[Hardware] What’s Up With The Missing NVIDIA DLSS Support In AMD Sponsored FSR Titles?

[[X]pErT-]

 

Ever since the launch of NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR, there has been a constant battle of who can get their tech implemented first in the biggest AAA titles. The first few years saw these GPU makers gunning for exclusivity but more recently, we have seen the shift to friendlier support with a range of titles now featuring support for tech from all three GPU vendors (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA) but there are still several AAA titles that are missing your favorite upsampling technologies and we reached out to both AMD and NVIDIA to know why that's the case despite both companies claiming to offer an open-source integration.

 

NVIDIA DLSS Games Are More Friendlier & Open To AMD FSR & Intel XeSS Support Pre/Post Launch

NVIDIA's DLSS has been adopted at an accelerated pace and there are more DLSS titles in the market than both FSR and XeSS combined. Not just that, but the newest DLSS 3 technology has surpassed the adoption rate of DLSS 2 with more and more titles popping up that utilize DLSS 2 and DLSS 3 technologies to deliver faster frame rates at similar or better quality than the native image.Since we last published our DLSS 3 adoption story back in March, there have been 40 more DLSS titles and DLSS currently offers a library of over 300 titles whereas AMD was only able to manage 17 titles during this period which is less than half the DLSS list. However, one interesting thing has happened and is something that has been overlooked for a while now.

 

Why Are My Favorite AAA Titles Missing Support For NVIDIA DLSS?

 

So all of this leads to one of the biggest questions that most gamers have right now and that's the DLSS support in some of the biggest recent releases? We have told you how NVIDIA has made it a lot easier to integrate upscaling technologies in games and has provided tools to everyone to make their choice of upscaling tech easier to integrate into any title.

 

If we take a look at some of the most recent NVIDIA and AMD-sponsored releases, we would see that almost all NVIDIA-sponsored titles had DLSS and FSR support at or soon after launch. Every title except Battlefield 2024 had DLSS/FSR support added to it. The only reason Battlefield 2024 didn't have FSR 2 support was that the upscaling technology wasn't available at the time of the launch.Looking at the other camp (AMD), out of the 13 or so sponsored AAA titles, only 3 titles received support for DLSS. This is something to be concerned about since these are major AMD-sponsored titles and game developers might have been asked to keep upscaling technology exclusivity to the Radeon camp since there's no reason to not have DLSS or XeSS support within these titles. Even in Intel's camp, the company has been very open in the integration of its own and competition tech in AAA titles.

 

Following is a list of bundled AMD and NVIDIA titles and their support for DLSS / FSR:

 

 

 

 

 

Forspoken 

AMD

 

1/24/2023

 

1/24/2023

 

12/2/2022

 

Callisto Protocol 

AMD

 

12/2/2022

 

None

 

12/1/2022

 

Marvel's Midnight Suns 

NVIDIA

 

 

 

None

 

10/6/2021

 

5/7/2021

 

Resident Evil Village 

AMD

 

7/19/2021

 

None

 

11/23/2020

 

World of Warcraft Shadowlands 

AMD

 

None

 

None

 

We reached out to AMD for their comment and they once again commit to an open approach that is broadly supported by console and competitive solutions.We reached out to AMD for their comment and they once again commit to an open approach that is broadly supported by console and competitive solutions.

 

To clarify, there are community sites that track the implementation of upscaling technologies, and these sites indicate that there are a number of games that support only DLSS currently (for example, see link).

 

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is an open-source technology that supports a variety of GPU architectures, including consoles and competitive solutions, and we believe an open approach that is broadly supported on multiple hardware platforms is the best approach that benefits developers and gamers. AMD is committed to doing what is best for game developers and gamers, and we give developers the flexibility to implement FSR into whichever games they choose.

