upscaling vs native resolution: where do you draw the line?

frame-generationimage-qualitylatencyupscaling6 replies · 64 views · started
  1. fun problem! discussion: i think a lot of ppl treat upscaled or generated frames as equivalent to native rendering, and Im not convinced its that simple.

    to me, upscaling trades image quality for performance, while frame generation trades latency for smoothness. those are different trade-offs. how do u decide when each is worth it?? im about to throw this thing out the window lol

    facepalm

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  2. @shadergremlin whats your base frame rate before enabling frame generation in the games where it feels floaty?

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  3. hmmm 1440p output, the floaty game has a base frame rate somewhere in the 40s before generation... the one where it feels fine is already near 80 without it.

    Curious what u end up with.

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  4. for competitive games i keep generation off and run native or a light upscale, because responsiveness matters more than motion smoothness there. for slow single-player games with lots of panning cameras, frame generation can be a realy nice upgrade.

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  5. lol same thing happened to me frame generation inserts frames between real ones 😭 It makes motion look smoother, but the game still only responds to your input at the base frame rate, and theres some added latency because a real frame has to be held back to geenrate the in-between one.

    so it works best when your base frame rate is already decent. using it to turn a low frame rate into a "high" one gives you the smoothness of teh higher number with the responsiveness of the low one, which is exactly the floaty feeling you describe.

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  6. oof id disagree with treating native as the gold standard. Some games native anti-aliasing is quite blurry or shimmery, and a good upscaler can sometimes produce a cleaner image than "native" with a weak AA solution. Its worth comparing side by side rather than assuming native always wins.

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  7. oof my rule: upscaling is fine almost everywhere if teh base resolution isnt too low. at 1440p or 4K output, a quality preset is hard to tell apart from native in motion. at 1080p output, the internal resolution gets low enough that softness and shimmering become noticeable.

    good luck! fingers crossed 🤞

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