Horizon Forbidden West: DLSS vs. FSR vs. XeSS Comparison

[wolf]

You don't notice the loss of quality when you use DLAA because you are playing newer games. Try games from the Xbox 360 generation at 4k and high refresh rates and they look INCREDIBLY clear.

I play lots of old games, definitely pre TAA era, DLAA still looks very clear and detailed.

Having said that, those old games are so easy to run I can use gratuitous amounts of supersampling, which absolutely pumps up the perceived detail and perfect AA effect.

 

[Sithaer]

You don't notice the loss of quality when you use DLAA because you are playing newer games. Try games from the Xbox 360 generation at 4k and high refresh rates and they look INCREDIBLY clear.

I do play old-older games sometimes where I use a much higher res than my native via DSR or use supersampling, yes they do look sharp but so does DLAA in new games to me especially compared to the crappy TAA in most games.
My most recent older game was Burnout Paradise on game pass and I've forced something like a 5k+ res that was working with my 21:9 aspect ratio. 'in game AA was turned off'

 

[Macro Device]

How about playing games in their pure form, NATIVE without all the frame generation gimmicks by Nvidia, AMD & Intel.

Depends on a game, display, and other hardware. And also on your perception.

1080p60 displays* make upscalers effectively garbage due to low pixel count, as well as they ruin the frame generation experience by leaving you either with <60 FPS baseline after vsync or with some kind of tearing with vsync disabled.
2160p displays tax your hardware a lot if you run native, yet DLSS (usually) and other upscalers (sometimes) don't fail to deliver same level of image quality at Quality/Balanced mode, also getting you playable framerate. Of course you're getting some sort of backfire but is 35 FPS gaming really superior to a somewhat lesser fidelity 60 FPS gaming?
High refresh rate monitors (144 Hz and higher) make frame generation worth it in a lot of titles. Artifacts, given the baseline framerate exceeds 60 (preferrably, 90) are minor, so is input lag (of course it's a no go in competitive games).
If you're not really sensitive to bad image quality but you're sensitive to bad framerate you should also enable upscaling.
If all you care for is how beautiful the game looks you should adjust each and every game individually. Some games look horrid at "pure" native. Some games only look great at "pure" native. Some games aren't really getting much affected by upscaling so DLSSQ is basically equal to native in terms of IQ so you enable DLSS only for better performance (or energy saving at locked FPS).

*Oh by the way, owners of low resolution displays (1440p and below) will really benefit if they use virtual super resolution (say, 3200x1800 on a 1600x900 display) with a little bit of DLSS/FSR on top of that so they are getting much higher quality levels than they would get whilst playing at stock standard resolution but also at reasonable speed thanks to upscaling (not every GPU can run 3200x1800 at "native").

 

[Super XP]

Depends on a game, display, and other hardware. And also on your perception.

1080p60 displays* make upscalers effectively garbage due to low pixel count, as well as they ruin the frame generation experience by leaving you either with <60 FPS baseline after vsync or with some kind of tearing with vsync disabled.
2160p displays tax your hardware a lot if you run native, yet DLSS (usually) and other upscalers (sometimes) don't fail to deliver same level of image quality at Quality/Balanced mode, also getting you playable framerate. Of course you're getting some sort of backfire but is 35 FPS gaming really superior to a somewhat lesser fidelity 60 FPS gaming?
High refresh rate monitors (144 Hz and higher) make frame generation worth it in a lot of titles. Artifacts, given the baseline framerate exceeds 60 (preferrably, 90) are minor, so is input lag (of course it's a no go in competitive games).
If you're not really sensitive to bad image quality but you're sensitive to bad framerate you should also enable upscaling.
If all you care for is how beautiful the game looks you should adjust each and every game individually. Some games look horrid at "pure" native. Some games only look great at "pure" native. Some games aren't really getting much affected by upscaling so DLSSQ is basically equal to native in terms of IQ so you enable DLSS only for better performance (or energy saving at locked FPS).

