Nvidia DLSS support for Starfield teased alongside stability-improving update
Starfield's first update focuses on improving stability, but Bethesda Game Studios teased that future updates will add Nvidia DLSS support and more.
Nvidia’s First DLSS Compatible VR Games Include No Man’s Sky
NVIDIA’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology allows PC gamers who are running GeForce RTX GPU’s to improve the graphics performance of their rigs using AI. Since launch, over 50 videogames have steadily added support but for a technology that would obviously benefit from it, virtual reality (VR) hasn’t been included; until now that is. Today, NVIDIA has confirmed three VR titles are now DLSS compatible.
The most prominent of those videogames is most certainly Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky. Whether you’re playing in VR or non-VR modes NVIDIA DLSS “doubles your VR performance at the Ultra graphics preset” the company claims. Plus, if you happen to be on an Oculus Quest 2, with DLSS on it’ll maintain 90 FPS with a GeForce RTX 3080. Standard desktop gaming should see a performance boost of up to 70% at 4K.
Also on the compatible list is Into the Radius, a survival shooter which launched last year. Set in a post-apocalyptic zone inside Russia with a misty, grim-looking environment, DLSS will add an improvement to the anti-aliasing, so shimmering and stair-stepping on objects and foliage should be reduced for a more immersive experience. Lastly, car mechanic sim Wrench has gotten the AI-powered treatment. Players could see a performance boost of up to 80% on top of the ability to enable ray-traced effects in both VR and desktop modes. Making those engines look super detailed and visually gorgeous.
Hopefully, this is just the start for NVIDIA DLSS support for VR videogames, with more to come in the following months. There are certainly a number of high-end, performance-hungry VR titles VRFocus can think of which would benefit from these sort of improvements.
As for the other non-VR games on the list AMID EVIL, Aron’s Adventure, Everspace 2, Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition, Redout: Space Assault, and Scavengers can now use the feature.
You do, of course, still need the right GPU’s to enable NVIDIA DLSS in the first place. They include the RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti; RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and the all-powerful RTX 3090. Getting one, on the other hand, is another matter, with stock continually sold out at most retailers.
Should further VR videogames add DLSS support, VRFocus will let you know.
Nvidia Adds First DLSS VR Titles Including No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky is one of the first VR games to get Nvidia DLSS support to improve framerate and fidelity on PC headsets.
DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling and was created by Nvidia to help boost the performance and visual fidelity of PC games while reducing the demands they place on a machine. It uses AI rendering to achieve high-resolution images comparable to native rendering without doing as much of the leg work. Extra overhead can then be used to improve other areas, like framerate. We haven’t seen the technique used in any VR games so far, but there’s been high demand in the PC VR community.
Check out the example No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games posted below, which isn’t running in VR. It shows the game running side-by-side on a 2060 Super card at high settings. With DLSS on, the game is able to nearly double its framerate, jumping from high-30s to mid-70s. However, a post from Nvidia itself claims that the game runs at 90FPS on Ultra settings with a 3090 card when the setting is enabled.
Other games adding support today are STALKER-like VR FPS, Into The Radius and in-depth mechanic sim, Wrench.
Some users reported performance issues with No Man’s Sky’s VR support when it launched on PC a few years back, so it will be interesting to see if this technique has a big impact on the game. It’s not the only big update the game’s VR support has seen of late – over on PSVR the PS4 version of the game can take advantage of running on PS5 to deliver improved fidelity.
‘No Man’s Sky’, ‘Into the Radius’ & ‘Wrench’ Among First VR Games to Support DLSS
NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS) is a technology native to RTX cards which, through the power of onboard AI, can intelligently increase the resolution of rendered frames in games. DLSS has been available for VR for a few months now, and we’re just starting to see more games support the performance-boosting tech. NVIDIA says the first VR games on the list are Into the Radius (2020), No Man’s Sky (2016) and Wrench (2018).
Update (May 21st, 2021): NVIDIA has announced that two more VR games have been added to this list since it first announced Into the Radius was the first VR game to include DLSS. In addition to Into the Radius, both No Man’s Sky and Wrench now include DLSS. Wrench is also said to feature ray-tracing. Here’s what NIVIDA says about all three:
- No Man’s Sky: When playing No Man’s Sky in VR mode, DLSS doubles your VR performance at the Ultra graphics preset and maintains 90 FPS on an Oculus Quest 2 with a GeForce RTX 3080.
- Wrench: Ray-tracing and DLSS comes to VR in today’s update. DLSS boosts performance by up to 80% for this mechanic sim, making it possible to enable ray-traced effects for both its desktop and virtual reality modes
- Into The Radius: With NVIDIA DLSS in the Virtual Reality survival shooter, players will discover a noticeable improvement to anti-aliasing, which greatly reduces shimmering and stair-stepping on objects and foliage, further enhancing image quality and immersion.
