Microsoft seems to be throwing its hat in the image upscale battle that's currently raging between NVIDIA and AMD. The company has added two new job openings to its careers page: one for a Senior Software Engineer and another for a Principal Software Engineer for Graphics. Those job openings would be quite innocent by themselves; however, once we cut through the chaff, it becomes clear that the Senior Software Engineer is expected to "implement machine learning algorithms in graphics software to delight millions of gamers," while working closely with "partners" to develop software for "future machine learning hardware" - partners here could be first-party titles or even the hardware providers themselves (read, AMD). AMD themselves have touted a DirectML upscaling solution back when they first introduced their FidelityFX program - and FSR clearly isn't it.

It is interesting how Microsoft posted these job openings in June 30th - a few days after AMD's reveal of their FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) solution for all graphics cards - and which Microsoft themselves confirmed would be implemented in the Xbox product stack, where applicable. Of course, that there is one solution available already does not mean companies should rest on their laurels - AMD is surely at work on improving its FSR tech as we speak, and Microsoft has seen the advantages on having a pure ML-powered image upscaling solution thanks to NVIDIA's DLSS. Whether Microsoft's solution with DirectML will improve on DLSS as it exists at time of launch (if ever) is, of course, unknowable at this point.

NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology has been developed to upscale lower resolutions using artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms. By using this technique, users with RTX cards can increase their framerates in supported games, with minimal loss in image quality. Recently, AMD introduced FidelityFX Super Resolution, a competing technology, which in one aspect might be technologically better than the DLSS competition. How you might wonder? Well, at the "quality" setting, NVIDIA's DLSS renders the game at 66.6% of the resolution, upscaling it 1.5 times. At the same "quality" preset, AMD FSR renders the game at 77% of the resolution and upscales the image by 1.3 times. This is technically providing an advantage to AMD FSR technology, as the image is posed to look better with less upscaling. DLSS on the other hand uses much more information, because it considers multiple frames in its temporal algorithm.

That newfound competition could be what made NVIDIA re-think their options and today we are getting some exciting news regarding DLSS. In the Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) documentation, there is a placeholder for "Ultra Quality" DLSS mode, which is supposed to rival AMD's "Ultra Quality" mode and offer the best possible image quality. Currently, the latest DLSS version is 2.2.6.0, which is present in some DLSS supported games, and can be added to others using a DLL-swap. The updated version with the Ultra Quality preset is already present in UE5, called DLSS 2.2.9.0. Mr. Alexander Battaglia from Digital Foundry has made a quick comparison using the two versions, however, we are waiting for more in-depth testing to see the final results.

Just a few days ago, we have reviewed AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, which represents an answer to NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling technology used to upscale images t certain resolutions. As the review predicted, AMD's presence in consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S must result in the integration of the technology in that field, not only the PC space. And today seems to be the day that Microsoft and AMD join forces to bring AMD's FSR technology to consoles. In the latest Xbox Game Development Kit preview, Microsoft is shipping AMD's FSR tech, giving game developers an easy way to integrate it into the games and thus manipulate resolution to give us the best possible frame rates.

Jason Ronald (Twitter)Excited to continue our close partnership with @AMD and see what game developers can do with FidelityFX Super Resolution, available to preview in our GDK today for @Windows, @Xbox Series X|S and #XboxOne consoles.

AMD's DLSS competitor FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is going to be launched in a mere five days, on June 22nd. When AMD announced the technology last month, they used Godfall as a showcase for the improved performance characteristics of the technology, which should aid (particularly) in raytracing.enabled games. Being open source, AMD's FSR also supports NVIDIA's graphics cards, meaning that any game that bakes in support for the technology can be taken advantage of by PC players irrespective of GPU brand.

In the meantime, the launch titles for FSR have become known, and there are seven of them, though they're relatively small hitters (Anno 1800 is one of the supported games at launch). However, support for FSR is expected to launch in the near future for 12 more games, including heavy-hitter Baldur's Gate III, DOTA 2, Far Cry 6, Myst, Resident Evil Village and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt. Besides these closer-to-the-horizon games, a number of developers have announced they're working on integration FSR on their workflows, including Crystal Dynamics, Focus Home Interactive, Capcom, Ubisoft, Unity, Electronic Arts & Dice... A total of 44 developers in all, Of course NVIDIA's DLSS supports much more games - but remember it has two years in the market going for it, and remember that DLSS 1.0 wasn't all that good. So comparisons with NVIDIA's solution and claims of failure or disappointment on AMD's technology might be slightly too early judgments, especially considering how this tech has also been announced to be supported by Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S consoles.

AMD has announced that Microsoft's Xbox Series S|X now features support for the company's FidelityFX suite. This move, which enabled previously PC-centric technologies on Microsoft's latest-generation gaming consoles, will bring feature parity between RDNA 2-powered graphics, and will eventually enable support for AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), the company's eventual competition to NVIDIA's DLSS tech.

This means that besides the technologies that are part of the DX 12 Ultimate spec (and which the consoles already obviously support), developers now have access to AMD's Fidelity FX technologies such as Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, Variable Rate Shading, ray traced shadow Denoiser, Ambient Occlusion and Screen Space Reflections. All of these AMD-led developments in the SDK allow for higher performance and/or better visual fidelity. However, the icing on the cake should be the FSR support, which could bring the Series X's 8K claims to bear (alongside high-refresh-rate 4K gaming) - should FSR turn out be in a similar performance-enhancing ballpark as NVIDIA's DLSS, which we can't really know for sure at this stage (and likely neither can AMD). No word on Fidelity FX support on the PS5 has been announced at this time, which does raise the question of its eventual support, or if Sony will enable a similar feature via their own development tools.

AMD, via its CVP & GM at AMD Radeon Scott Herkelman, confirmed in video with PCWorld that the company's counterpart to NVIDIA's DLSS technology - which he defines as the most important piece of software currently in development from a graphics perspective - is coming along nicely. Launch of the technology is currently planned for later this year. Scott Herkelman further confirmed that there is still a lot of work to do on the technology before it's ready for prime time, but in the meantime, it has an official acronym: FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution). If you're unfamiliar with DLSS, it's essentially an NVIDIA-locked, proprietary upscaling algorithm that has been implemented in a number of games now, which leverages Machine Learning hardware capabilities (tensor cores) to upscale a game with minimal impact to visual quality. It's important because it allows for much higher performance in even the latest, most demanding titles - especially when they implement raytracing.

As has been the case with AMD, its standing on upscaling technologies defends a multiplatform, compatible approach that only demands implementation of open standards to run in users' systems. The idea is to achieve the broadest possible spectrum of game developers and gamers, with tight, seamless integration with the usual game development workflow. This is done mostly via taking advantage of Microsoft's DirectML implementation that's baked straight into DX 12.