*Oh by the way, owners of low resolution displays (1440p and below) will really benefit if they use virtual super resolution (say, 3200x1800 on a 1600x900 display) with a little bit of DLSS/FSR on top of that so they are getting much higher quality levels than they would get whilst playing at stock standard resolution but also at reasonable speed thanks to upscaling (not every GPU can run 3200x1800 at "native").

I've yet to run into a PC game that looks horrid at pure native. But I probably didn't run into such a game just yet I suppose. The types of games I like and look fantastic on Native are the following: Call me old school lol
Metro 2033 + Redux
Metro Last Light + Redux
Metro Exodus
ALL the Resident Evil Games released on PC
Prey
Left 4 Dead 1 & 2
Atomic Heart
BioShock Infinite
Black Mesa
Days Gone
Control
Death Standing Directors Cut
All the Dooms Games released on PC
All the Wolfenstein games released on PC
Dying Light 1 & 2
Fallout 4
Farcry 3
The Forest 1 & 2
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Mad Max
RAGE 1 & 2
Zombie Army 4
Etc.,

 

[Dawora]

I checked 1080p image on my monitor 1440p , Both DLSS/FSR/Xess do have some shimmering on trees and ground , also 1440p/4K barely seen any shimmering.
Hope they add FSR3.1 which improves quality image.

1080p in 1440p monitor is bad, if u have 4K Then 1080p looks normal quality.

u can drop 1440p to 720p then pixels go 1:1 and it looks what it should look.
But 1080 in 1440p looks blurry and horible.

How about playing games in their pure form, NATIVE without all the frame generation gimmicks by Nvidia, AMD & Intel.

Because many games looks better using DLSS and i can get over +30% FPS boost.

 

[Super XP]

1080p in 1440p monitor is bad, if u have 4K Then 1080p looks normal quality.

u can drop 1440p to 720p then pixels go 1:1 and it looks what it should look.
But 1080 in 1440p looks blurry and horible.



Because many games looks better using DLSS and i can get over +30% FPS boost.

I suppose it depends on your gaming hardware. Fair enough,

 

[Garrus]

I do play old-older games sometimes where I use a much higher res than my native via DSR or use supersampling, yes they do look sharp but so does DLAA in new games to me especially compared to the crappy TAA in most games.
My most recent older game was Burnout Paradise on game pass and I've forced something like a 5k+ res that was working with my 21:9 aspect ratio. 'in game AA was turned off'

Well I just played Horizon Forbidden West and the ghosting from DLAA is as clear as day to me, especially in front of certain objects (water... or a crack in the wall).

Then I play Mass Effect again and I'm so happy. Xbox 360 graphics forever!

I play lots of old games, definitely pre TAA era, DLAA still looks very clear and detailed.

Having said that, those old games are so easy to run I can use gratuitous amounts of supersampling, which absolutely pumps up the perceived detail and perfect AA effect.

Well DLAA looks very good when you are not moving the mouse a lot. Movement introduces a big separation there between the new and old rendering techniques. When you move the mouse a lot in Mass Effect or Overwatch, you should be able to notice the difference, super clear compared to modern TAA and DLAA games.

It's not perfect, but I have been really impressed by frame-gen in the few titles I play that support it. Provided you use it with Reflex and your end result is at least 100fps, it's a great way to get high-refresh experience without resorting to the smear and blur of upscaling.

Whilst I'm sensitive to smearing and blur, the glitches you see from generated frames tend to be specular highlights only, or sharp-edges in reflections, so they don't actually appear too often. The worst-case-scenario I've found for DLSS3.5 frame-gen is the Afterlife Bar in CP2077 where there's a lot of neon lighting for sharp, high-contrast reflections, and polished metal and glass surfaces on six sides. Even then, to trick the frame-gen to the point where it's obviously making a real hash of things, you have to be circle-strafing a mirrored surface so that the base texture is staying centred in your screen but the reflections are making both large sideways movements, but also perspective shifts that skew the reflected image. That's a very hard thing to predict and motion vectors don't apply well to that, especially when the ratyraced reflections are noisy and temporally-filtered in the first place.

