Both AMD and Nvidia have upscaling technologies which generally allow for a higher resolution image of otherwise lower quality renders. In the Nvidia corner you have Deep Learning Super Sampling, or DLSS which has been around for a few years. It’s a fairly complicated and resource hungry process, but it’s a big part of why we are seeing more and more real-time ray tracing in games.
AMD’s solution is called AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and it’s a very different approach. Rather than intensive computer processes, FSR is open source software that uses a special algorithm to upscale images and give them sharper edges. We did a bunch of tests on it when it first came out. It’s much simpler than DLSS and while that has downsides, this simplicity also means it can run on a much wider range of GPUs.
As it’s been out longer, it’s no surprise Nvidia has provided DLSS plugins for Unreal Engine 4 and 5 for a while now. FSR has taken a bit longer, but is now available as a plugin available for Unreal Engine 4.
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Spotted by Videocardz, the UE4 plugin for FSR can be downloaded by anyone from the GPUOpen website. The website also gives an overview with helpful bits of information like recommended settings, and descriptions of the various modes. It also covers things to watch out for, one of which being that FSR already features a Contrast Adaptive Sharpening pass integrated so developers might need to disable any others.
It’s always nice to see software like this become available for more people, especially with how relatively lightweight FSR. Developers of all sorts can likely make use of it, and they don’t need the beefiest kit in the world to do it. Hopefully soon we’ll see FSR make its way to UE5 as well.
