Was it a mistake for new consoles to not have DLSS like technology?

[stoke1863]

So I got my hands on a RTX 3070 today upgraded from an AMD Vega 64 and I'm just blown away with how amazing DLSS works, I know I'm LTTP with it but it feels like the biggest change we've had in graphics for years.

Now don't get me wrong console games are still going to look stunning when studios like ND and Guerrilla get games out, but imagine what visuals we could get if the game could just render at 1080p and DLSS it up to 4k instead. They could probably do so much more with RT.

When AMD get there DLSS stuff going will the consoles be able to support it?

 

[sir_crocodile]

I wouldn't call it a mistake, when the consoles were in development (and still now) it wasn't available from AMD. Not much MS or Sony could do about that. DLSS 2.0 (when it became good) only came out in 2019, way too late for anyone to make sure a similar technology could be HW supported.

 

[Dancrane212]

Wasn't AMD looking at a (mostly) software-based solution? Wouldn't be surprised to see that pop up on these machines whenever that moves forward. Other than that there's nothing else they really could have went with for shipping these consoles in 2020.

 

[Zor]

I'm not a very techie guy but based on how much hype I've read about it, I have to imagine they've be looking at some kinda implementation for mid-gen "Pro" updates to the consoles. Dunno how feasible it is, mind you.

 

[TronLight]

I'm sure the big studios will come up with a solution similar if they feel it's worth the cost. It won't be hardware accelerated, but it can run on shaders and still save performances compared to rendering at full 4k (Control was running DLSS on shaders, and then I think they updated it if I'm not mistaken).

 

[stoke1863]

To clarify I don't really mean a mistake as such, becuase obviously AMD doesn't have that tech figured out right now.

I just mean it's a shame they don't.

 

[pg2g]

I can't call it a mistake since it wasn't really an option.

We'll see if Microsoft is able to do anything with the customizations they did for machine learning.

 

[Patitoloco]

They can, and they have done during the past gen, create custom solutions for their games and engines.

No specialized solution, true, but it's not like it's impossible.

 

[stoke1863]

I'm imaging a world where the Switch pro has this tech as obviously they are partnered with Nvidia.

Doubt it's possible on a portable console though.

 

[wbloop]

AMD doesn't even have a hardware solution on their most recent PC GPUs. I assume that this could become a reality with possible mid-gen refreshes.

 

[Glio]

You can't delay tech products "Because there is going to be a new technology around the corner." There is always going to be something new and revolutionary, you have to work with what you have in a reasonable time frame.

 

[daninthemix]

You rarely get cutting edge PC tech in consoles. Frankly I'm suprised ray tracing made an appearance.

 

[LewieP]

I'm imaging a world where the Switch pro has this tech as obviously they are partnered with Nvidia.

Doubt it's possible on a portable console though.

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Yeah I think this is possible, but maybe another generation away. Switch 2 rather than Switch Pro.

 

[Bungie]

It sounds like both Xbox consoles have DirectML support and the hardware you need for it. If so, it's just a matter of time.

It's a bit unclear for the PlayStation 5. I'm guessing it won't be able to support the same sort of solution

 

[dgrdsv]

DLSS isn't "free", NV is paying for it with a ~20% die size increases.
They can do that because this die area is then used in ML markets where products are sold for thousands of USD.
Spending as many transistors on DLSS only would be a waste and a net loss.
When (and if) there will be other gaming applications for ML h/w then we will see it appear in gaming consoles.

It sounds like both Xbox consoles have DirectML support and the hardware you need for it.

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DirectML is a compute API, you don't need any h/w to support it but you do need h/w to run ML fast enough for it to be usable for real time graphics.
All RDNA2 GPUs have support for packed math (FP16, INT8, INT4) but a) packed math is not ideal for ML, it just runs faster than FP32 but it's hard to say if that's fast enough for something like DLSS, b) it's the same SIMDs which do FP32 so you can do either shading or ML on them.
Also the heart of DLSS tech isn't API or h/w, it's the NN which was created, trained and is now supported by NV. Somebody must do the same for non-NV h/w, including consoles.

