Much of Nvidia's messaging around the RTX graphics cards based on its Turing GPUs has revolved around ray tracing. That isn't the only new technology debuting alongside the next generation of GPUs, however, and features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) are likely to have a strong impact on recent games as well. To wit, Nvidia announced that nine more titles will support the secretive tech.
Nvidia hasn't shared many details about how exactly DLSS works. As its name implies, the tech is a new form of super sampling that uses AI to improve a game's image quality by increasing the resolution of its video output. It's supposed to obviate the need for anti-aliasing too, with Nvidia claiming RTX cards with DLSS enabled will run "up to 2x faster than previous generation GPUs using conventional anti-aliasing techniques."
The company's benchmarks of the RTX 2080 do show improved performance if DLSS is enabled while anti-aliasing is disabled. But not all of this can be attributed to DLSS--some of it also results from the changes between the Pascal and Turing architectures. We also don't know at what settings the games were benchmarked, so until we get them in our test suite, we'll have to consider Nvidia's results promising but unproven.
Either way, developers seem keen to add support for DLSS to their games. Nvidia announced the feature with 16 compatible games that ranged from the indie battle royale Islands of Nyne to the decidedly not-indie Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition. The feature is expected to be used mostly by AAA titles, but the initial list and the new games show that Nvidia isn't limiting DLSS to big developers.
Here's the list of additions:
- Darksiders III
- Deliver Us The Moon: Fortuna
- Fear The Wolves
- Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
- KINETIK
- Outpost Zero
- Overkill's The Walking Dead
- SCUM
- Stormdivers
Nvidia said in today's announcement that we can expect to hear "much more" about DLSS, ray tracing and other GeForce RTX features in the coming weeks. As the company partners up with devs to support RTX technologies in upcoming titles rather than updating existing ones--as seen with ray tracing support in Battlefield V--don't be surprised if more DLSS-compatible games are revealed.
