Cynicalking
Regular
Yep
Starfield to use FSR2 only, exclude DLSS2/3 and XeSS: concerns and implications *spawn*
- Thread starter Cyan
- Start date
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
That's the thing, in the eyes of many once DLSS starts appearing more routinely in AMD-sponsored titles, AMD's exclusionary contracts have now been 'fixed', but...have they? Maybe they just get amended so the most obviously blatant restriction is removed, but other potential aspects such as mandated reduced RT quality remain.
Like there is certainly less 'evidence' that say, Capcom purposefully curtailed Re:Village and RE:4's RT implementation on PC due to sway from AMD, it could be just be Capcom not bothering to update the RT beyond the console implementation, sure. DLSS not in RE4 is far more blatant as by that time, DLSS not being in a game was odd enough, but especially when the bulk of the implementation work has already been done for FSR2, unlike say Village, which would require more work to implement any competent reconstruction tech. From their broken TAA onwards, you can surmise it's just Capcom being spotty on their QA.
But there is definitely some low-hanging RT fruit, like just increasing reflection resolution to something other than quarter res? I can't imagine that would take many man hours to provide a higher-quality option. I mean you can't help but wonder now how many PC versions were held back, as AMD took so long to even somewhat address the wooly mammoth in the room with DLSS when it was obvious to everyone - what about other aspects that aren't so clear-cut?
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arandomguy
Veteran
I don't think it should be surprising. Based on the cross sampling of DX11/DX12 capable games there does seem to be some supporting correlation that it seems more challenging for developers to optimize for GPUs (especially across multiple architectures), and also likely requiring more collaboration between gamedev and IHV. This is BGS's first DX12 outing and there's also some questions in terms of how much IHV collaboration was involved on the PC side.
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arandomguy
Veteran
We've had Skyrim cheese and now Starfield potatoes -
Why bring this up? There's likely design trade offs involved here in that optimization choices that allow the above to be relatively easy done have drawbacks in other scenarios. So game might not seem actively heavy all the time, but back end also has to be capable of this.
DavidGraham
Veteran
The press is praising the DLSS mod in Starfield, it's leaps and bounds better than FSR.
www.techpowerup.com
DigitalFoundary too (timestamped).
Starfield: DLSS Community Patch Review
Starfield, an AMD sponsored title, has no support for the NVIDIA DLSS technology, so modders added it without official blessings, and the results are good. In this mini-review, we examine and compare the image quality and performance improvements provided by these technologies.
DigitalFoundary too (timestamped).
So Bethesda just announced (via a no fanfare patch note) that DLSS will be included in a future patch.
I guess we can close the thread now!
I guess we can close the thread now!
DavidGraham
Veteran
The internet backlash did its thing. Devs now realize that DLSS is always going to be a publicly requested feature, especially with NVIDIA's doiminant marketshare.
The NVIDIA Geforce driver rep on Twitter.
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Sweet. Curious to see the levels of support, FG would be a massive boost here for them. And yesssss!!!!! I don’t have to deal with mods!So Bethesda just announced (via a no fanfare patch note) that DLSS will be included in a future patch.
I guess we can close the thread now!
NightAntilli
Newcomer
Leaving this here, which explains what happened with Bethesda, AMD, DLSS etc.
MLID has always been a joke. I only watched the first 30 seconds of that video but it seems he is basing his assertion that "Bethesda were 100% not blocked by AMD from adding DLSS" on the fact that DLSS is now being added to the game.
Lol.
So the possibility that it was blocked, and then due to the massive backlash AMD amended their contract to quietly unblock it didn't even occur to him?
So what exactly was happening during all those months of silence in which this PR firestorm was burning through AMD's and Bethesda's reputations?
NightAntilli
Newcomer
To me, he seems to have a good track-record regarding leaks.
If you would have watched more than 30 seconds you would have understood what happened. The game was being developed on Vulkan and was a mess. They decided late in development to switch to DX12 (for whatever reason). They had issues with this as well, and decided to bring AMD on-board to help facilitate the transition. Makes sense, considering that Vulkan was pretty much pre-developed by AMD, and they have experience with DX12 too. And it also explains why the game seems to run like crap on everything. If they had problems getting the game to run at all, how can we expect them to have time and resources to implement XeSS and DLSS? Obviously AMD would want some sort of compensation for assisting, so... They included AMD tech and advertised for them.
There's a bug in Starfield, where suns/stars do not show up, and it happens on AMD cards only.
Intel cards not running well got a useless reply from Bethesda saying that it doesn't mean the minimum requirements, even though the card is actually stronger than their minimum requirements.
All these are testaments for how messed up the game was that they needed AMD's help, rather than this being AMD paying to somehow mess up the game for nVidia (and Intel).
Everyone understands that possibility, but it simply doesn't seem to line up, unless you presuppose that AMD is the bad guy, which is obviously a very popular position on the internet. There were also reports that nVidia deliberately leaked the AMD blocking DLSS story as a smear campaign, but that's another story for another thread (or maybe another forum).
What exactly could AMD have said?
They ultimately said no, and nobody believes them. If they would have immediately said that months ago, would anyone have changed their minds back then? Probably not, because everyone's minds are already made up.
And if they would have said yes? Would you have applauded them for being honest? Probably not.
