Making WT look good on 1080p/1440p displays with DLSS+DSR (Nvidia only)

War Thunder has quite the jaggy graphics when it comes to graphics on native 1080p resolution and the anti-aliasing options of FXAA, FXAA HQ and TAA are to put it simply, horrible. There's 4x SSAA but it can be a bit taxing. This guide aims to get you very crisp visuals with excellent FPS on your RTX GPU with 1080p/1440p displays.

Things you need to do

For this you need:

1. a Nvidia GPU from RTX 2xxx, 3xxx or 4xxx series
2. a software called Borderless Gaming [github.com]

Let's begin.

Firstly , open NVIDIA control panel and scroll down to find DSR - Factors , double click it and tick the first box with the text 1.78x DL , press OK then press apply and close the control panel.



Next, download Borderless Gaming , install it and run it.
While it's running turn on War Thunder and launch it. Alt+tab and double click on the BG icon on the system tray (note: for me this is the case because I have start minimized to tray turned on, it might just open in a window for you).



You'll see two sections in the Borderless gaming software window. "Applications" on the left and "Favorites (Automatic)" on the right. What this right section does is whichever game is in that section will automatically scale to fullscreen borderless. Find War Thunder in the left section and click the arrow pointing right and it should now go into the "Favorites (Automatic)" section.



Quit War Thunder. And launch War Thunder again. This time the window that usually says "Select launch option" should maximize. Do not worry it just means the Borderless gaming software is working correctly.

Select "Launch Manual Game Update" and press play. In the WT launcher, in the "Resolution" section, select 3840x2160 and in the next section select "Windowed".



Close the launcher and then launch the game from steam again. The easy anti-cheat window might maximize while launching the game and then the game will start maximized.

Now, go to graphics settings in War Thunder and select "Balanced" or "Quality" in the NVIDIA DLSS section. This is up to preference really, I don't like my GPU ramping up the fans too much so I put it at Balanced.



Enjoy the game with far smoother visuals than native 1080p

Afterwards you can bypass the "Play Warthunder" or "Launch Manual Game Update" window by clicking the gear on the far right of the Library window for War Thunder, then select "Play War Thunder" in the Launch Options. Thanks to UNSTOPPABLE FORCE for mentioning that.


PLEASE NOTE: As you seen with the steam game launcher window maximizing this method has a few little quirks. I suggest turning off steam overlay for WT as well to prevent any issue that might occur. Also don't forget Borderless Gaming needs to run BEFORE you start playing War Thunder. You might want to adjust UI scale to 85% too in War Thunder if the Text ingame is a bit "edgy".

[Nexram]

just used geforce expierence and it put my game into 2880x1660 fullscreen with dls quality isntead of my native 1080p and it looks and runs great.

[Copper]

Thanks for this, borderless gaming and windowed mode worked a treat, anything else is scaled wrongly unless i set my desktop to DSR res, and that just makes my desktop look fuzzy.

Previously I was just using SSAA at 4x, my system is much quieter now with this set up, looking forward to DX12 and RT!

[Сычева]

I see, I didn't have these problems

[Messer]

I had to go the borderless gaming route because once i change my res with launcher it has dumb resolutions like 1920x2160 and stuff if i use 4k.

and oh yeah I should add that you can launch the game directly after changing the launcher res to avoid that launch war thunder/launch launcher window.

[Сычева]

btw, after this you can set Steam back to launch WT directly without its original launcher, it will still use applied resolution

[Сычева]

I mean, it didn't work for me either, just did not showed up in the game, but I followed the steps from this guide and decided to skip one with Borderless Gaming. I've simply launched the game with original WT launcher as you did, and there, in the launcher settings, was an option to set 2880p resolution.
Then I've launched the game, and it was there in the game settings, and worked as expected.
My GPU is RTX 4070 Super, Win10

[Messer]

because on my pc (and many others) where DSR doesn't work I made this guide. my bug report on it: https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/2LWWFSvXcR4v

[Сычева]

you don't need Borderless Gaming for this to work, just choose fullscreen mode with higher DSR resolution and launch the game

[Luv]

Thank you for introducing me to the Borderless Gaming software. It helps prevent the game from being "stretched". AFAIK this is the only way of getting War Thunder + DSR to work on a 2560x1440 monitor.