Introduction

Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales has finally released on PC, with plenty of visual enhancements over its original PlayStation 5 release, such as ray traced shadows, higher quality ray traced reflections, NVIDIA HBAO+, full support for ultra-wide screens, and this version on PC also has support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA), NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 2.4), NVIDIA's DLSS Frame Generation (DLSS 3) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 (FSR 2.1) 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 are subtle differences in the implementation of NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 2.4), NVIDIA's DLSS Frame Generation (DLSS 3) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 (FSR 2.1), so we are keen to have a look at these temporal upscalers in this game.



Below, you will find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p, 1080p, and in different DLSS Super Resolution and FSR 2.1 quality modes; the TAA and DLSS Frame Generation screenshots are also available in the dropdown menu. For those who want to see how DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Frame Generation and FSR 2.1 perform in motion, watch our side-by-side comparison video. The video can help uncover issues like shimmering or temporal instability, which are not visible in the screenshots.

All tests were made using a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU at Very High graphics settings with ray tracing enabled; motion blur, chromatic aberration and depth of field were disabled for better image viewing. DLSS Super Resolution in this game shipped with version 2.4.12.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

In Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales, the in-game TAA solution, DLAA, DLSS and FSR 2.1 implementations all use a sharpening filter in the render path, and the game has the ability to tweak the sharpening values through separate sliders. We used the default value of 5 for all sharpening filter values in our testing. The inclusion of a separate sharpening filter for each upscaling and temporal anti-aliasing solution is a great option to have, but there is one important issue of note. At lower internal resolutions, such as 1080p DLSS/FSR 2.1 Quality mode for example, the default value of 5 for sharpening filters can cause negative side effects in this game, such as excessive shimmering in motion, so we recommend to set the sharpening filter value to 0 for 1080p resolution, when using upscaling. Also, at the time of writing, the DLAA implementation appears to be broken, as it is simply not running at native resolution—that's the only reason on why we won't be covering the DLAA implementation in this review.

Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales is a fast paced action game, so when using any temporal upscaling solutions, the temporal stability of the image is key to enjoyable gameplay. In comparison to the Spider-Man Remastered game, which uses the same game engine, the developers have managed to fix most of the issues that were present in both DLSS and FSR 2.1. When using DLSS, the image was stable in motion in Quality modes, the level of detail rendered in vegetation and tree leaves is improved in comparison to the in-game TAA solution, and small details in the distance, such as wires or thin steel objects, are rendered more correctly and completely. The ghosting issues are also less pronounced, for example, you won't be seeing flying pigeons with black trails behind them anymore. The FSR 2.1 implementation comes with noticeable upgrades in image quality in comparison to the Spider-Man Remastered game. The developers have managed to greatly reduce the shimmering issues on steel objects and the ghosting issues were also greatly reduced. As a result, the DLSS and FSR 2.1 implementations are very close to each other in terms of the overall image quality in this game.

Speaking of DLSS Frame Generation implementation, the overall image quality is quite impressive, even small flying particle effects, such as snow, are rendered correctly in a fast movement scenario, like when swinging through the city. However, there are also a few important issues of note. We spotted excessive shimmering and flickering on tree leaves when swinging through the city and it is especially visible when swinging through the Central Park area of the game. These shimmering issues are happening when Spider-Man's webs are interlaced with the tree leaves and the DLSS Frame Generation algorithms can't manage to make it stable enough at the current state of implementation—these shimmering issues are visible even at 4K resolution. The second-most-noticeable issue is how DLSS Frame Generation deals with the in-game on-screen UI such as mission marks. This issue is also mostly caused by Spider-Man's webs interlacing with the in-game on-screen UI and when it's happens, the mission marks can have a very jittery look, which can be quite distracting for some players.

Speaking of performance, Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales is a very CPU intensive game on PC, and high-powered GPUs such as the GeForce RTX 4080 can end up CPU bottlenecked in some sequences of the game, even at 4K. In a such CPU limited scenario, comes a very welcome help from the DLSS Frame Generation technology, which has the ability to bypass CPU limitations and provide additional frames. With DLSS Super Resolution in Quality mode and DLSS Frame Generation enabled, you can expect almost doubled performance at 1440p and 4K, and during our testing, overall gameplay felt very smooth and responsive, we haven't spotted any issues with the input latency.