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Jun 7, 2018
1,179
Germany
Wait, so DLSS 2.0 in quality mode has a better image quality than the native resolution? What wizardry is this?

Can't wait to start playing the game this weekend. Have fun everyone!
 

Dan L

Tried to PM someone for a tag
Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,177
Regina, Saskatchewan
Wait, so DLSS 2.0 in quality mode has a better image quality than the native resolution? What wizardry is this?

Can't wait to start playing the game this weekend. Have fun everyone!
Comes down to the fact in being able to resolve better detail and the loss of detail/ghosting that happens when using TAA in this game.

I played about 4 hours tonight @ 4k60 with DLSS Quality mode and it was using less than half of my 2080ti's utilization and looks so damn good. And yeah I switched back and forth and DLSS looks noticeably better to me then native 4k.

Also as Dictator mentioned the HDR looks great in this game. was a great video btw Alex! looking forward to the checkerboard rendering vs DLSS vid!
 

J_ToSaveTheDay

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
18,826
USA
Whew, this is a definite double dip from PS4 on sale for me at a sale price later on. I'll wait for $30 or lower, but this is looking like a damn impressive port!
 

sacrament

Banned
Dec 16, 2019
2,119
Pretty neat I can get it on PC... Looking forward to a little cheaper price, but my 1440 monitor it and 2070 super is waiting :)
 

KeRaSh

I left my heart on Atropos
Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,254
Damn, that DLSS 2.0 comparison.
I wish we had something like that for next gen consoles.
 

raketenrolf

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,214
Germany
The Pro version actually holds up pretty good considering it's age and shitty CPU. The improvement in textures/shadows/draw distance wouldn't mean much to me but 16xaf makes the game look cleaner (as always). And of course, biggest improvement for me personally are the 60fps+.

But I only have an i5/GTX970 and don't think I can run this with 60 so I better wait until I upgrade.
 

leng jai

Member
Nov 2, 2017
15,118
The Pro version actually holds up pretty good considering it's age and shitty CPU. The improvement in textures/shadows/draw distance wouldn't mean much to me but 16xaf makes the game look cleaner (as always). And of course, biggest improvement for me personally are the 60fps+.

But I only have an i5/GTX970 and don't think I can run this with 60 so I better wait until I upgrade.

Yeah it holds up well because they didn't do much with the port in terms of pushing out settings and detail hence why there's so much headroom to push out the res/FPS. Would have been nice if they put in higher end settings like grass shadows, even better LoD and advanced shadows for people that want to stay at 60fps.
 

Edgar

User requested ban
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
7,180
So does DLSS 2.0 also solves temporal aliasing? Also I am so glad that it seems I can keep my 2080ti longer due to this , lol
 

samred

Amico fun conversationalist
Member
Nov 4, 2017
2,586
Seattle, WA
I updated my Ars report on the PC version; go to the end of its last page, and you'll see some images I captured showing how DLSS fails to properly render particle effects in a cut scene and how it sometimes renders a softer image when the game's in more organic zones (rocks, rushing water, foliage). I chatted with Nvidia, and the impression I get is that the very, very impressive work of DLSS is trained on the most common shapes and patterns found in active video games, particularly lined patterns on walls and thin lines on the horizon. Sure enough, DLSS 2.0 is at its best in Death Stranding's city and building-interior scenes. But methinks their models could stand to be trained on more cinematic content, especially as more games target 4K resolutions for cut scenes.

arstechnica.com

Why this month’s PC port of Death Stranding is the definitive version [Updated]

A major embargo is up, so we've added comparison images for anti-aliasing methods.
 
Nov 8, 2017
13,110
Wait, so DLSS 2.0 in quality mode has a better image quality than the native resolution? What wizardry is this?

Most modern games use some form of temporal anti-aliasing to clean up a large number of artefacts that are troublesome with other techniques at a low performance cost. It results in a very clean image for the most part, but also in a loss of clarity (perceptual sharpness) and loss of detail (slight blurring on textures and whatnot). Since overall pixel counts are fairly high these days, the image still looks quite good, and somewhat "filmic". In order to combat the reduction in perceptual sharpness, some form of sharpening filter is applied over the image.

