Upscaling games above native resolution with Lossless Scaling (proof of concept)

[Nisser Blahman]

In a previous post I made, I mentioned how using Lossless Scaling to upscale games above one's base monitor resolution and then back down as a kind of brute force anti-aliasing method could be a worthwhile feature to add. It would be similar to NVIDIA's DSR but with less drawbacks in terms of FPS and only a slight reduction in quality in comparison.

To show how effective such a technique could be, especially for older games, or even movies/shows that are already in one's native resolution but could be improved with more detail, I've devised a somewhat crude method as a proof of concept. I've outlined the steps below:

INFO: I will be using Unigine Heaven to showcase this technique, please note that in each of the screenshots, antialiasing has been turned off completely. All other graphics quality settings are enabled/the highest. I have a GTX 1060 with a 1080p monitor.

Step 1) Enable NVIDIA DSR in the control panel settings.

Step 2) Go to display settings and change the display resolution from 1080p to 4K (using DSR), if everything becomes small and slightly blurry then you've done this step correctly.

Step 3) Run Unigine Heaven at 1080p (your display is currently running "4K"), and then use Lossless Scaling to upscale the 1080p window to fill the "4K" display.

Step 3) I have taken a screenshot in roughly the same location for 1080p native, 4K DSR, and 1080p to 4K upscaling using FSR default settings (sharpness in the middle, performance mode OFF) with Lossless Scaling

Step 4) Take a screenshot, when OBS and Lossless Scaling are both in administrator mode, you can use OBS to take a screenshot of the actual Lossless Scaling image. This applies to screen recordings as well. You need a Lossless Scaling window specific Game Capture scene for this to work.

Ideally, you should download the 3 images that I have provided and look at them using a program like IrfanView (make sure Fit to screen is enabled under View>Show Fullscreen options>Fit to screen: large images only. You can also view them in fullscreen in your browser of choice.

As you can see, using this somewhat hacky technique provides several benefits:

Aliasing is noticeably less with the Lossless Scaling upscaling methods compared to native 1080p (still not as detailed or good as 4K DSR, however).

Frame rate dip due to this extra processing is far less compared to 4K DSR. Native 1080p runs at around 90 fps, 1080p to 4K Lossless Scaling runs at 65 fps, and 4K DSR runs at 22 fps.

However, because there is no downscaling step in this method as there is with DSR, the actual image you see on the monitor is not that great, only when comparing screenshots when you are back in native resolution is the difference more apparent.

Textures also do not look as crisp because they are not rendered in 4K then downscaled to 1080p. So visually 4K DSR>1080p to 4K LS>1080p native assuming there is no anti-aliasing enabled.

To offset the slight performance drop and the quality disparity between 4K DSR and 1080p to 4K LS, perhaps an upscaling and downscaling model could be trained for that specific purpose, one that is more efficient, better at creating new details, and downscales the image back to native more smoothly.

High quality image links:

1 (1080p native) - https://files.catbox.moe/wnsh0f.png

2 (LS 1080p to 4K w/ FSR quality 5/10 sharpness) - https://files.catbox.moe/dk700t.png

3 (4K DSR 33% smoothness) - https://files.catbox.moe/u5787s.png