In the last few years, one of the biggest developments in video game graphics has been the arrival of AI-powered image-upscaling technologies, such as AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), Intel Xe Super Sampling (XeSS), and Nvidia Deep-Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). These technologies upscale the image for sharper picture quality, allowing GPUs to render graphics at lower resolution to offer a higher frame rate.
However, the problem is that these technologies don’t offer the same capabilities. Nvidia DLSS is exclusively available on Nvidia GPUs, AMD FSR works on every hardware but doesn’t perform as well as Nvidia DLSS, and Intel XeSS works with every GPU but performs the best on Intel hardware.
All of that means that developers have to implement each image upscaling technology in a game separately to offer the best graphics experience on every hardware, which could cost them a lot of time and money. If they don’t do that, customers don’t get the best experience. Well, Microsoft has just announced a feature that aims to fix those problems.
Microsoft announces DirectSR for Windows
In a blog post about technologies that Microsoft will showcase at GDC 2024, the company has announced the DirectSR API for Windows. With this technology, developers will no longer have to implement AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, and Nvidia DLSS separately in a game. They can just implement DirectSR and then Windows will automatically choose the best image-upscaling technology based on the hardware.
Microsoft says that it has designed the new APU “in partnership with GPU hardware vendors to enable seamless integration of Super Resolution (SR) into the next generation of games.” It further adds “This API enables multi-vendor SR through a common set of inputs and outputs, allowing a single code path to activate a variety of solutions including NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution, and Intel XeSS.”
Microsoft says that the public preview of DirectSR will be available “soon” and the company will showcase it at GDC 2024. Microsoft announced the new feature right after rolling out ‘Automatic super resolution’ or ‘AutoSR’ to Windows 11 with the 24H2 update. Clicking on the ‘more about Auto SR’ option under that feature takes you to the blog post about DirectSR, which suggests that DirectSR and AutoSR are related to each other.