 

[blastprocessor]

Well PS5 has checkboard retendering for time being. I mean l was surprised how good Days Gone 4KC looked on PS5.

 

[stoke1863]

Well PS5 has checkboard retendering for time being. I mean l was surprised how good Days Gone 4KC looked on PS5.

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Yeah the checkerboard stuff was pretty great on the PS4 I thought but seeing DLSS in action is a totally different level.

 

[Strings]

No. They're plenty powerful as is.

To clarify I don't really mean a mistake as such, becuase obviously AMD doesn't have that tech figured out right now.

I just mean it's a shame they don't.

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Oh, in that case I guess, but they're still good systems.

 

[Polyh3dron]

Running Cyberpunk on my 3090 at 4K60 with raytracing set to the Psycho setting thanks to DLSS has blown my mind. Consoles will never come close to that this gen and the very notion that there will be a couple GPU refreshes happening over the course of this console generation that widens the gap even more is crazy to me. Usually it takes a little while for PCs to catch up to consoles in some aspect. Not so this time around.

i am quite skeptical on AMD's ability to match what Nvidia has pulled off with DLSS, as another poster has pointed out, Nvidia has invested tons and tons of money in machine learning-focused hardware and has implemented it in these GPUs via tensor cores. AMD can't compete with this.

 

[Pryme]

Well PS5 has checkboard retendering for time being. I mean l was surprised how good Days Gone 4KC looked on PS5.

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That's your mind playing tricks on you. It looks around the same as it looks on PS4 Pro.

Usually it takes a little while for PCs to catch up to consoles in some aspect. Not so this time around.

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This hasn't been true since 2006. High end PC GPUs were well beyond the capabilities of the previous gen consoles at launch.

 

[Mirage]

Running Cyberpunk on my 3090 at 4K60 with raytracing set to the Psycho setting thanks to DLSS has blown my mind. Consoles will never come close to that this gen and the very notion that there will be a couple GPU refreshes happening over the course of this console generation that widens the gap even more is crazy to me. Usually it takes a little while for PCs to catch up to consoles in some aspect. Not so this time around.

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Nvidia added a lot of value to their cards with DLSS.

 

[Techno]

Usually it takes a little while for PCs to catch up to consoles in some aspect. Not so this time around.

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Yes, plus the really fast m.2 SSDs are already out as well. 7GB read speed.

 

[snausages]

I presume they will have it eventually.

Personally I just don't really like how DLSS makes games look murky and soft. If they ever do it on consoles then I really hope it's just a toggle option to make ray tracing effects more sophisticated and not something that's on by default.

 

[Polyh3dron]

Yes, plus the really fast m.2 SSDs are already out as well. 7GB read speed.

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That's actually the single area where consoles will be ahead though; the exclusives will focus on leveraging the SSD loading speed in ways that multiplatform games are less likely to do in an effort to hit a lowest common denominator in hardware terms.

 

[Phoenix Splash]

And this is how they could justify 8K* mid-gen refreshes

*DLSS

 

[Darkstorne]

With crazy fast SSDs, a colossal leap in CPU power, and a decent GPU bump, we're still going to be seeing some insanely impressive first-party games when this gen gets going. ND's new games will still look mind-blowing for example. Missing out on DLSS-like tech just means that with another half-decade of developing that tech we're guaranteed another colossal leap forwards in console capabilities with the PS6 gen, so I don't mind too much =)

 

[AshenOne]

Its not a mistake because they never had a choice. AMD doesn't have as refined and good software as nvidia, same with hardware.

 

[tokkun]

Although DLSS 2.0 is a cool piece of technology, it's important to recognize that it is still only available on a small handful of PC games. Last I checked, it was something like ~20. Since DLSS 2.0 requires access to object motion vectors, it only works with certain types of game engines. Given the rate of adoption, I suspect that even if you have a compatible engine, it is not trivial to integrate.

