Nvidia’s DLSS technology got another update today, adding five new titles to the service, updating another title, and improving the tools available to developers looking to use the game-changing setting.
For those unfamiliar, DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, and is basically a way of using AI techniques to increase the frame rate you can output in compatible PC games – allowing you to theoretically boost graphics-intensive settings, including light trace without degrading performance.
With DLSS, you can do things like maximize Cyberpunk 2077, including using ray tracing, and still hit 60 or even 120 frames per second. When it works, it’s a damn magical feature. There’s a catch, of course – you’ll need a compatible Nvidia RTX graphics card, and the game has to be updated separately for DLSS compatibility.
Today, five new games join the DLSS lineup: cheating company, goodbye, Small Country: Surviving in the Wilderness, handleand The last of us part 1. Some of these games are getting DLSS updates, while others were released with DLSS updates this week. All five of these games support DLSS 2, the previous but still very capable iteration of the technology.
Meanwhile, Forza Horizon 5 is heading to the next generation, with an upgrade to DLSS 3 today – becoming the 29th game to support the next-gen tech. With DLSS3 and Nvidia Reflex, Nvidia is boasting that Forza Horizon 4 can break the 120fps barrier at 4K with settings maxed out, including ray tracing.
Note that DLSS 3 is only compatible with the ridiculously expensive 40-series GPUs – but it will be a boon for those who own them. Even with DLSS 2, however, Nvidia says 84 percent of its Forza Horizon 5 players are playing with the technology. It’s an interesting statistic, as it shows just how valuable this technology is to the games that support it.
If you don’t know how it works, it’s a complex set of systems working together – but what it does is deceptively simple. Essentially, you turn up the game settings – which usually lowers the frame rate – but then you turn on DLSS. What DLSS then does is render the game at a lower resolution than your chosen output – this allows the game to push higher frame rates. Then deep learning supersampling itself kicks in, filling in the missing detail and bringing you back to the target resolution. The AI is so powerful that a DLSS image originally rendered at 1080p but displayed in 4K is virtually indistinguishable from a native 4K image. DLSS is paired with anti-lag tool Nvidia Reflex to ensure no extra lag.
Nvidia’s goal is also to make DLSS easier to implement. The company has boasted that it can be integrated into games “within a day,” and at last week’s GDC it showed off a new set of tools to make integration easier for developers.
Nvidia’s rival AMD has its own version of DLSS called Fidelity FX Super Resolution – or FSR.
