Optiscaler FSR 4 Setup Guide: Add AI Upscaling to Any Vulkan Game

Well, it looks like the Optiscaler team has done it again. Seems like every time I finish writing an article about a new Optiscaler feature, they push out a brand new release with even more functionality. Maybe it's personal, and they want to keep me shackled to my desk for eternity, pumping out article after article about their excellent mod. Or maybe this is a form of protest against AMD's continuous refusal to meet the demands of the community and officially release INT8 FSR4? Regardless, as long as they keep on pumping out brilliant new updates, I'll be here to share them with you.

Optiscaler Does What AMDon't

This time, the Optiscaler team has cooked up something big. They've finally solved one of the biggest issues to-date with FSR 4: the Vulkan wall. You see, since its launch nearly a year ago, FSR 4 has remained off limits for Vulkan, due to some technical limitation or the other - frankly, I'm not sure anyone cares too much about the exact reason. What the community does care about is the fact that it's been nearly a year without any developments in this regard. No communications, no plans to finally bring FSR 4 to Vulkan games, nothing. This, as well as AMD's reluctance to officially release the INT8 version of FSR 4, has been one of the biggest pain points for users.

So how has the Optiscaler team managed to pull off the impossible? Technical details are currently scarce, but what's clear for now is that whatever fundamental technical limitation prevents FSR 4 from being added to Vulkan games hasn't been lifted. Optiscaler is simply adding a "compatibility path," so to speak. If details on the actual implementation become clear, I'll be sure to add an update to this article.

Everything You Need To Install Optiscaler

With that preamble out of the way, let's get on with the installation process. You'll need the following things to get started:

• OptiScaler v0.9.0-pre10 Test Build (or higher)
• OptiPatcher

To download the latest version of Optipatcher, navigate to the Rolling Releases tab from the right-hand side.

Then, download "Optipatcher.asi". Ignore the source code files.

You can grab the latest test build of Optiscaler from their Discord server, linked here. We'll go through the installation process for Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, a game that only supports Vulkan. I'm using the Game Pass version of the game, but the only part of the installation process that differs based on platform is the location of the game executable. For more details on this, you can check out my in-depth Optiscaler installation tutorial.

The first thing to do is locate the aforementioned game executable. The easiest way to do this is to navigate to the game in your library, expand the hamburger menu, then Manage > Files > Browse. This will take you to the XboxGames folder, where your Game Pass games are installed.

Once in XboxGames, open the folder of the game you're adding Optiscaler to. In our case, it's simply called Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. For other games, the name might not be so obvious; Death Stranding Director's Cut is in a folder titled by the abbreviation DSDC. Conveniently for us, we don't have to dive deep into subfolders to find our game executable - it's right in the next folder called Content; again, other games will differ. The executable for Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is simply called TheGreatCircle.exe; at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will once again point out this convenience.

From here, it's very straightforward. Take the extracted contents of the Optiscaler folder, and dump all of them into the game folder.

Then, create a new folder inside the game executable folder called "plugins". Put Optipatcher.asi in this plugins folder. Strictly speaking, Optipatcher shouldn't be necessary to get FSR 4 working with Vulkan - although it's definitely the preferred method of appropriating DLSS inputs for Optiscaler's pipeline, being more performant and compatible than the older spoofing method - but the Optiscaler installation script on the latest test release tends to hang on the last step without it, so we'll go with this.

The next step is to run said installation script. Earlier, when we copied over the Optiscaler folder's contents to our game executable folder, we also copied over this script. In the game executable folder, look for a file called "setup_windows.bat", and run it. If an "Open File - Security Warning" window pops up, just disregard it and hit the run button.

Now, you'll want to enter each of the following inputs, followed by hitting the enter key.

• 2 (to select winmm.dll)
• 2 (to select AMD/Intel)
• 2 (no spoofing)
• n (don't update Optipatcher)

Once that's done, just press Enter to close out the script. And you're done! Optiscaler is now successfully installed. Now all we have to do is some configuration in-game.

In Game Configuration

In the game's Video settings, choose your upscaler setting of choice: FSR or DLSS. This only affects the upscaling inputs provided to the Optiscaler pipeline; we can derive an FSR 4 upscaled output from either. Typically, choosing the DLSS input provides better quality, but it can be less stable in certain titles. YMMV.

