Outriders, the proven Nvidia DLSS

Outriders

We took a look at the implementation of Nvidia DLSS technology in Outriders, the looter shooter published by Square Enix and developed by People Can Fly that seems to have merged part of its shooter philosophy with Gears of War, bringing out an imperfect title, above all. in level design, but interesting. However, it is not light for the hardware, thanks to a considerable volume of particles and an optimization that is not exactly exceptional. But it enjoys precisely the support for DLSS technology which with GeForce RTX cards promises a performance boost up to peaks of 73% in 4K.

The DLSS

Outriders at the top of the quality possible, in 4K with DLSS in Quality mode DLSS, we know, is NVIDIA upscaling based on Deep Learning and designed to take advantage of the Tensor Cores that the GeForce RTX inherited from the Volta GPUs. But although it has been around for a while, it is still an evolving technology and it is normal that this is so given the delicate task to which it is called. On the other hand we are talking about an upscaling that promises a minimum loss of quality even in the transformation of a 1080p image in 4k, obviously guaranteeing a net performance boost given the considerably lower effective rendering resolution. So it's no surprise that it's still in the making, as the models that neural networks rely on to give life to what looks a bit like magic continue to evolve.

To understand the room for improvement it is enough to see the jump from the first version of the technology, which had to be heavily trained and worked with limited information, to version 2.0, capable of working faster and obtaining more data thanks to the temporal antialiasing. The leap was not very drastic, both in quality and in performance gain, with the addition of different quality levels for the DLSS and extreme qualitative peaks up to even improving the definition with Control, while increasing performance. br>
In 4K, indoors, DLSS at maximum guarantees very high framerates Unfortunately, not all titles reach the same level as the Remedy title. The performance of DLSS still depends on the work of the developers and we are probably still a long way from when it can be applied automatically and in high quality to any game with temporal antialiasing. But the results achieved are already surprising and in addition to bringing us closer to 4K, sometimes reachable even with mid-range cards, they have made it possible to compensate for ray tracing. The DLSS, however, is also useful without the advanced lighting technology, simply going to push on performance as in the case of Outriders. Before celebrating it is good to take a look at the actual fluidity gain as well as, of course, the image quality.

Performance

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As a test field we used the second part of the prologue, set in the middle of a battle, using the entire mission to detect the average framerates that have arrived, with DLSS at maximum quality, at 118fps in 1080, 98fps in 1440p and 62fps in 4K. We were therefore able to play without problems, with significant gains compared to what we achieved without DLSS where the RTX 3070 reached 109fps in 1080p, 82fps in 1440 and 49fps in 4K.

The increase in 1080p is certainly not exciting , but on the other hand the DLSS applied to such a resolution leads the card to work at very low definitions, also calling into question the processor which limits the gain. The issue is different in Ultra HD thanks to a 27% increase in framerate, enough to guarantee 4K at more than 60fps with minimum peaks, difficult to detect with the naked eye, of 50 frames per second. Of course, we are far from the advertised 73%, but in this case we are talking about DLSS at maximum quality, where the image quality brought to 4K is almost identical to the image actually rendered in 4K.

In the order DLSS in Ultra quality Performance, Performance and Quality A pinch of clarity is lost by switching to DLSS in Performance mode. However, the quality remains high and the loss of definition is almost impossible to see on a 32-inch screen. Instead, we note the increase in the average framerate that flies to 74fps, with a gain of 51% on 4K rendered without DLSS. Furthermore, the minimum framerate does not drop below 60fps, guaranteeing 4K at a granite 60fps on an RTX 3070 and confirming a good application of NVIDIA technology. This, however, still has some limitations as is evident from the Ultra Performance mode, which allowed us to play in 4K at 85fps on average, reaching exactly 73% gain and never falling below 70fps, but it took in the face of a decidedly more marked decrease in definition. Let's be clear, on a medium-sized screen the image rendering is still excellent, but clearly those who play in 4K are looking for the maximum quality.

Ultimately Outriders undoubtedly benefits from the implementation of DLSS which enjoys four levels of implementation and at maximum quality offers an excellent image, allowing you to play in 4K without smudging, with the graphics settings all at maximum, on an RTX 3070. The problem, we know, is to find it, just as it is difficult to find any latest generation card, but we still trust that the market will invent something, while we wait to see the future of artificial intelligence-based upscaling that with the next version of the DLSS promise to become a standard.

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