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Nvidia’s DLSS tech is now part of Unreal EngineSupport for Nvidia’s DLSS tech could be about to get a lot better
Support for Nvidia’s DLSS tech could be about to get a lot better
Game developers now have direct access to Nvidia’s clever performance-boosting DLSS tech thanks to a new plug-in for Unreal Engine 4. Nvidia released the plug-in for Unreal Engine 4.26at the end of last week, and golly, I’m really hoping this means we’ll get loads moreDLSS gamesfrom now on, as it’s a feature that’s become pretty much mandatory in all of the big ray tracing games that have come out over the last few months.DLSS (or Deep-Learning Super Sampling, to give it its full and proper name) has quietly become one of the best things about recent graphics card tech. Ray tracing may be the big shiny obvious one that gets all of the attention whenever a new graphics card comes out, but DLSS is what makes a lot of those ray tracing games actually playable on today’s RTX cards, as the performance cost of switching on ray tracing (particularly at higher resolutions) is still prohibitively large in a lot of cases. Indeed,Watch Dogs Legionispretty much unplayablewithout it if you want to play in the ray traced streets of London, andThe Medium’s ray tracing performance also proveda formidable foeeven for Nvidia’s flagshipRTX 3080GPU.NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 | A Big Leap In AI RenderingWatch on YouTubeThis is where DLSS comes in, as it uses AI to help take some of the load off your GPU, allowing it to render fewer pixels while the AI fills in the gaps. It’s a bit like Sony’s checkerboarding techniques on the PlayStation 4 Pro, but much fancier - and in some cases constructs images that are sharper and higher resolution than they would be at native 4K. I think the most impressive use of it so far has been inDeath Stranding, where I literallycouldn’t tell the differencebetween its DLSS-ified landscapes and its natively rendered ones. Death Stranding isn’t a ray tracing game, but its DLSS support means that even people with an entry-level RTX 2060 cardcan play the game at 60fps speeds at 4K with maxed out settings.It’s impressive stuff, and could open the doors to higher resolution gaming like never before if support for it takes off. Of course, you still need an Nvidia RTX card to take advantage of DLSS, as it’s all tied to Nvidia’s AI-infused Tensor Cores - which you don’t get withAMD’s Radeon RX 6800andRX 6800 XTcards. AMD are currently working on their own rival DLSS technology for their RX 6000 GPUs - tentatively dubbed FidelityFX Super Resolution - but we still don’t know when this is going to arrive, or how its upscaling will compare to Nvidia’s DLSS tech.Of course, DLSS coming to Unreal Engine is also kind of inevitable. After all, once AMD’s FidelityFX Suepr Resolution eventually launches, that, too, will be open source much like the rest of AMD’s FidelityFX suite, making it even easier for developers to incorporate it into future games. If Nvidia want their DLSS tech to compete / gain equal amounts of support as AMD’s version of it, then they’ve got to open the floodgates and make it available rather than keeping it under lock and key. Either way, it’s a big win for us, and that’s really all that matters in the end. Now if only we could actually buy some of those next-gen graphics cards that actually support DLSS, that would be swell…
Game developers now have direct access to Nvidia’s clever performance-boosting DLSS tech thanks to a new plug-in for Unreal Engine 4. Nvidia released the plug-in for Unreal Engine 4.26at the end of last week, and golly, I’m really hoping this means we’ll get loads moreDLSS gamesfrom now on, as it’s a feature that’s become pretty much mandatory in all of the big ray tracing games that have come out over the last few months.DLSS (or Deep-Learning Super Sampling, to give it its full and proper name) has quietly become one of the best things about recent graphics card tech. Ray tracing may be the big shiny obvious one that gets all of the attention whenever a new graphics card comes out, but DLSS is what makes a lot of those ray tracing games actually playable on today’s RTX cards, as the performance cost of switching on ray tracing (particularly at higher resolutions) is still prohibitively large in a lot of cases. Indeed,Watch Dogs Legionispretty much unplayablewithout it if you want to play in the ray traced streets of London, andThe Medium’s ray tracing performance also proveda formidable foeeven for Nvidia’s flagshipRTX 3080GPU.NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 | A Big Leap In AI RenderingWatch on YouTubeThis is where DLSS comes in, as it uses AI to help take some of the load off your GPU, allowing it to render fewer pixels while the AI fills in the gaps. It’s a bit like Sony’s checkerboarding techniques on the PlayStation 4 Pro, but much fancier - and in some cases constructs images that are