DLSS takes advantage of the specialized tensor cores on Nvidia GPUs, which have otherwise not been used that much in gaming applications. Viewed another way, you can say that the GPU die area devoted to tensor cores goes unused on 99.999% of games. Since die size is more constrained on console APUs, it is a tougher to justify spending it on a rarely utilized feature. The PS5's APU has to fit both the CPU and GPU in a similar die area to the RTX 3060. Given that limited area budget, it may make more sense to use it on improved rasterization performance, since that can benefit almost every game.

In the future if we see greater adoption of DLSS or if developers discover other ways to effectively make use of tensor cores in games, then it would make more sense for consoles to add support.

 

[Jobbs]

DLSS is an enormous, transformative thing and it's absolutely a shame if any platform doesn't have it or something equivalent to it.

 

[iceblade]

I wouldn't call it a mistake, when the consoles were in development (and still now) it wasn't available from AMD. Not much MS or Sony could do about that. DLSS 2.0 (when it became good) only came out in 2019, way too late for anyone to make sure a similar technology could be HW supported.

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One and done. Having DLSS would necessitate either AMD having a solution (they don't right now), moving to a weaker chip (like the Tegras), giving you Switch like power/performance, or having potentially hotter / more expensive consoles thanks to needing to use more parts to make them and cool them.

It's not just as simple as "ooh DLSS, lets add that in too".

 

[JoyeuxMoel]

DLSS ans IA in general are the true future of gaming

 

[Bungie]

DirectML is a compute API, you don't need any h/w to support it but you do need h/w to run ML fast enough for it to be usable for real time graphics.
All RDNA2 GPUs have support for packed math (FP16, INT8, INT4) but a) packed math is not ideal for ML, it just runs faster than FP32 but it's hard to say if that's fast enough for something like DLSS, b) it's the same SIMDs which do FP32 so you can do either shading or ML on them.
Also the heart of DLSS tech isn't API or h/w, it's the NN which was created, trained and is now supported by NV. Somebody must do the same for non-NV h/w, including consoles.

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Yeah I know the difference between NGX and DLSS

 

[medyej]

It's basically brand new tech so I wouldn't have expected it in the new consoles. I'm sure they'll have a similar solution for the mid-gen upgrades or even next gen like they did to add VRR and SSDs etc that PCs had for a generation before that.

 

[dunkzilla]

It's a shame AMD don't have a DLSS competitor, yes.

 

[meenseen84]

It doesn't exist yet. But in 3-4 years when the next batch of consoles come out maybe it does.

 

[ginge]

DLSS isn't "free", NV is paying for it with a ~20% die size increases.
They can do that because this die area is then used in ML markets where products are sold for thousands of USD.
Spending as many transistors on DLSS only would be a waste and a net loss.
When (and if) there will be other gaming applications for ML h/w then we will see it appear in gaming consoles.


DirectML is a compute API, you don't need any h/w to support it but you do need h/w to run ML fast enough for it to be usable for real time graphics.
All RDNA2 GPUs have support for packed math (FP16, INT8, INT4) but a) packed math is not ideal for ML, it just runs faster than FP32 but it's hard to say if that's fast enough for something like DLSS, b) it's the same SIMDs which do FP32 so you can do either shading or ML on them.
Also the heart of DLSS tech isn't API or h/w, it's the NN which was created, trained and is now supported by NV. Somebody must do the same for non-NV h/w, including consoles.

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xbox has additional hardware to accelerate that, its not just stock RDNA2, they talked about it in the hotchips presentation

 

[Deleted member 87246]

It wasn't available it's as simple as that really.

When you see Miles Morales, Demon's Souls and Ratchet at 1440/60 I don't think there's anything to worry about tbh. Budget and developer talent will always outweigh technical shortcomings as first parties from Xbox, PS and Nintendo constantly demonstrate.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

It wasn't available it's as simple as that really.

