I don’t understand. You mentioned multiple times that developers are independently choosing FSR exclusivity. Presumably because there’s evidence of this happening. I don’t have an opinion one way or another but the data we have points in the other direction.
Starfield to use FSR2 only, exclude DLSS2/3 and XeSS: concerns and implications *spawn*
- Thread starter Cyan
- Start date
I don’t understand. You mentioned multiple times that developers are independently choosing FSR exclusivity. Presumably because there’s evidence of this happening. I don’t have an opinion one way or another but the data we have points in the other direction.
Well ok, but this isn't what is happening. I dont know why you're being so naive over this. I get you want to protect the reputation of game devs, but seriously, if you ever look at my posts, I'm one of the first to come to the defense of developers when they're being slagged off. Nothing sets me off more than hearing the phrase 'lazy devs' especially. Instantly outs somebody as supremely ignorant.
But you cant tell me the programmers here are the ones making these decisions. Sponsorship deals will be handled at the higher management levels. None of this reflects badly on the individual developers themselves, it's just clear that those who take AMD sponsorship deals are clearly being directed to avoid a DLSS implementation. It may not even be a direct order, just a sort of 'strong suggestion', ya know? "Make our sponsor happy", which will mean emphasizing testing on their hardware and hyping their features and all, ya know?
DavidGraham
Veteran
GamersNexus approached AMD to ask them directly if their contract with Bethesda includes any clauses for blocking DLSS directly or indirectly, but AMD said "they have no comment on the matter at this time".
This seals the deal, they are actively blocking DLSS.
This seals the deal, they are actively blocking DLSS.
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Flappy Pannus
Veteran
I mean really, this is the the third pounding of the gavel by now. Their first strike was their response to wccftech which touched all of this off, the second was not issuing any kind of clarifying statement as this story proliferated (any simple tweet like "To clarify, AMD does not..."), and this is the third.
I think most discussion on this has ran its course at this point, but at least we can finally dispense with any notion that AMD's intentions are unclear. Yes, it's possible that even without this deal the developers would have chosen FSR only too - and bear in mind it's also possible DLSS will be included after this backlash regardless*. But obviously AMD feels this forced exclusion brings them value, which frankly I think is a severe miscalculation. I can't believe they didn't see this kind of dust-up eventually coming to pass, it was only a matter of time this would be found out.
If this game will drive potential purchase of AMD CPU/GPU's, it's going to be through bundle deals, or just supremely optimized for Radeon/Ryzen architecture. It's certainly possible, like with Horizon Zero Dawn and Hitman 3, which perform superbly on Radeon. But even just taking the opportunistic angle into consideration, restricting DLSS just makes so little sense - FSR-only doesn't give Radeon a specific advantage, it's just going to result in all...this. There's little to no upside and just potential downsides with negative publicity. Just give them the assistance to make FSR2 the best implementation it can possibly be, and leave it up to them if they also want to bother with DLSS at launch or down the line. Hell they might get a situation like Uncharted, where FSR is arguably better than DLSS anyways (largely because they fucked up the DLSS implementation mind you).
Maybe it will be the first exposure to FSR3? That potential bombshell is all I can think of that brings some sense to the calculation of the potential PR upside vs. the negative reaction with forcing such a high profile game to not ship with an almost-standardized feature for the overwhelming market leader. Any such wording in a marketing agreement just has so many obvious downsides when it eventually leaks and so few upsides. All this exposure does now is end the speculation on the reconstruction front, but it just further increases the speculation on other aspects of AMD sponsored titles. If they're willing to try and dissuade partners from including DLSS, what else are they restricting? Is Resident Evil's extremely low-res RT reflection quality just because Capcom doesn't want to bother (certainly a possibility) or...did AMD mandate that they can't have a higher-res reflection quality because that impacts Radeon performance far more severely than Nvidia?
(On that front at least though, if those RT quality restrictions existed and actively prevented Capcom from making the best RE version they could on the PC, well that sucks for the consumer too - but from AMD's perspective I at least understand it. Games are often benchmarked at their Ultra quality setting, at that would have put Radeon in a distinct disadvantage if they allowed RT settings that weren't performant. Restricting DLSS though is far less clear-cut as a marketing win.)