sharper and higher resolution than they would be at native 4K. I think the most impressive use of it so far has been inDeath Stranding, where I literallycouldn’t tell the differencebetween its DLSS-ified landscapes and its natively rendered ones. Death Stranding isn’t a ray tracing game, but its DLSS support means that even people with an entry-level RTX 2060 cardcan play the game at 60fps speeds at 4K with maxed out settings.It’s impressive stuff, and could open the doors to higher resolution gaming like never before if support for it takes off. Of course, you still need an Nvidia RTX card to take advantage of DLSS, as it’s all tied to Nvidia’s AI-infused Tensor Cores - which you don’t get withAMD’s Radeon RX 6800andRX 6800 XTcards. AMD are currently working on their own rival DLSS technology for their RX 6000 GPUs - tentatively dubbed FidelityFX Super Resolution - but we still don’t know when this is going to arrive, or how its upscaling will compare to Nvidia’s DLSS tech.Of course, DLSS coming to Unreal Engine is also kind of inevitable. After all, once AMD’s FidelityFX Suepr Resolution eventually launches, that, too, will be open source much like the rest of AMD’s FidelityFX suite, making it even easier for developers to incorporate it into future games. If Nvidia want their DLSS tech to compete / gain equal amounts of support as AMD’s version of it, then they’ve got to open the floodgates and make it available rather than keeping it under lock and key. Either way, it’s a big win for us, and that’s really all that matters in the end. Now if only we could actually buy some of those next-gen graphics cards that actually support DLSS, that would be swell…
Game developers now have direct access to Nvidia’s clever performance-boosting DLSS tech thanks to a new plug-in for Unreal Engine 4. Nvidia released the plug-in for Unreal Engine 4.26at the end of last week, and golly, I’m really hoping this means we’ll get loads moreDLSS gamesfrom now on, as it’s a feature that’s become pretty much mandatory in all of the big ray tracing games that have come out over the last few months.
DLSS (or Deep-Learning Super Sampling, to give it its full and proper name) has quietly become one of the best things about recent graphics card tech. Ray tracing may be the big shiny obvious one that gets all of the attention whenever a new graphics card comes out, but DLSS is what makes a lot of those ray tracing games actually playable on today’s RTX cards, as the performance cost of switching on ray tracing (particularly at higher resolutions) is still prohibitively large in a lot of cases. Indeed,Watch Dogs Legionispretty much unplayablewithout it if you want to play in the ray traced streets of London, andThe Medium’s ray tracing performance also proveda formidable foeeven for Nvidia’s flagshipRTX 3080GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 | A Big Leap In AI RenderingWatch on YouTube
NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 | A Big Leap In AI Rendering
This is where DLSS comes in, as it uses AI to help take some of the load off your GPU, allowing it to render fewer pixels while the AI fills in the gaps. It’s a bit like Sony’s checkerboarding techniques on the PlayStation 4 Pro, but much fancier - and in some cases constructs images that are sharper and higher resolution than they would be at native 4K. I think the most impressive use of it so far has been inDeath Stranding, where I literallycouldn’t tell the differencebetween its DLSS-ified landscapes and its natively rendered ones. Death Stranding isn’t a ray tracing game, but its DLSS support means that even people with an entry-level RTX 2060 cardcan play the game at 60fps speeds at 4K with maxed out settings.
It’s impressive stuff, and could open the doors to higher resolution gaming like never before if support for it takes off. Of course, you still need an Nvidia RTX card to take advantage of DLSS, as it’s all tied to Nvidia’s AI-infused Tensor Cores - which you don’t get withAMD’s Radeon RX 6800andRX 6800 XTcards. AMD are currently working on their own rival DLSS technology for their RX 6000 GPUs - tentatively dubbed FidelityFX Super Resolution - but we still don’t know when this is going to arrive, or how its upscaling will compare to Nvidia’s DLSS tech.
Of course, DLSS coming to Unreal Engine is also kind of inevitable. After all, once AMD’s FidelityFX Suepr Resolution eventually launches, that, too, will be open source much like the rest of AMD’s FidelityFX suite, making it even easier for developers to incorporate it into future games. If Nvidia want their DLSS tech to compete / gain equal amounts of support as AMD’s version of it, then they’ve got to open the floodgates and make it available rather than keeping it under lock and key. Either way, it’s a big win for us, and that’s really all that matters in the end. Now if only we could actually buy some of those next-gen graphics cards that actually support DLSS, that would be swell…
