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Nvidia adds Vulkan compatibility to Smooth Motion frame generation, complete with a boost for emulators
Nvidia's latest driver-based frame generation technology (RTX 50-series exclusive) now supports all three major gaming APIs. A user on the Nvidia subreddit confirmed that Smooth Motion stealthily received an update allowing the technology to support Vulkan titles in addition to DX11 and DX12. In addition, Vulkan support will allow Smooth Motion to work with emulators, bringing frame generation to older games that are emulated through Proton or DXVK.
Smooth Motion is Nvidia's competitor (or counterpart) to AMD Fluid Motion Frames (or AFMF/AFMF2). Just like AFMF, Smooth Motion is a driver-based frame generation technology that works in any game (as long as the API is supported) and is completely developer-agnostic.
The Reddit user discovered Smooth Motion's new update in the Nvidia App, where Nvidia added Vulkan to the technology's minimum requirements in the description. Most games nowadays take advantage of DX11 or DX12, but Vulkan support will allow Smooth Motion to work with the relatively small pool of Vulkan-exclusive games.
Smooth Motion is now at parity with AFMF, at least in terms of game support with Vulkan support. One area where AMD's driver-based frame generation tech is still superior is GPU compatibility, supporting multiple generations of Radeon GPUs. Smooth Motion, by contrast, only supports RTX 50-series GPUs for the time being, with the technology allegedly coming to the RTX 40-series in a future update. However, there is no timeframe for that update, nor is there any word on whether the tech will make its way to older GPUs such as the RTX 30- and 20-series.
Smooth Motion is an alternative version of DLSS 3/4 frame generation that generates an entirely new frame using AI to boost frame rates. Smooth Motion works at the driver level, generating new frames independently from the game engine itself. DLSS 3/4 frame generation, by contrast, is embedded into a game engine by the game developers, improving image quality. AMD's AFMF counterpart works the same, but at the time of writing, it uses an inferior non-AI-based approach to generate frames.
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Smooth Motion can actually be really useful. I loaded up Crysis Remastered last night and was getting around 200fps and the frame pacing just wasn’t smooth. Whereas using higher resolution DLDSR + Smooth Motion at like 160-180fps actually looked and felt better than 190-200fps native frames.