DLSS guesses/invents micro detail in the image, and it does thing like connect thin lines together that might otherwise only look good at extreme resolution (e.g. hair strands). The detail that it has isn't necessarily totally true to the source artwork, but since it's mostly tiny scale things being fudged it still appears very good to the naked eye. It does a much better job than most TAA+Sharpening solutions at retaining perceptual sharpness, although it is also sometimes going overboard here resulting in ringing artefacts of it's own (the sharpness is apparently developer-adjustable).
 

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,811
I have a question for samred and Dictator . Sam's article mentions that AMD's CAS upscales the image while Alex's video mentions that it appears to not upscale the image (at 18:24 onwards). Can any of you guys ask AMD so that we get a definitive answer on this?

Edit: Reconstructing is probably a more accurate term than upscaling.
 
Oct 31, 2017
133
It's amazing how groundbreaking DLSS 2.0 really is.
Imagine if something like this existed on next-gen consoles. We should praise Nvidia for thinking far ahead the curve and betting so high on a new technology like this.
Dictator is it possible that something like DLSS 2.0 can still be implemented on next-gen consoles at this point?
 

Raide

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
16,596
It's amazing how groundbreaking DLSS 2.0 really is.
Imagine if something like this existed on next-gen consoles. We should praise Nvidia for thinking far ahead the curve and betting so high on a new technology like this.
Dictator is it possible that something like DLSS 2.0 can still be implemented on next-gen consoles at this point?
Series X has its own implementation with their AI ML stuff. There are some GDC 2019 videos around showing it off.
 

samred

Amico fun conversationalist
Member
Nov 4, 2017
2,586
Seattle, WA
I have a question for samred and Dictator . Sam's article mentions that AMD's CAS upscales the image while Alex's video mentions that it appears to not upscale the image (at 18:24 onwards). Can any of you guys ask AMD so that we get a definitive answer on this?

Edit: Reconstructing is probably a more accurate term than upscaling.

CAS as described in the Death Stranding menus includes the deliberate use of the word "upsampling." But AMD isn't very clear about exactly *what* that upsampling portion of the FidelityFX pipeline is doing, at least not at their public-facing sites:

CAS' optional scaling capability is designed to support Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS). DRS changes render resolution every frame, which requires scaling prior to compositing the fixed-resolution User Interface (UI). CAS supports both up-sampling and down-sampling in the same single pass that applies sharpening.

To be clear, I never enabled sharpening in my tests, in order to hone in specifically on what its upsampling delivers for an average PC gamer without an RTX card, and how that compares to DLSS 2.0.
 
Mar 11, 2019
549
AMD does not have the R&D money or time invested in AI to do it or catch up to nvidia. If they use something it will be a solution made by someone else.
I would assume that both MS and Sony would very much like to have these features build into their system/ SDK. They may separately work with AMD on similar solutions. And if MS and Sony dont work on it together, they will use their solution against each other to show off the games run best on their system.

But It is basically guranteed when DLSS doubling fps while improving the image compared to 4k, that AMD will place resources into having similar solutions.
 

Isee

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,235
that AMD will place resources into having similar solutions.

For sure. Especially now that it is proven to work well, and demand/interest is rising.
I just fear that this will lead to two, incompatible techs not coexisting peacefully. Games using one or the other exclusively would be a big step backwards.
 

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,811
CAS as described in the Death Stranding menus includes the deliberate use of the word "upsampling." But AMD isn't very clear about exactly *what* that upsampling portion of the FidelityFX pipeline is doing, at least not at their public-facing sites:



To be clear, I never enabled sharpening in my tests, in order to hone in specifically on what its upsampling delivers for an average PC gamer without an RTX card, and how that compares to DLSS 2.0.

Thank you for the reply Sam. To be honest I'm super confused by all the different definitions that are used for these techniques. I understand that upscaling is different from upsampling, but is upsampling different from reconstructing?
 

Dictator

Digital Foundry
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
4,931
Berlin, 'SCHLAND
Thank you for the reply Sam. To be honest I'm super confused by all the different definitions that are used for these techniques. I understand that upscaling is different from upsampling, but is upsampling different from reconstructing?
Upsampling can mean upscaling, just like downsampling can mean sownscaling. You are sampling up from an aliased lower res
 

dgrdsv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,885
I have a question for samred and Dictator . Sam's article mentions that AMD's CAS upscales the image while Alex's video mentions that it appears to not upscale the image (at 18:24 onwards). Can any of you guys ask AMD so that we get a definitive answer on this?

