatives though. It is fine to make a more fair and balanced post that at least outlines the majority use cases where FSR can and does very well, while also acknowledging that FSR and DLSS have plenty of drawbacks.

• If you have a high resolution source then FSR looks very close to native
• If you have a poor baseline such as TAA at native, then FSR will simply take the poor TAA image with missing details and sharpen it. In these cases it actually looks worse than native.
• When posting half a page outlining the advantage of DLSS, at least acknowledge it has drawbacks.
• Similarly the posts like "FSR has killed DLSS" are trolling nonsense that ignores DLSS will shine in areas FSR simply cannot

Posts saying FSR will never be as good as DLSS, while ignoring that DLSS is limited to £400+ NVidia GPUs is a bit disingenuous

 

[zx128k]

I have a 3080 and if DLSS o FSR is available and does not degrade image quality too much I will use it. For me the benefit is at 4K 58 FPS (locked for Freesync) the GPU runs much cooler and quieter with DLSS or FSR on. Though in a game like CP2077 or WD:L with RT effects DLSS is required to get acceptable FPS and my GPU is running full out most of the time.

So for many DLSS or FSR are not just all about getting fancy RT effects. This is where the open nature of FSR wins.

Open source wins so much OpenGL replaced DX. O wait.... Maybe Vulkan replaced DX? O wait... Please stop with the PR sophistry.

an you compare the process of implementing AMD's FSR and NVIDIA's DLSS in Edge of Eternity? Which differences did you encounter?

Implementing DLSS was quite complex to integrate into Unity for a small studio like us; it required tweaking the engine and creating an external plugin to bridge Unity and DLSS. It was complicated, but in the end, it gave amazing results. FSR, on the other hand, was very easy to implement, it only took me a few hours, requiring only simple data. However, it did require the source data to be as sharp as possible since FSR is not a deep learning method and cannot reconstruct loss details. We needed to replace the built-in Unity TAA with the AMD Cauldron TAA (opensource) that we ported to Unity as it is a lot better at preserving details.

Note FSR uses AMD Cauldron TAA in edge of eternity, as part of implementing FSR. FSR is based on the Lanczos algorithm, which was invented in 1979. You need as much detail in the image as you can because FSR is just a simple upscaler. Its never going to be as good as DLSS. Open source is not some magical I win every arguement button.

FSR has some serious image quality concerns, if we renamed FSR to DLSS 1.0. FSR would be DoA.

 

[Tinek]

Note FSR uses AMD Cauldron TAA in edge of eternity, as part of implementing FSR.

Note, that game, as a whole, uses better Couldron TAA, as stock unity TAA is just bad. Now, imagine this - another AMD tech that actually gives better results and is free and easy to implement - and so even if you don't want to use FSR, this still benefits you. Is that bad?

Fingers crossed more devs will actually start to use FidelityFX tools that AMD provides for free and that give very good results. So far it's mostly CAS that they use, but it offers so much more - including good TAA, good enough upscaling, CAS for sharpening (seems to be best sharpening shown so far), ambient occlusion, reflections and quite a few more. It's all there, just very underutilised so far. It's possible FSR, just by its very existence and the whole big discussion about quality, will indirectly improve quality of rendered image in games - just by implementing tech that's already available and free.