* - Steve from Gamers Nexus echoed my thoughts:
Gamers Nexus said:
Edit: <removed NxGamer's take on this, just going to derail this further. I think you can guess.>
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Now I really want to know what he said! I'm struggling to see how this could be connected to "the PS5 having a superior architecture and better API's than the PC" but I'm sure he was able to find some kind of link.
EDIT: OK I checked, and yeah that viewpoint does not need any airtime.
Regardless, the fact that Starfield will not have RT (at least on the PC side) is bit of a bummer. Because there is no way in hell AMD will sponsor a product where their competitor would solidly beat them in performance in that area.
Not a deal breaker though, I just wished RT was available at launch (or hopefully even available in the future).
Not a deal breaker though, I just wished RT was available at launch (or hopefully even available in the future).
Of course all this outrage is presuming that a usable DLSS3 integration was actually in the cards for the launch time frame of the game. The CPU hitching and lurching might make the frame rate too erratic for DLSS3 to be something you'd even want to run, especially for those with lower tier CPUs and 40-series GPUs. Nvidia, from a PR point of view, might be better off having people wish they had DLSS3 rather than giving them something that doesn't deliver as they expect it to. Leave it until a GOTY edition so they can do some kind of Overdrive remaster, which I'm sure will come about eventually. It's not like Witcher4 and ES6 are just around the corner, and Nvidia has to talk about something other than Cyberpunk for the next couple years. Would it be nice if Starfield had all the Nvidia bells and whistles? Sure. It would also be nice if Bethesda's PC releases didn't warrant very measured expectations. If the game doesn't need user mods to de-consolify the inventory UI or fix some x87/SSE compiler flag issue then that'd be great.
I know I'm late to the party here.... But.
Your totally correct.
NV should open source their algorithm,
The true genius in NV hardware is the tensor cores,
Instead of making it an argument / discussion about software,
open source the software, and let people see how much better DLSS runs on NV hardware v AMD hardware.
This is the approach Intel has taken with XeSS, where they provide an Impl optimized for their own hardware, AND one that works on most modern GPU's too.
This is probably the ideal solution!
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Whilst I hope I'm wrong, I am not among you optimists who expect Bethesda to rewrite chunks of their rendering tech for a GOTY edition. Bethesda are very different from CDPR and I don't think they have any history of doing something like this in the past. Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls GOTY Editions tend to be consolidations of base game and DLC.
That said, it will be interesting to see if AMD/Bethesda/Microsoft react to this overwhelmingly negative coverage, which is likely to impact the larger majority of gamers on Microsoft's largest gaming platform (Windows). Will they back-peddle on any real or imagined non-DLSS clauses in their exclusivity contract. Otherwise, the modder PureDark will be the hero we need and deserve, and I feel that both AMD and Bethesda will just look a bit ridiculous. I'm supporting PureDark on Patreon regardless.
That said, it will be interesting to see if AMD/Bethesda/Microsoft react to this overwhelmingly negative coverage, which is likely to impact the larger majority of gamers on Microsoft's largest gaming platform (Windows). Will they back-peddle on any real or imagined non-DLSS clauses in their exclusivity contract. Otherwise, the modder PureDark will be the hero we need and deserve, and I feel that both AMD and Bethesda will just look a bit ridiculous. I'm supporting PureDark on Patreon regardless.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Sure, and I also have a lot of indie games that get vastly more support than big games. When you look at RimWorld, Prison Architecture, 7 Days to Die, Minecraft, Stardeus, The Last Starship, Banished, FTL, Kingdoms & Castles, The Long Dark, March of the Living, Northgard, Parkitect, Rise to Ruins, Space Engineers, Space Haven, Terraria, Torchlight, The Universim, Valheim and Wasteland - all games that have had extensive re-rengineering over a very long period of time, none of them had a AMD marketing deal.
