[Idea] NVIDIA DSR-like Feature in Lossless Scaling

[Nisser Blahman]

Currently, Lossless Scaling (LS) allows users to take a lower resolution image and upscale it using various methods to the native resolution of the monitor. For example, if a game is running at 720p in windowed mode, LS can be used to upscale that image to 1080p (assuming that 1080p is the native resolution of the monitor). The ratio of the upscaled to native resolution would be 0.66 in this case, and this technique is great for running modern/demanding games on older hardware at an acceptable frame rate and visual quality.

However, for games that leave graphical headroom to push graphics fidelity even more, the idea that I am proposing is that LS could potentially use its upscaling technology to upscale the native resolution (such as 1080p) by a greater than one ratio, such as 1.33, then back to 1080p. This would mean that the 1080p image is upscaled to 1440p, then, the 1440p image is downscaled back to 1080p.

The benefit of doing this upscaling/downscaling combination would be that it would work as a brute-force anti-aliasing filter and make the game appear smoother and sharper overall. It would not just be a sharpening filter because real (but still generated) information would be used to create the pixels.

Essentially, the feature would work very similarly to NVIDIA's Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), which does the exact same thing, except the game is instead natively rendered at a higher resolution (such as 1440p), then downscaled back to 1080p. The issue with DSR is that it is very demanding on FPS and GPU usage. The advantage of the idea I am proposing is that because upscaling the image will be less costly in terms of GPU power, it could serve as a viable alternative to DSR and paired with LSFG it could provide a great experience especially in games that are easy to run or for those with very performant hardware.

Ideally allowing users to scale up to 2x their base resolution (in terms of WxH) would be enough. This would allow for users to upscale from 1080p up to 4K which is more than enough.

I'm not a developer myself so I don't know how feasible this idea is in practice, but if it was added it would certainly make LS a jack of all trades in improving graphics fidelity in games and even more of a must-have app.

Here is a video showcasing how effective DSR is for visual fidelity, but also how costly it can be in terms of FPS, even for modern GPUs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3voyiojWl4

[Alas! Rat Gunk!]

I think this would be an ideal feature to be honest. It's a good trade off. Does anyone know if there are such plans?

[existential transcendence]

What's the point to ai upscale and then downscale image with 1080->1440->1080 path, rofl

Nvidia already implemented DLDSR, and i dont really get the point of the tech, like nothing changes for me on 1440p monitor when image upscaled to 4k and then downgraded

[xvt]

existential transcendence lähetti viestin:

What's the point to ai upscale and then downscale image with 1080->1440->1080 path, rofl

Nvidia already implemented DLDSR, and i dont really get the point of the tech, like nothing changes for me on 1440p monitor when image upscaled to 4k and then downgraded

It's called supersampling (also known as downsampling) and the result is higher pixel density. This allows the image to show higher detail than native resolution.

MSAA takes this principle but only applies it to edges or pixel contrast areas, whereas supersampling takes the image as a whole, so it's less performant than MSAA.

It's also existed for decades and it's one of the highest fidelity forms of image.