Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#11

Post by brucethemoose2 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

In other games, DLSS2 looks better to me, but the difference is mostly apparent at high scaling factors (like the "performance" preset).

...And I briefly launched Starfield just because it came with my CPU, and to be blunt, it looks hilariously dated, and runs like a pig. Cyberpunk 2077 looks better on my laptop 2060 than Starfield does on my desktop 3090, at about the same framerate on a 4K TV. The resemblance to Oblivion is uncanny.

Don't get me wrong, I love the old BGS games and don't really care about their dated visuals, I'm just saying Starfield is a horrible test for upscaling technology.

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#12

Post by LegitShady »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

FSR has way more noticeable artifacting and in general looks worse than DLSS

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#13

Post by kimixa »

ShamelessC wrote: post #5
Operyl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, AMD also responded with this publicly, "AMD claims there’s nothing stopping Starfield from adding Nvidia DLSS": https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/22372077/amd-starfield-dl...

This is also mentioned at the end of the linked article. > For anyone hoping for a more official (and less morally fraught) way to add DLSS support to Starfield, AMD hasn't completely ruled it out. In a recent interview with The Verge, AMD Gaming CEO Frank Azor said that "if they [Bethesda] want to do DLSS, they have AMD’s full support... If [our partners] ask us for DLSS support, we always tell them yes." No public…

Also DLSS has pretty strict requirements in advertising, requiring nvidia logo & adverts on splash screens and give nvidia any rights to use your app in their own advertising. [0] It's certainly not "free". A completely night and day difference to FSR, which just uses MIT [1]

Lots of people online seem to believe both are "free", so the only reason why you wouldn't implement one is some back room deal. But in my experience, just getting everyone into the same room to sign off on things like that is hard.

One "advantage" to this mod is they can completely ignore the license I guess.

[0] https://github.com/NVIDIA/DLSS/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

[1] https://github.com/GPUOpen-Effects/FidelityFX-FSR/blob/maste...

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#14

Post by MrLeap »

You can keep DLSS if we can get some subsurface scattering on the heads + better eye materials.

When I look at the texture resolution budget the hard surface art team got vs. whoever is in charge of the dead eyed bethesda faces, I wonder if they were bullied. The clothes look phenomenal full of all sorts of nice greebling, buckles, varying specularity, then your eyes move up a bit to see a plastic person with painted on eyes that blink about 35% less than they should.

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#15

Post by scheeseman486 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

You might not notice a difference but neither does grandma notice motion smoothing on her TV.

FSR2 has a bunch more fizzle in high frequency detail (specular and foliage), more severe disocclusion artifacts causing streaking and ghosting behind moving objects and it runs worse than DLSS since it eats into the raster budget instead of using discreet hardware like Nvidia's tensor cores.

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#16

Post by 66fm472tjy7 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

In my experience, people are sensitive to different aspects/weaknesses in game graphics. For instance, I don't really notice any difference between 60 and 120 FPS. I am also not very bothered by traversal stutter.

What I AM sensitive to however, is temporal instability - it just draws my attention and hurts immersion. Here DLSS makes a huge difference, as shown here[0].

Therefore it is sad that Bethesda chose[1] to deliver worse than possible image quality for 80%+ of their PC customers[2].

----

[0] https://youtu.be/ciOFwUBTs5s?feature=shared&t=336

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452149

[2] https://archive.ph/mqPLK, nvidia has 75% market share here, but you have to look at the higher end parts only and exclude Intel as Starfield does not run at all on their GPUs[3]

[3] https://in.ign.com/starfield/193351/news/starfield-intel-fin...

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#17

Post by Eisenstein »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #15
Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

You might not notice a difference but neither does grandma notice motion smoothing on her TV. FSR2 has a bunch more fizzle in high frequency detail (specular and foliage), more severe disocclusion artifacts causing streaking and ghosting behind moving objects and it runs worse than DLSS since it eats into the raster budget instead of using discreet hardware like Nvidia's tensor cores.

I'd suggest that in future discussions you refrain from metaphors which use insulting connotations as it makes it difficult for the person to follow up without getting defensive. Perhaps try: 'you may not notice a difference, and I don't notice the difference between really good wine or mediocre wine, but there are people who can'.

I know this discussion is about a game, but lets not turn HN into a toxic gamer forum where we try to belittle each other and drop tech terms to gain cred.

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#18

Post by psd1 »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #15
Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

You might not notice a difference but neither does grandma notice motion smoothing on her TV. FSR2 has a bunch more fizzle in high frequency detail (specular and foliage), more severe disocclusion artifacts causing streaking and ghosting behind moving objects and it runs worse than DLSS since it eats into the raster budget instead of using discreet hardware like Nvidia's tensor cores.

I like the idea of "discreet hardware".

"Oh, you have tensor cores? I had no idea."

"One does not like to brag."

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#19

Post by Zetobal »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

If you don't see differences between DLSS and FSR it's on you there are numerous tests and reviews from well known outlets that just tell you that.

Re: Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

#20

Post by m-p-3 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Unlike DLSS, AMD's upscaling tech works cross vendor, so I am not sure what the big deal is. I have a 3080 and I don't notice any difference between DLSS and FSR on games, and Starfield is running fine and looks great at 4K with whatever the default settings are at 'High/Ultra'.

And more importantly for Microsoft it also works on game consoles.
Post reply on HN