Edit: Reconstructing is probably a more accurate term than upscaling.
Upscaling vs reconstruction. CAS does simple upscaling similar to what you get with your display h/w or when using the GPU to upscale a lower res to a higher one. DLSS reconstructs the missing data with AI which is a much more complex thing to do and why the results are better. CAS doesn't reconstruct, it just upscale.
 

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,811
Upscaling vs reconstruction. CAS does simple upscaling similar to what you get with your display h/w or when using the GPU to upscale a lower res to a higher one. DLSS reconstructs the missing data with AI which is a much more complex thing to do and why the results are better. CAS doesn't reconstruct, it just upscale.

That makes it clearer, thanks.
 
Jun 7, 2018
1,179
Germany
Most modern games use some form of temporal anti-aliasing to clean up a large number of artefacts that are troublesome with other techniques at a low performance cost. It results in a very clean image for the most part, but also in a loss of clarity (perceptual sharpness) and loss of detail (slight blurring on textures and whatnot). Since overall pixel counts are fairly high these days, the image still looks quite good, and somewhat "filmic". In order to combat the reduction in perceptual sharpness, some form of sharpening filter is applied over the image.

DLSS guesses/invents micro detail in the image, and it does thing like connect thin lines together that might otherwise only look good at extreme resolution (e.g. hair strands). The detail that it has isn't necessarily totally true to the source artwork, but since it's mostly tiny scale things being fudged it still appears very good to the naked eye. It does a much better job than most TAA+Sharpening solutions at retaining perceptual sharpness, although it is also sometimes going overboard here resulting in ringing artefacts of it's own (the sharpness is apparently developer-adjustable).

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation.
 

BeI

Member
Dec 9, 2017
5,980
Upscaling vs reconstruction. CAS does simple upscaling similar to what you get with your display h/w or when using the GPU to upscale a lower res to a higher one. DLSS reconstructs the missing data with AI which is a much more complex thing to do and why the results are better. CAS doesn't reconstruct, it just upscale.

I was reading some comparison yesterday where they were saying image quality with CAS was similar to DLSS, along with performance. Isn't CAS technically working from a higher resolution too (75% base resolution vs DLSS 66%)?
 

dgrdsv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,885

Muhammad

Member
Mar 6, 2018
187
Note: Fidelity is doing an excellent job, but the still images are only telling a part of the story. In motion there is a lot more shimmering and unrest though. Both in comparison to native and DLSS.
This.

CAS is good enough in stills, but in motion it is not good at all, DLSS 2 on the other hand is good in stills and EXCELLENT in motion, which is what matters when playing video games.
 

Muhammad

Member
Mar 6, 2018
187
I updated my Ars report on the PC version; go to the end of its last page, and you'll see some images I captured showing how DLSS fails to properly render particle effects in a cut scene and how it sometimes renders a softer image when the game's in more organic zones (rocks, rushing water, foliage). I chatted with Nvidia, and the impression I get is that the very, very impressive work of DLSS is trained on the most common shapes and patterns found in active video games, particularly lined patterns on walls and thin lines on the horizon. Sure enough, DLSS 2.0 is at its best in Death Stranding's city and building-interior scenes. But methinks their models could stand to be trained on more cinematic content, especially as more games target 4K resolutions for cut scenes.
CAS is significantly worse during motion, I think you didn't factor this aspect in your article.

Computerbase agrees with DigitalFoundry: DLSS 2 is vastly superior to CAS, and is superior to native.
FidelityFX cannot match DLSS 2.0

Unlike DLSS 2.0, FidelityFX works on an AMD and an Nvidia graphics card regardless of the manufacturer. The end result delivers decent results, but looks consistently worse than the native resolution. In particular, the geometry is less smoothed, which visibly increases the restlessness in the image. In addition, the graphics become minimally blurred, which can be changed by sharpening more, but the graphics flicker accordingly even more afterwards. When hunting for more FPS, the use of FidelityFX makes more sense than reducing the graphics presets. However, the technology in the game cannot match the high level of DLSS.

www.computerbase.de

Death Stranding im Benchmark-Test: DLSS 2.0 vs. FidelityFX vs. native Auflösung

Death Stranding im Test: DLSS 2.0 vs. FidelityFX vs. native Auflösung / DLSS 2.0 arbeitet in Death Stranding sehr gut

DLSS offers a better picture than the native resolution
Even if Death Stranding does not support ray tracing, it currently offers the best implementation of DLSS 2.0 (test) . Nvidia's AI upscaling, which is only available on GeForce RTX, delivers a better image than the native resolution in the quality setting without generating annoying graphics errors. There is also a decent performance boost.

www.computerbase.de

Death Stranding im Benchmark-Test: Spielkritik und Fazit

Death Stranding im Test: Spielkritik und Fazit / Wie gut ist Death Stranding? / Der PC hat beim Gameplay Vorteile

So does Overclock3d:

DLSS provides superior visuals. In this regard, there is no comparison, DLSS wins.

