Windows 11 Will Soon Feature Built-In “Super Resolution” For Games And Apps
Windows 11 Will Soon Feature Built-In “Super Resolution” For Games And Apps
Resolution upscaling technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS have allowed gamers to significantly boost framerates at a minor cost to graphical quality in games, and modern games almost universally have this feature built-in one way or another. However, it looks like Microsoft intends to implement this feature into Windows 11 in the future.
As spotted by Twitter (X) user PhantomOcean3, this particular Windows 11 Insider build presents an option called Automatic Super Resolution. The description reads: “Use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details.”
One can make an educated guess that this will rely on the NPU on the latest processors, although the exact implementation is unclear at the moment. It’s worth pointing out that AMD FSR, an open-source implementation, does not require AI hardware to work. NVIDIA DLSS, meanwhile, relies on Tensor Cores to function, which is fundamentally a neural processing unit, making Microsoft’s feature more similar to NVIDIA’s solution on paper.
Despite the description explicitly mentioning games, the second screenshot reveals the feature is likely designed to work on non-gaming applications as well. However, Windows will warn users that it may “cause unexpected results.” Here, we can also see an option to pick a GPU responsible for upscaling function, or just let Windows decide what’s best.
Given that we have at least three same-same-but-different kinds of upscaling implementation today from three different GPU vendors, Microsoft’s implementation meant that there might be a possibility that the super resolution feature will eventually be merged into DirectX 12’s API (which is created by Microsoft). Time will tell if Microsoft will force GPU vendors to consolidate their implementations under one setting via Windows 11 itself at some point in the future.
Source: PCMag
Pokdepinion: A built-in upscaling for video player would be really neat.
