NVIDIA takes on AMD FSR with their new open source Image Scaling

By Liam Dawe - 16 November 2021 at 3:00 pm UTC

While NVIDIA has had DLSS available for a while, it does depend on game support with a compatible NVIDIA GPU. So we saw AMD come along with FidelityFX Super Resolution that worked across both vendors and now NVIDIA has something of an answer with their own open source Image Scaler.

The announcement came as part of their release of DLSS 2.3 today, which has numerous rendering improvements to give an even clearer picture.

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On Windows, the NVIDIA control panel has an option for a driver-based spatial upscaler which sadly Linux lacks and this has been upgraded. Thankfully, we won't entirely miss out on it as the newer Image Scaling is now open source, so any developer can add it into their game with the NVIDIA Image Scaling SDK v1.0 now available on GitHub under the MIT license. Hopefully it can then end up fully cross-platform then too.

NVIDIA say it offers "best-in-class" image quality when compared with other tech. They also showed off a comparison with this explanation:

Here’s a comparison from Necromunda: Hired Gun, comparing three scaling techniques against the game’s native rendering at 4K. On the left, with the game’s built-in temporal anti-aliasing, the monitor’s text is somewhat legible. Using NVIDIA Image Scaling and other spatial upscalers, the resolution is decreased to 2955x1622 and the text becomes illegible, though performance does increase to far more playable levels.

In contrast, NVIDIA DLSS renders at 1920x1080, but through the magic of AI and GeForce RTX Tensor Cores, image quality is better than native 4K, the monitor’s text is clearer, and performance is more than doubled, giving players the definitive experience in Necromunda: Hired Gun.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.

Tags: Misc, NVIDIA, Open Source

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About the author - Liam Dawe

I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me

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31 comments

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Calinou Nov 17, 2021

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Quoting: MohandevirThe FSR maintainers should have a look at DLSS and see what can be integrated that will boost FSR performances... Isn't it open source, afterall?

This is not possible for two reasons:

- The DLSS SDK is proprietary. In fact, even Quake 2 RTX (maintained by NVIDIA) doesn't include DLSS support because integrating the DLSS SDK would violate the GPL.
- DLSS requires motion vectors, which makes it much more difficult to integrate in an existing engine. In contrast, FSR is a post-processing shader that can even be injected into applications that weren't designed for it (at the cost of UI elements looking worse than with a "proper" implementation).

Last edited by Calinou on 17 November 2021 at 12:38 am UTC

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holisticboy Nov 17, 2021

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Yeah they way I read this is:
Thanks to AMD once again for forcing Nvidia to do something that they said wasn't possible that they could've done at any time but chose not to. I know that's blunt, but this really highlights how important competition is. Nvidia could've done this at any time, but just chose not to, and thanks to the AMD FSR it has really forced their hand (this goes with other stuff too, such as FreeSync, high core-count CPUs, etc).

Edit: Looking at those images provided, the text looks better on the new Nvidia tech, but the wall textures appear to be "softer" and less detailed. Either way, its nice to have competition, and it looks like this will be really nice in some cases (being able to choose from either method is going to be awesome).

Last edited by holisticboy on 17 November 2021 at 1:24 am UTC

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TheRiddick Nov 17, 2021

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FSR still has some sharper texture handling but I suppose you can fix that issue with vkbasalt.

I would like them to put some more effort into distance detail enhancing rather then up in your face comparisons. Often these scaling systems break down when dealing with medium to long range objects/textures etc...

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einherjar Nov 17, 2021

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Fragmentation is well known in the Linux community. So we can easily deal with that and call it choice.

Nvidia could have done better, but no one is forced to use their solution.

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Fredrik Nov 17, 2021

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I hope someone ports the image scaling, I have been using fsr with proton ge but its very buggy.

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chelobaka Nov 17, 2021

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Quoting: FredrikI hope someone ports the image scaling, I have been using fsr with proton ge but its very buggy.

I never hit a FSR bug in Proton GE. Works like a charm if a game doesn't do its own upscaling like Control.

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Mohandevir Nov 17, 2021

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Quoting: chelobaka
Quoting: FredrikI hope someone ports the image scaling, I have been using fsr with proton ge but its very buggy.

I never hit a FSR bug in Proton GE. Works like a charm if a game doesn't do its own upscaling like Control.

Personnal experience... I'm using FSR and ProtonGE with Witcher 3. I get game freezes that don't happen on stable Proton, or Experimental. I mean, one complete freeze per hour of play or so.

Edit: But this said, for this particular game, I never tried ProtonGE without FSR (forgot that part), there is no incentive in doing so; stock Proton (or experimental) is more than enough. It might just be a regression in ProtonGE... Adding this to my list of tests to do...

Last edited by Mohandevir on 17 November 2021 at 4:43 pm UTC

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Mohandevir Nov 17, 2021

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Quoting: Calinou
Quoting: MohandevirThe FSR maintainers should have a look at DLSS and see what can be integrated that will boost FSR performances... Isn't it open source, afterall?

This is not possible for two reasons:

- The DLSS SDK is proprietary. In fact, even Quake 2 RTX (maintained by NVIDIA) doesn't include DLSS support because integrating the DLSS SDK would violate the GPL.
- DLSS requires motion vectors, which makes it much more difficult to integrate in an existing engine. In contrast, FSR is a post-processing shader that can even be injected into applications that weren't designed for it (at the cost of UI elements looking worse than with a "proper" implementation).

I meant Nvidia Image Scaling... DLSS came to my mind as a reflex, but yeah, it was the wrong appellation. Are you meaning that NIS is also locked behind proprietary stuff nonetheless?

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F.Ultra Nov 17, 2021

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Quoting: AnanaceWait, for that comparison image, are Nvidia saying that a lower resolution image upscaled with DLSS gives a better resulting 4k quality than a native 4k render?

They seem to run some edge-enhancement on the DLSS image and that can make some thing look better while in reality wildly distort the image. The technique was commonly used on low bitrate DVDs (and still used on some BR:s because why not) where it often resulted in ghosting), but it works excellent on things that are blocky/line-based by nature such as text which is what we see in the example image from nVidia.

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Eike Nov 17, 2021

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Quoting: F.UltraThey seem to run some edge-enhancement on the DLSS image and that can make some thing look better while in reality wildly distort the image. The technique was commonly used on low bitrate DVDs (and still used on some BR:s because why not) where it often resulted in ghosting)

IMHO this could only be done by the player, not by anything on the DVD...?

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