 

Hydeus

Banned
Nov 4, 2017
3,496
France
I was reading some comparison yesterday where they were saying image quality with CAS was similar to DLSS, along with performance. Isn't CAS technically working from a higher resolution too (75% base resolution vs DLSS 66%)?

It's false. There was only one article which said that.
DLSS provided better IQ than native.
 

Ionic

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
2,735
So, could somebody render the game at native 4k, do DLSS upscaling to an even higher resolution, then downsample that image back to 4k for absurdly good image quality?
 

Isee

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,235
So, could somebody render the game at native 4k, do DLSS upscaling to an even higher resolution, then downsample that image back to 4k for absurdly good image quality?

I don't think dlss supports resolutions beyond 4k currently.
But you can do something similar on 1080p screens.
By using DSR you can set the resolution to 4k, which would force DLLS to render internally at 1440p.
You'd end up with 1440p-->2160p-->1080p.
A Supersampled, AI enhanced image, so to speak.
 

KKRT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,544
So, could somebody render the game at native 4k, do DLSS upscaling to an even higher resolution, then downsample that image back to 4k for absurdly good image quality?
Theoretically yes and i hope 3.0 will be that, dynamic upscaling or downscaling internal resolution with DLSS resolve based on frametime utilization.
 

Bio

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,370
Denver, Colorado
Seems like a pretty barebones port, though it's great that they've gone back and re-encoded prerendered cutscenes to 4K/60fps, and you gotta love the fact that they actually forced 16xAF by default (and with no way to even change it in-game). I don't understand why most games don't force good anisotropic filtering.

Cutscenes in this game are not pre-rendered. They are rendered in real time.

 

Bio

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,370
Denver, Colorado
I assume AMD could come up with a similar solution.

They already have, and in Death Stranding you have the option of using DLSS 2.0 or Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, which I ended up opting for over using DLSS. I got a good 30% performance boost with a sharper image. Depending on what resolution you're playing at determines how much you'll benefit from either solution, but both offer both better image quality and better performance.

www.techspot.com

Testing AMD's new Radeon Image Sharpening: Is It Better than Nvidia's DLSS?

Today we're taking a deeper look into one of the new features that shipped with AMD's latest Navi GPUs: Radeon Image Sharpening. In short, RIS is a...
 

Isee

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,235
They already have, and in Death Stranding you have the option of using DLSS 2.0 or Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, which I ended up opting for over using DLSS. I got a good 30% performance boost with a sharper image. Depending on what resolution you're playing at determines how much you'll benefit from either solution, but both offer both better image quality and better performance.

www.techspot.com

Testing AMD's new Radeon Image Sharpening: Is It Better than Nvidia's DLSS?

Today we're taking a deeper look into one of the new features that shipped with AMD's latest Navi GPUs: Radeon Image Sharpening. In short, RIS is a...

CAS and DLSS are not the same thing. One is an AI enhanced reconstruction technique, the other is sharpening. That's an old article comparing DLSS 1.0 vs CAS.
Things have significantly changed since than. DLSS 2.0 is vastly superior over CAS and even over native resolution and TAA in Death Stranding.

This is 1080p native (200% zoomed in)
1080pnativepwkqd.jpg

This is 1080p CAS

This is 1080p DLSS

Performance wise: DLSS 2.0 and CAS are pretty similar in my testing at 4k.
Both give around +33%, at least on a Nvidia GPU.

4k Native
4k CAS
4k DLSS

4k Performance Video: DLSS/CAS side by side
 

Bio

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,370
Denver, Colorado
CAS and DLSS are not the same thing. One is an AI enhanced reconstruction technique, the other is sharpening. That's an old article comparing DLSS 1.0 vs CAS.
Things have significantly changed since than. DLSS 2.0 is vastly superior over CAS and even over native resolution and TAA in Death Stranding.

