Death Stranding Director's Cut: XeSS vs. DLSS vs. FSR 2.0 Comparison

maxus24 · Oct 3, 2022

Death Stranding Director's Cut has recently been updated with support for Intel Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0). In this mini-review, we take a look, comparing the image quality and performance gains offered by XeSS, FSR 2.0 and DLSS.

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siluro818 · Oct 3, 2022

Why do you keep updating only the DLSS libraries for such comparisons? You're wasting both your time and that of your readers...

W1zzard · Oct 3, 2022

siluro818 said:
Why do you keep updating only the DLSS libraries for such comparisons? You're wasting both your time and that of your readers...

not the review author, but as far as I know, FSR doesn't use a DLL, so it can't be updated (except by the developer who has the game's source code), and for XeSS there's no newer version available, unless you know something we don't ?

ZoneDymo · Oct 3, 2022

its interesting especially in this game how all 3 version just look different, not better, not worse, just different really

maxus24 · Oct 3, 2022

siluro818 said:
Why do you keep updating only the DLSS libraries for such comparisons? You're wasting both your time and that of your readers...

The FSR 2.0 implementation in Death Stranding Director's Cut doesn't use a DLL packaging, so the manual update is not possible.

Steevo · Oct 3, 2022

siluro818 said:
Why do you keep updating only the DLSS libraries for such comparisons? You're wasting both your time and that of your readers...

Why do you whine about someone doing free work for others?

I bet you are a hoot at parties.

W1zzard · Oct 3, 2022

maxus24 said:
The FSR 2.0 implementation in Death Stranding Director's Cut doesn't use a DLL packaging, so the manual update is not possible.

Is there even any game that uses FSR 2.0 in a DLL ?

maxus24 · Oct 3, 2022

W1zzard said:
Is there even any game that uses FSR 2.0 in a DLL ?

Spider-Man Remastered for example.

Trunks0 · Oct 3, 2022

Basicly any FSR 2 game that has the "ffx_fsr2_api_dx12_x64" & "ffx_fsr2_api_x64" DLL's.

*late edit* Worth noting that Death Stranding does not appear to have those. So you would have to use the DLSS2FSR mod. Which wouldn't make for the cleanest of comparisons here.

W1zzard · Oct 3, 2022

Trunks0 said:
Basicly any FSR 2 game that has the "ffx_fsr2_api_dx12_x64" & "ffx_fsr2_api_x64" DLL's.

Thanks!

http://imgur.com/5VJti6H

Oh boy .. no details, no version info, no digital signature .. compiled by amateurs who have never released any software before?

Trunks0 · Oct 3, 2022

The one typically used in Marvels Spider-Man is/was compiled by "CapFrameX" and released on their twitter.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1567968973509242881

W1zzard · Oct 3, 2022

This is the DLL from my Steam download of Spiderman, I havent manually changed any files. I can't imagine they are distributing a DLL to millions of people that they haven't compiled in-house?

Trunks0 · Oct 3, 2022

W1zzard said:
This is the DLL from my Steam download of Spiderman, I havent manually changed any files. I can't imagine they are distributing a DLL to millions of people that they haven't compiled in-house?

I would assume Nixxes compiled their version of FSR 2 internally. But i have nothing to confirm that either of course.

wheresmycar · Oct 3, 2022

are my eyes fooling me or does FSR 2.0 clearly come out ahead of DLSS/XeSS

cvaldes · Oct 4, 2022

wheresmycar said:
are my eyes fooling me or does FSR 2.0 clearly come out ahead of DLSS/XeSS

It's really an individual judgment call.

Whatever you do, do NOT base your decision simply by comparing still screen shots. The three upscaling systems have qualitative temporal differences, things like occlusion, shimmering, etc. that really cannot be assessed by still images because they are time based observations.

Digital Foundry's recent comparison of DLSS and XeSS with Shadow of the Tomb Raider was careful to point out that still screen shots aren't the end all for these analyses. You must compare live action rendering footage to fully visualize the efficacy of each technology, both strengths and weaknesses.

Moreover, these upscaling technologies do not work equally well at all display resolutions.

wheresmycar · Oct 4, 2022

cvaldes said:
It's really an individual judgment call.

Whatever you do, do NOT base your decision simply by comparing still screen shots. The three upscaling systems have qualitative temporal differences, things like occlusion, shimmering, etc. that really cannot be assessed by still images because they are time based observations.

Digital Foundry's comparison of DLSS and XeSS with Shadow of the Tomb Raider was careful to point out that still screen shots aren't the end all for these analyses. You must compare live action rendering footage to fully visualize the efficacy of each technology, both strengths and weaknesses.

Moreover, these upscaling technologies do not work equally well at all display resolutions.

appreciate the heads-up!

InVasMani · Oct 4, 2022

Developers did a fantastic job with FSR the lighting has a nice glow to it I don't notice with XeSS/DLSS. That probably explains the higher frame rates because lighting is difficult.

siluro818 · Oct 4, 2022

Indeed I have only used FSR in Spider-Man, so I did not know that you can't just copy the dll in every other FSR2-enabled title. But it was precisely because you did the Spider-Man comparison without using FSR 2.1 that I reacted like this. And in that game 2.1 made all the difference between usable and unusable for me. Either way I see even W1zzard learned sth new out of this, so it's all good I guess

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Death Stranding Director's Cut: XeSS vs. DLSS vs. FSR 2.0 Comparison

maxus24

siluro818

W1zzard

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ZoneDymo

maxus24

Steevo

W1zzard

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maxus24

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