The fact that this news broke at all, made it a lose-lose for AMD no matter what they did. And that should make you question who decided to drop this news at all, and why.
GhostofWar
Regular
He's a clown, from dlss 3 being a driver level toggle to rdna3 RT being much faster than ada to numerous other rubbish and he deletes the old videos when they are so wrong it's embarrassing. Why would bethesda need to call in AMD to help with vulkan when they have iD ???? Sounds like more of his typical rubbish without thinking about the holes his story has.
I stopped watching him years ago after he claimed DLSS3 was launching with Ampere and would bring driver level DLSS super resolution for all games.
None of that in any way precludes AMD from blocking competitors technologies in return for their assistance.
Because it takes almost no effort to implement if you already have FSR for an enormous return. Not just in technical terms, but in marketing terms and in the avoidance of very bad PR. It's a no brainer.
You make it sound so convoluted as opposed to the simple reality that AMD likely had a clause in their contract that stated the game must implement AMD exclusive features and must not implement (at least at launch) competing solutions.
It lines up perfectly and all it requires is the acceptance that AMD made a poorly thought out PR decision. It would hardly be the first time.
Except the story wasn't leaked. It was arrived at via logical deduction independently by a variety of outlets and individuals.
They could have said "no we're not blocking the implementation of DLSS" as soon as they were asked the question. Just like Nvidia did about FSR.
Because it took them months to do so and their statement referred only to the current tense, not the past tense.
Absolutely. That's exactly what they and Bethesda should have done, which would have avoided the entire sh*t storm.
No everyones minds were made up by their silence and refusal to give comment when a simple open and honest answer (if they were legally at liberty to give such a thing) would have cleared the whole thing up
DavidGraham
Veteran
Initially, AMD had a very suspicious non resposne that started this whole farce. While NVIDIA gave a definitve no to blocking FSR, AMD danced around the question and refered to several early DLSS games that had no FSR implementation, this was very suspicious.
Then, AMD refused to even give a detailed answer despite being asked by half a dozen outlets. AMD just said no comment for two whole months to everyone that asked about the matter.
Then after two months, AMD said they don't block DLSS, and Bethesda is free to do DLSS if they want to. This was quickly followed by Avatar Pandora, StarWars Jedi Survivor and Starfield all announcing DLSS support, all within a very short time of AMD's announcement.
The timeline is clear enough.
Then, AMD refused to even give a detailed answer despite being asked by half a dozen outlets. AMD just said no comment for two whole months to everyone that asked about the matter.
Then after two months, AMD said they don't block DLSS, and Bethesda is free to do DLSS if they want to. This was quickly followed by Avatar Pandora, StarWars Jedi Survivor and Starfield all announcing DLSS support, all within a very short time of AMD's announcement.
The timeline is clear enough.
NightAntilli
Newcomer
Easy to say in hindsight.
It's relatively easy to implement technically. It doesn't mean it's easy to implement legally. What are nVidia's requirements for officially including DLSS in a game?
arandomguy
Veteran
I mentioned earlier in here that AMD likely words it's sponsorship agreement here in a plausibly deniable way that works against the implementation of competitor technologies without explicitly doing so or even explicitly mentioning them. For instance I suspect there is no specific lines in there with respect to DLSS.
Nvidia's standard license it's RTX SDK (including DLSS) requires 2 things marketing/branding related things -
1) The game must have in it's credits, splash screen/title cards, and box (if applicable) attribution to Nvidia and it's logo. Keep in mind this doesn't specify you need one specific splash screen for Nvidia.
2) Allow Nvidia the right to use the game as promotional material for RTX subject to what is "commercially reasonable."
AMD's agreement (at least now) likely probibits the above, which they can plausibly argue fits an exclusive marketing partnership.
Yes it's based on lawyering and technicalities but it is what it is. As with these things one's personel viewpoint is likely going to be swayed by their feelings to the parties involved.
Nvidia's standard license it's RTX SDK (including DLSS) requires 2 things marketing/branding related things -
1) The game must have in it's credits, splash screen/title cards, and box (if applicable) attribution to Nvidia and it's logo. Keep in mind this doesn't specify you need one specific splash screen for Nvidia.
2) Allow Nvidia the right to use the game as promotional material for RTX subject to what is "commercially reasonable."
AMD's agreement (at least now) likely probibits the above, which they can plausibly argue fits an exclusive marketing partnership.
Yes it's based on lawyering and technicalities but it is what it is. As with these things one's personel viewpoint is likely going to be swayed by their feelings to the parties involved.
NightAntilli
Newcomer
Exactly. Who would sponsor a game, to then at the same time allow the competitor to market with the same game, where they basically didn't contribute anything through development? It simply does not work in practice.
So in reality, it is nVidia's requirements for implementing DLSS that limit its implementation in AMD sponsored games. And that makes it also quite easy to start a smear campaign against AMD, blaming them for blocking it. It also makes zero sense for a company that constantly develops open source software that works on nVidia too, to suddenly start blocking nVidia tech.
So either two things are going to happen with Starfield. Either nVidia dropped the two requirements to allow DLSS, or, AMD is going to allow nVidia to use Starfield for promotions.
Which one do you think is more likely?
There are none. The UE4 plugin is for free. And the rest is using the Github streamline version.