Following the recent news that Microsoft's Xbox Series S and X consoles now support AMD's FidelityFX suite, we assumed that would soon include the newest Super Resolution tool, due to launch on June 22nd for PC graphics cards. Confirmation came swiftly through a Microsoft spokesperson, who shared the following statement with IGN:
At Xbox, we’re excited by the potential of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution technology as another great method for developers to increase framerates and resolution. We will have more to share on this soon.
AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution is the long awaited answer to NVIDIA's acclaimed Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), though it does differ in a few significant ways. First of all, it's entirely cross-platform, which is why Microsoft can easily make it compatible with the next-generation Xbox consoles; Sony could do the same with PlayStation 5 if they wanted to. FSR will also be released in an open source capacity at some point.
DLSS, on the other hand, is a proprietary technology that is only available when using GeForce RTX hardware on PC. That's because it exploits the Tensor Cores first introduced with NVIDIA's Turing architecture, which are specifically optimized for machine learning tasks such as DLSS. Additionally, whereas FidelityFX Super Resolution is only a spatial upscaling technique, DLSS uses temporal data (like TAA) to accumulate many low resolution frames in what NVIDIA defined as a multi-frame super-resolution approach.
With this limitation, many doubt that AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution could match the quality of DLSS. Indeed, the first brief showcase we had doesn't exactly inspire confidence in that regard; still, AMD will likely improve the technique over time just like NVIDIA did with DLSS, and game developers will have another tool at their disposal when crafting PC and Xbox games.
What is AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution?
FSR is our brand new, open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs. It uses a collection of cutting-edge algorithms with a particular emphasis on creating high-quality edges, giving large performance improvements compared to rendering at native resolution directly. FSR enables “practical performance” for costly render operations, such as hardware ray tracing.
How does it work?
FidelityFX Super Resolution is a spatial upscaling technique, which generates a “super resolution” image from every input frame. In other words, it does not rely on history buffers or motion vectors. Neither does it require any per-game training.
Super Resolution
- Major framerate boosts combined with high-quality, high-resolution graphics!
- Four different quality modes proposed: Performance, Balanced, Quality, and Ultra Quality.
Cross-platform
- FSR is not limited to the latest GPU architectures only! It runs on a large variety of GPUs.
- Wide API support for DirectX®12, Vulkan®, and DirectX®11!
- Once released, FSR can be ported onto multiple platforms without restriction.
Open source
- In due course, FSR 1.0 will be provided here on GPUOpen under the MIT license.
Easy to integrate
- The same great experience that you expect from AMD FidelityFX, with a low barrier of entry.
- Full shader source code provided for a smooth and flexible integration.
- Fixed and arbitrary scaling supported.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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