For single-player experiences, outside of CDPR I can't think of any major publishers that have overhauled their rendering tech significantly since launch.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for AMD or Bethesda here. But unless this coverage makes them change before launch, I very much doubt Bethesda will ever add native DLSS support to a future version of the game. It's not that they can't, it's that they won't. That's the difference.
Wasnt my intention to put something into your posting.
There are three big UE4 games (Calisto Protocoll, Dead Island 2 and Jedi Survivors) which have no support for DLSS when DLSS is just a checkbox in the UE4 (and 5). At the same time there are new UE4 games with DLSS releasing every week or getting ported over to UE5.
The only difference between these games is AMD.
There are three big UE4 games (Calisto Protocoll, Dead Island 2 and Jedi Survivors) which have no support for DLSS when DLSS is just a checkbox in the UE4 (and 5). At the same time there are new UE4 games with DLSS releasing every week or getting ported over to UE5.
The only difference between these games is AMD.
Does the modability of Bethesda games make it easier to mod in “native” upscaling support? If it is then this is a storm in a teacup as people who care about DLSS/XeSS will just get the mod.
Either way I don’t get how this helps AMD. Tin foil hat time - by blocking DLSS3 they increase the odds that someone will choose to upgrade their CPU and AMD sells CPUs.
Either way I don’t get how this helps AMD. Tin foil hat time - by blocking DLSS3 they increase the odds that someone will choose to upgrade their CPU and AMD sells CPUs.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
My understanding is it support things like DLSS, you been to build the game with the requisite Nvidia libraries that provide these functions. This is not something you can mod in using Bethesda's inbuilt modding tools.
On PC you will typically use swap a bunch of pre-installed DLLs (which form part of the game) with patched ones. If the mod is really good, it'll will also patch the game's graphics options to give you access to the extra options, if the mod is a bit more bare bones you'll have an .ini file to edit to set your graphics options that the game doesn't natively support.
That's typically how the PureDark mods work, I have been looking at these this morning following supporting the moodier in Patreon and having access to their Discord server.
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Deleted member 2197
Guest
I believe PureDark makes use of Streamline as depicted in his recent Fallout 4 demo using DLSS 3.
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Deleted member 11852
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You're right, I only skimmed the files on the modder's Discord server, there is also a NexusMods component. So probably not a big effort if you're already using Nexus.
I thought trinibwoy was referring to Bethesda's inbuilt mod platform. where it's not possible (or wasn't in Skyrim/Fallout 4) to modify or add DLLs and PureDark's FO4SE mod includes the following additional libraries: ffx_fsr2_api_dx12_x64.dll, ffx_fsr2_api_x64.dll, igxess.dll, libxess.dll, nvngx_dlss.dll, PDPerfPlugin.dll, XeFX_Loader.dll and XeFX.dll. Having had a look at his other mods, including the Elden Ring mod, they all look they they take the same approach so he's clearly devised an approach that works across number of games and engines.
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Paid PureDark for the Jedi Survivors Mod. And wow. That makes the game so much better. Absolut ridiculous that one person can implement something into a game which can transform the experience. And there are developers and publishers who are thinking that AMD's money is worth more than a happy customer.
I'm a little uncomfortable with this kind of militant, uncompromising support for an industry near-monopolist's closed box, proprietary technology.
Just weeks ago PC reviewers including DF were commenting on how Nvidia were using DLSS to justify small, underpowered, vram starved GPUs being sold at premium prices. Now we've suddenly got to a point where Nvidia's play has seemingly been endorsed by a large proportion of gamers.
In the short term I can absolutely understand people who've bought cards for DLSS (amongst other things) being frustrated that Nvidia's proprietory hardware and middleware isn't being used. In the longer term, I see the entrenchment of Nvidia's near monopoly being harmful for PC gaming.
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Deleted member 11852
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Given PureDark's minimum Patron membership is $4.50/month and he has 3,586 members, he's pulling over $16,000 (at least) a month so AMD are responsible for keeping this guy gainfully employed!
It would be nice if @Dictator and the DF team could find some time to check out his mods and do a video. Any chance, Alex?