Original Article (March 31st, 2021): DLSS is a feature available on RTX 20/30-series GPUs, but must be included by individual developers. Now about six months after the release of the DLSS 2.1 update, which included support for VR headsets, developers CM Games took a step as one of the first to include support for the technology.
Granted, Into The Radius isn’t the absolute first VR game (or rather, VR-supported game) to adopt DLSS. Only two months after DLSS 2.1 released with VR support, battle simulator War Thunder (2013) announced it had enabled DLSS as well, however users found mixed results when playing the game in VR.
What does DLSS do exactly? Road to VR’s Ben Lang describes it best in his initial reporting on DLSS for VR:
The goal is to achieve the same resolution and level of detail as a natively rendered frame of the same resolution, and to do the whole thing more efficiently. Doing so means more graphical processing power is available for other things like better lighting, textures, or simply increasing the framerate overall.
For instance, a game with support for DLSS may render its native frame at 1,920 × 1,080 and then use DLSS to up-res the frame to 3,840 × 2,160. In many cases this is faster and preserves a nearly identical level of detail compared to natively rendering the frame at 3,840 × 2,160 in the first place.
If you’re looking for something more visual, War Thunder released a side-by-side comparison of how the game looks with DLSS toggled on and off. This is of course a flatscreen comparison, but the basic concept is the same.
Do you know of any other VR games which have included DLSS? Let us know in the comments below!
The post ‘No Man’s Sky’, ‘Into the Radius’ & ‘Wrench’ Among First VR Games to Support DLSS appeared first on Road to VR.
NVIDIA’s DLSS 2.1 Supersampling Now Supports VR, Could Significantly Boost Fidelity
NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS) technology uses AI to increase the resolution of rendered frames by taking a smaller frame and intelligently enlarging it. The technique has been lauded for its ability to render games with high resolution with much greater efficiency than natively rendering at the same resolution. Now the latest version, DLSS 2.1, includes VR support and could bring a huge boost to fidelity in VR content.
DLSS is a technology which can allow more detail to be crammed into each frame by increasing rendering efficiency. It leverages hardware-accelerated AI-operations in Nvidia’s RTX GPUs to increase the resolution of each frame by analyzing and reconstructing new, higher resolution frames.
The goal is to achieve the same resolution and level of detail as a natively rendered frame of the same resolution, and to do the whole thing more efficiently. Doing so means more graphical processing power is available for other things like better lighting, textures, or simply increasing the framerate overall.
For instance, a game with support for DLSS may render its native frame at 1,920 × 1,080 and then use DLSS to up-res the frame to 3,840 × 2,160. In many cases this is faster and preserves a nearly identical level of detail compared to natively rendering the frame at 3,840 × 2,160 in the first place.
Because of the need to keep latency to a minimum, VR already has a high bar for framerate. PC VR headsets expect games to render consistently at 80 or 90 FPS. Maintaining the frame-rate bar requires a trade-off between visual fidelity and rendering efficiency, because a game rendering 90 frames per second has half the time to complete each frame compared to a game which renders at 45 frames per second.
NVIDIA has announced that the latest version, DLSS 2.1, now supports VR. This could mean substantially better looking VR games that still achieve the necessary framerate.
For instance, a VR game running on Valve’s Index headset could natively render each frame at 1,440 × 800 and then use DLSS to up-res the frame to meet the headset’s display resolution of 2,880 × 1,600. By initially rendering each frame at a reduced resolution, more of the GPUs processing power can be spent elsewhere, like on advanced lighting, particle effects, or draw distance. In the case of Index, which supports framerates up to 144Hz, the extra efficiency could be used to raise the framerate overall, thereby reducing latency further still.
NVIDIA hasn’t shared much about how DLSS 2.1 will work with VR content, or if there’s any caveats to the tech that’s unique to VR. And since DLSS needs to be added on a per-game basis, we don’t yet have any functional examples of it being used with VR.
However, DLSS has received quite a bit of praise in non-VR games. In some cases, DLSS can even look better than a frame natively rendered at the same resolution. The folks at Digital Foundry have an excellent overview of what DLSS means for non-VR content.
It isn’t clear yet when DLSS 2.1 will launch, but it seems likely that it will be released in tandem with NVIDIA’s latest RTX 30-series cards which are set to ship starting with the RTX 3080 on September 17th. Our understanding is that DLSS 2.1 will also be available on the previous generation RTX 20-series cards.
Way back in 2016 NVIDIA released a demo called VR Funhouse which showed off a range of the company’s VR-specific rendering technologies. We’d love to see a re-release of the demo incorporating DLSS 2.1—and how about some ray-tracing while we’re at it?
The post NVIDIA’s DLSS 2.1 Supersampling Now Supports VR, Could Significantly Boost Fidelity appeared first on Road to VR.