Once that's done, head into gameplay and press Insert on your keyboard. This is the default hotkey to bring up Optiscaler's menu.

Click on the XeSS in the Upscalers section, top left. This will open up a drop-down menu with the following options:

Select FSR 3.X w/Dx12, then hit Change Upscaler. This enables the interoperability layer between the upscaling pipeline and Vulkan.

There you have it! This should automatically engage FSR 4 upscaling, as you can see in the picture below.

To fully dial in the experience with FSR Redstone frame generation, head over to this article.

Performance Tests

To test performance between FSR 4 in DX12 vs Vulkan, let's head over to Red Dead Redemption 2. This title is actually a very suitable candidate for Optiscaler's FSR 4 Vulkan fix, for several reasons. Firstly, the game's anti-aliasing is notoriously bad, providing a soft and blurry output typical of poor TAA. However, this alone doesn't necessarily make FSR 4 Vulkan useful, as the game has DX12, which already works with FSR 4. But this isn't a perfect solution either, as DX12 reportedly causes stuttering and inconsistent frame times in certain parts of the games, which Vulkan is immune to. Therefore, the theoretically optimal solution to play RDR2 on, say, a 9070XT, would be to use FSR 4 with the Vulkan API, for the best image quality with the smoothest gameplay.

Using RDR2 for the performance test also suits the nature of this article, since now I get to show you how to install Optiscaler for it. It's a bit more involved than most games, since Rockstar's launcher causes issues with OptiPatcher. Let's go through the installation process. Since we're using Steam now, we'll start from the beginning: locating the installation directory.

Navigate to the game's page in your library. Then, hit the gear icon (marked 1 below), select Manage (2) > Browse Local Files (3).

Copy over the Optiscaler files, create a folder called plugins, and add OptiPatcher. Now here's where we need to do an extra step for RDR2 specifically. Per TheRazerMD, one of the devs working on Optiscaler, Rockstar's game launcher messes with OptiPatcher and causes it to break. Therefore, if at this point you were to just go ahead with the rest of the installation process (namely, running windows_setup.bat), you'd be unpleasantly surprised on launching the game by failure to spoof DLSS inputs. Thankfully, there exists a workaround to the workaround: Ultimate ASI Loader. This tool ensures plugins are properly loaded. You can find it here; scroll down and download "dinput8.dll", then extract and copy just the .dll file itself to RDR2's folder. Then, just proceed with installing Optiscaler via the setup script (windows_setup.bat) as detailed earlier. In-game setup is also the same as before - just make sure to use DLSS inputs, not FSR2.

To test performance, I'm using Ultra settings at 4k with FSR 4 Quality. My system's specs are as follows:

• i7 13700k
• 32GB DDR5 7200
• RX 9070XT Mercury
• 2x 1TB SN850X
• Liquid Freezer II 420MM
• Seasonic Focus GX 1000W

In a small test loop through Saint Denis, DX12 was about 10% faster, averaging 88 FPS to Vulkan's 80. However, there were a lot of stutters with DX12, whereas, as you can see on the frametime graph below, the Vulkan experience was completely smooth.

Conclusion: All Hail Optiscaler

Now, some of you might be wondering why all the fuss for FSR 4 on Vulkan, since hardly any new AAA games come out that are fixed to Vulkan. Certainly, Doom: The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle are the only examples that come to mind when considering recent Vulkan-only AAA releases. And I agree with that to some extent: it's not a big issue in terms of the usability of FSR 4. What I take issue with is the fact that it's been nearly a year without any kind of communication or timeline from AMD to eventually sort this out. The fact of the matter is that users shouldn't have to mess around with a mod to get decent upscaling working on a game, especially when improved upscaling is one of the biggest sells of RDNA 4.

Well, I digress. The good news is that if you have the patience to mod it in, Optiscaler now enables you to play your favorite Vulkan-only titles with FSR 4. There is a performance hit, but not enough to invalidate the usefulness of this feature. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Optiscaler is now a must for anyone wanting to play RDR2 on an RDNA 3 graphics card or newer. The image quality gains provided by FSR 4 in that game specifically are well worth the performance hit, and now that it works with Vulkan, there's almost no downside. Maybe one day AMD will get its act together, and Optiscaler won't be as necessary for users. But I have a feeling I'll be writing a lot more of these articles until that day comes.

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