For the vast majority of my gaming with frame-gen enabled, it's a set-and-forget feature that I can basically treat as free performance 99% of the time. It's not like the occasional inaccurate reflection is a deal-breaker, given that SSR and RT reflections themselves are far from perfect in the first place!

The one thing I like about frame gen is when you have a really high refresh rate monitor. I can't run Horizon at 360hz, but I can double it from 180hz to 360hz, and when I do that using the AMD driver level version, I'd say you can actually see the faster pixel response time. I haven't found proper frame generation to be useful as it doesn't double things like the driver level version. I turned on frame gen with NVidia last time and it went from 100 to 120fps, so effectively no improvement and like playing with 60fps doubled. Driver level frame gen I've actually gotten double frame rates.

 

[Chrispy_]

The one thing I like about frame gen is when you have a really high refresh rate monitor. I can't run Horizon at 360hz, but I can double it from 180hz to 360hz, and when I do that using the AMD driver level version, I'd say you can actually see the faster pixel response time. I haven't found proper frame generation to be useful as it doesn't double things like the driver level version. I turned on frame gen with NVidia last time and it went from 100 to 120fps, so effectively no improvement and like playing with 60fps doubled. Driver level frame gen I've actually gotten double frame rates.

Yeah, same boat. My displays are 4K120 and 1440p240 and there's no way either GPU can push AAA games at those framerates without frame-gen.
It's a shame so few games implement it at the moment....

 

[Garrus]

Yeah, same boat. My displays are 4K120 and 1440p240 and there's no way either GPU can push AAA games at those framerates without frame-gen.
It's a shame so few games implement it at the moment....

I think you missed where I said the implemented frame gen hasn't been good (DLSS3). I use the driver level frame gen that works with all modern games (AMD) on games that are already very high frame rate purely to get my monitor's pixel response times down. Not for image quality the way NVidia wants.

The only use case I've seen for Frame gen is for high frame rate games and very high frame rate monitors. DLSS3 doesn't actually give a good boost to "frame rate" in all the games I've tried.

Since I'm going from 120hz or 180hz to 300+hz I don't have any input lag issues from the frame gen.

I'm still not sold on any frame gen at all, just suggesting people try it if they have the new 360hz OLED monitor.

 

[Chrispy_]

I think you missed where I said the implemented frame gen hasn't been good (DLSS3). I use the driver level frame gen that works with all modern games (AMD) on games that are already very high frame rate purely to get my monitor's pixel response times down. Not for image quality the way NVidia wants.

The only use case I've seen for Frame gen is for high frame rate games and very high frame rate monitors. DLSS3 doesn't actually give a good boost to "frame rate" in all the games I've tried.

Since I'm going from 120hz or 180hz to 300+hz I don't have any input lag issues from the frame gen.

I'm still not sold on any frame gen at all, just suggesting people try it if they have the new 360hz OLED monitor.

I didn't think FSR frame-gen was working with all titles yet! TBH I haven't really looked at it yet and I probably should since that rig has an AMD GPU.

 

[wolf]

Well DLAA looks very good when you are not moving the mouse a lot. Movement introduces a big separation there between the new and old rendering techniques. When you move the mouse a lot in Mass Effect or Overwatch, you should be able to notice the difference, super clear compared to modern TAA and DLAA games.

Oh I'm talking about in motion, I don't often play games just standing still. I'm just not seeing this 'big separation' on my setup, specifically viewed on the LG C2 OLED.

 

[Garrus]

Oh I'm talking about in motion, I don't often play games just standing still. I'm just not seeing this 'big separation' on my setup, specifically viewed on the LG C2 OLED.

Load up Mass Effect Legendary Edition (or any old game) and move your mouse around and compare to Horizon it should be night and day in clarity.