Wasn't saying they are exactly the same, just that AMD does have something similar, and for me it worked great for me in Death Stranding. I'm only playing at 1080 on a laptop, so obviously my experience isn't typical, but after playing around with both options I ultimately stuck with CAS because it produced a sharper image.
 

Bio

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,370
Denver, Colorado
You choose what you like best.
But it is not even close in being something similar tech wise. Quiet the opposite.

Again, didn't say they were the same tech wise (they literally couldn't be, as DLSS 2.0 is patented by Nvidia, and CAS, while developed by AMD, is open-sourced and works on any modern GPU), just similar in that they both strive to produce a better image withfewer performance impacts, and I'm not really interested in picking nits all night about the semantics. Either way, I think it's a good thing that Death Stranding (and hopefully more games in the future) offer a choice between the two.
 

dgrdsv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,885
Again, didn't say they were the same tech wise (they literally couldn't be, as DLSS 2.0 is patented by Nvidia, and CAS, while developed by AMD, is open-sourced and works on any modern GPU), just similar in that they both strive to produce a better image withfewer performance impacts, and I'm not really interested in picking nits all night about the semantics. Either way, I think it's a good thing that Death Stranding (and hopefully more games in the future) offer a choice between the two.
Drop your resolution in any game below native, turn on whatever sharpening filter you like to whatever setting you prefer. There, you have "CAS" in any game you play.
 

Talus

Banned
Dec 9, 2017
1,386
Yes, I'm sure it's that simple, which is why AMD went to all the trouble.
You clearly don't have any understand of what CAS is... and what it does. It literally IS that simple. AMD's solution just adjusts the sharpening filter based on contrast between pixels. There's no reconstruction... you're simply getting a lower resolution with a sharpening filter... that's it. Nvidia already has an equivalent to that in their freestyle filters, as well as built into their driver control panel.
 

dgrdsv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,885
Yes, I'm sure it's that simple, which is why AMD went to all the trouble.
What trouble? CAS shader is one of the simplest sharpening filters available. You can inject it with Reshade into any game on any GPU these days.
There will be differences between your display or GPU handling upscaling instead of CAS - for better or worse, depending on how they compare in quality.
There will also be a difference with HUD elements which render in native res when the upscaling shader is implemented into a game obviously.
But generally this is exactly how it works. When you compare CAS upscaling to DLSS you're essentially comparing a sharpened lower resolution rendering to AI reconstruction.
Also I don't understand how anyone can prefer CAS to DLSS in DS, honestly. You've said that DLSS isn't sharp enough for you - well, you can inject CAS on top of DLSS and get the best of both worlds.
 
Jan 21, 2019
2,902
I would love to see DLSS from a 4K Base Just doing AA. Or maybe upscale to 8K and then downsample. Because as it seems, 4K without TAA still has more detail rendered however with aliasing. So I would love DLSS just adding their great AA to a native 4K screen.

Wait, so DLSS 2.0 in quality mode has a better image quality than the native resolution? What wizardry is this?

Can't wait to start playing the game this weekend. Have fun everyone!

It's because TAA blurs the image and DLSS not so much.
 

Bio

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,370
Denver, Colorado
Also I don't understand how anyone can prefer CAS to DLSS in DS, honestly. You've said that DLSS isn't sharp enough for you - well, you can inject CAS on top of DLSS and get the best of both worlds.

Every time I picked one, the other option would be greyed out. Anyway, tired of arguing about it, I never said CAS was as good as DLSS, and I'm, not super into all this shit to the point where I feel like arguing about it with everyone. I got better performance and image quality using TAA with CAS enabled than when I used DLSS; I'm not versed enough in this shit to know why, but that was my experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Can we move on now, please?
 

Bio

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,370
Denver, Colorado
That's why I've said "inject". You can inject CAS sharpening shader into almost any game with Reshade.

Was not aware of that. I'm not really a 'power user' kind of player. I just have a fairly nice laptop and I don't often fuck things outside of playing with built in graphics options or the occasional tweaking of a config file or whatever.

Anyway, just flipped CAS off and turned DLSS back on and, yeah, it kinda does look better. When I switched from DLSS to CAS partway through the game, I also changed a few other settings, and like I said only playing at 1080p so maybe just not noticing most of the benefits. Either way, pretty game. Not sure I've ever taken so many in game photos before.