 

AMD Spokesperson to Wccftech

 

We also used the link provided by AMD to see if what we are stating above is indeed the case. The PCGamingWiki list that AMD linked us back to also shows the same pattern which we showed above. Besides a few "Early Access" & Indie titles that exclusively feature NVIDIA DLSS, the majority of AAA titles released this year such as The Outer World's Spacer's Choice Edition, Resident Evil 4, Dead Island 2, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor doesn't have DLSS support but modders have made tools that help inject DLSS within these games. Even in unofficial support, DLSS excels over FSR 2 in the AAA title, Star Wars Jedi Survivor.So it looks like NVIDIA cannot do much in this situation since certain sponsorships or deals can restrict developers and publishers from actively participating and integrating another competitor's tech within their games. But it gives gamers a very clear message that NVIDIA-sponsored titles are friendlier and open to competitors than AMD.

 

The only problem is that gamers on NVIDIA camp are being punished for not having DLSS support integrated into their favorite games. Considering the number of bad PC ports that we have gotten this year, upscaling technologies can assist a lot in boosting performance but having just FSR and leaving out DLSS or XeSS support only means that you are hurting gamers and not NVIDIA or Intel in the process.

 

We also reached out to NVIDIA to comment on this and they were very straightforward that it is not their policy to block, restrict or discourage developers from implementing technologies from its competitors within their games:

 

NVIDIA does not and will not block, restrict, discourage, or hinder developers from implementing competitor technologies in any way. We provide the support and tools for all game developers to easily integrate DLSS if they choose and even created NVIDIA Streamline to make it easier for game developers to add competitive technologies to their games.

 

Keita Iida, vice president of developer relations, NVIDIA

 

It is actually great to hear that NVIDIA doesn't allow "exclusivity" to get in the way of the development of AAA and standard games. I am sure no company would want to give up the opportunity to have a certain game offer only their exclusive technologies but NVIDIA and Intel have so far shown to be the most mature and open in this regard.

 

NVIDIA Is Making It Easy For Everyone To Integrate Super-Resolution Technologies

 

NVIDIA, with the help of its open-source tools, is helping game devs not only integrate DLSS but also AMD FSR & Intel XeSS into their titlesNVIDIA, AMD & Intel are surely in the race to offer the most titles with their DLSS, FSR & XeSS tech support. This means that vendors will be willing to go the exclusivity route in enabling a certain tech on their sponsored titles. Look at it as the TressFX (Tomb Raider) or NVIDIA Hairworks (The Witcher 3), both of which enhanced the image quality in a certain way. But it looks like NVIDIA has chosen not to go that route in locking away other vendors and devs from enabling FSR or XeSS in NVIDIA-sponsored titles.

 

Instead, NVIDIA has taken a very friendlier approach, allowing game developers and modders to get access to tools that enable easy integration of not just DLSS but also AMD FSR and Intel XeSS in the titles. For this sole purpose, NVIDIA introduced "Streamline" which is an open-source cross-IHV solution that simplifies the integration of NVIDIA and other independent hardware vendor's upscaling and super-resolution technologies into applications and games. Streamline supports the following technologies:

 

DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling)

DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing)

Image Scaling (Spatial Upscaler)

Real-Time Denoisers (NRD)

Reflex (Low-Latency SDK)

NVIDIA is also working with modders and authors of tools that inject DLSS into unofficial titles on future game integration and also Remix titles. There is a vast list of Remix titles currently under development and there are many gamers requesting an RTX Remix of older titles such as the Need For Speed series and more (I can't wait to try out Underground 2 and Most Wanted with Remix!).

 

It is likely that having upscaling technologies from competitors integrated into games will let users see the difference between DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. DLSS has so far been shown to offer the best image quality with XeSS coming in a close 2nd. Both technologies use AI assistance whereas AMD's temporal upscaler has been unable to keep up with them. AMD does have FSR 3 coming which will be following NVIDIA's footsteps in offering to interpolate frame generation but NVIDIA once again has the edge with its Tensor Core-powered DLSS 3 and industry-leading AI performance which is going to keep giving it a huge edge.

 

https://wccftech.com/whats-up-with-the-missing-nvidia-dlss-support-in-amd-sponsored-fsr-titles/