Introduction

Lords of the Fallen is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, developed on Unreal Engine 5.1 and using the following cutting edge technologies: full support for Nanite virtualized geometry, advanced global illumination system Lumen with hardware acceleration (Ray Tracing) to increase the quality of global illumination and reflections even further, the Niagara VFX system and UE5's Chaos Physics for advanced simulation for clothes, chains, hair, and belts. This release on PC also has support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA), NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 3.1), NVIDIA's DLSS Frame Generation (also known as DLSS 3) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2 (FSR 2.2) from day one. In order to run this game at maximum graphics settings and reasonable framerates at native resolution, quite a powerful GPU is required, which is why upscaling solutions are so important. But depending on the game, there can be differences in the implementations of NVIDIA's DLSS/FG and AMD's FSR, so we are keen to have a look at these temporal upscalers in this game.



Below, you will find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions, and in the various DLSS and FSR quality modes; TAA, DLAA and DLSS Frame Generation screenshots are also available in the dropdown menu. For those who want to see how these technologies perform in motion, watch our side-by-side comparison video, to help uncover issues like shimmering or temporal instability, which may not be visible in the game screenshots.

All tests were made using a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU at Ultra graphics settings with ray tracing enabled; motion blur, chromatic aberration, film grain and depth of field were disabled for better image viewing. DLSS Super Resolution in this game shipped with version 3.1.30 and DLSS Frame Generation shipped with version 3.5.0.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

In Lords of the Fallen, there is a big issue with the in-game sharpening filter implementation for anti-aliasing and upscaling solutions. The in-game TAA solution, DLAA, DLSS and FSR 2.2 implementations all use a sharpening filter in the render path, and the game has the ability to tweak the sharpening values for DLAA, DLSS and FSR 2.2 through separate sliders. By default each upscaling and anti-aliasing solution is using the value of 25, however, only the FSR 2.2 sharpening slider is working somewhat correctly in this game.

The DLSS and DLAA sharpening values are controlled through the same slider, however, at the time of writing this review, this slider is completely broken. When DLSS is active, changing the sharpening value does not have any impact on the image, and when DLAA is active, the sharpening filter does not apply at all even when set to the value of 100. This means that with DLSS you don't have the ability to disable the sharpening pass or control its values and with DLAA the sharpening pass does not work at all.

These issues with broken sharpening sliders are crucial, because in this game the quality of the sharpening filter itself is very underwhelming and has a big impact on the final image quality in a negative way. When sharpening is applied, the whole image becomes very grainy, pixelated and introduces a bright glow on the ground, around tree leaves and vegetation in general. For the best example you can compare the DLSS and DLAA image to see how different the overall image looks when sharpening is disabled in the DLAA image. These artifacts are visible in the TAA and FSR 2.2 image as well, but to a lesser degree. With FSR 2.2 you can control the values for the sharpening filter, however, you can not disable it completely as the game still applies a small amount of sharpening even when set to the value of 0.

The DLSS Super Resolution implementation also isn't perfect in this game. While it produces a slightly improved quality of small details in tree leaves, vegetation, thin steel objects and particle effects, like different varieties of magic spells for example, unfortunately the DLSS image also has some ghosting and smearing issues, particularly on flying birds in the distance and in some cases on falling snow or ash particles. The DLAA image does not have any issues with stability in motion and produces an excellent image quality with more details on screen compared to native TAA and DLSS, and surprisingly, with a slight performance boost compared to the native TAA solution.

Speaking of the FSR 2.2 implementation, Lords of the Fallen is set in a dark fantasy world with a generally dark and low contrast art design of the game world, which helps to cover some of the flaws in the FSR 2.2 image, like incomplete image details in the distance for example, this makes it look slightly better than other FSR 2.2 implementations. However, it does not cover several major instabilities in motion, like ghosting and disocclusion artifacts around the main character, moire patterns on clothes and armors, a small amount of shimmering on vegetation in motion at lower resolutions, such as 1080p, and a blurry and incomplete look of most in-game particle effects across all resolutions and quality modes.

The DLSS Frame Generation implementation in Lords of the Fallen is excellent, producing a stable and crisp image without any jittering issues on the in-game on-screen UI, the area where DLSS Frame Generation often has issues. Small particle effects, such as different varieties of magic spells, are rendered correctly, even during fast movement. However, at the time of writing this review, the DLSS Frame Generation option has been disabled by the developers after the first patch due to crashes under specific conditions. During our testing, we didn't encounter a single crash with DLSS Frame Generation enabled, even after playing and testing the game for several hours. You can reactivate the DLSS Frame Generation option by setting a command-line switch -DLSSFG and only after that the Frame Generation option will show up in the menu as usual.

Speaking of performance, compared to DLSS, FSR 2.2 has slightly smaller performance gains across all resolutions, while also producing more image quality issues. Overall, the DLSS and FSR 2.2 performance uplift at 4K and 1440p is a great improvement to the game, offering up to 45% more performance in "Quality" mode. With DLSS Super Resolution in "Quality" mode and DLSS Frame Generation enabled, you can expect more than doubled performance across all resolutions, and during our testing, overall gameplay felt very smooth and responsive, we haven't spotted any issues with input latency. Surprisingly, the DLAA solution has a performance boost of around 5%, compared to the TAA solution, while offering the best graphical experience at the same time.