When you see Miles Morales, Demon's Souls and Ratchet at 1440/60 I don't think there's anything to worry about tbh. Budget and developer talent will always outweigh technical shortcomings as first parties from Xbox, PS and Nintendo constantly demonstrate.

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The funny thing is that Miles Morales, Demons Souls and likely Ratchet all use temporal reconstruction to upscale to 4K from 1440p or thereabouts, with very, very good results compared to simply rendering at 1440p... DLSS is just a refinement of the temporal supersampling techniques that console games have used for years and which developers refuse to implement in PC games for some reason.

 

[Ales34]

It's a pity, but it's not like they had a choice at the time of the consoles' development. The next generation of consoles will likely have it.

 

[laxu]

Although DLSS 2.0 is a cool piece of technology, it's important to recognize that it is still only available on a small handful of PC games. Last I checked, it was something like ~20. Since DLSS 2.0 requires access to object motion vectors, it only works with certain types of game engines. Given the rate of adoption, I suspect that even if you have a compatible engine, it is not trivial to integrate.

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DLSS 2.x is apparently very easy to integrate in any game that uses TAA, but it does require developer effort. It has been supported on many major releases but we have to remember it is still new tech that has only been available from the start of last year. I expect to see it as a feature on most games coming to PC this year.

AMD/Sony/Microsoft would do well to develop something similar for consoles because it would be a huge boon for those systems. It's the exact right tech to put in the gap between 4K native and 1440p. It would really help give both 60 fps and keeping high quality visuals including RT. As it is it's basically 4K 30 fps or 1440p 60 fps in the few next gen games that are out for PS5. At this point there is no way I want to run anything on my PS5 at 30 fps again.

 

[Dan]

It needs to be stated that when the XB S/X and PS5 hardware was formalised, the only implementation of DLSS by Nvidia was 1.X and it wasn't very good at all. So no, I don't think it was a mistake in hindsight.

I suspect if AMD come up with something similar it may be released in future revisions of the consoles.

 

[Deleted member 87246]

The funny thing is that Miles Morales, Demons Souls and likely Ratchet all use temporal reconstruction to upscale to 4K from 1440p or thereabouts, with very, very good results compared to simply rendering at 1440p... DLSS is just a refinement of the temporal supersampling techniques that console games have used for years and which developers refuse to implement in PC games for some reason.

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Yeah that's true. I really can't tell the difference between 1440 and 2160 from a few feet away tbh. I hope developers target 1440 for most games.

 

[VariantX]

Weren't these consoles in development before DLSS was a thing? People were at least aware of ray tracing for quite some time but using machine learning for image sharpening was relatively new thing at least at the time 1.0 came out

 

[tokkun]

DLSS 2.x is apparently very easy to integrate in any game that uses TAA, but it does require developer effort.

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I could understand that being true given the similarities between TAA and DLSS. And yet, DLSS 2.0 adoption still seems low, even among TAA games. This is what makes me suspicious that it's not so trivial. Given the marketing value that DLSS has for Nvidia, I'd think they would be throwing engineers at companies to help them implement DLSS.

I expect to see it as a feature on most games coming to PC this year.

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"Most" as in > 50%? That does not seem plausible.

There are still only about 20 games available that support DLSS 2.0. There are maybe another 10-20 that have announced plans to support it.

I haven't seen stats for 2020, but it looks like there were about 8000 games released on Steam in 2019 alone. So I would be surprised if even 1% of games supported DLSS in 2021.

 

[Decarb]

They've had that feature since Pro/1X, its just brute force and there's no 'deep learning' AI which is what makes DLSS tick.

 

[Techno]

I haven't seen stats for 2020, but it looks like there were about 8000 games released on Steam in 2019 alone. So I would be surprised if even 1% of games supported DLSS in 2021.

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That's true but most games don't really need DLSS, I mean smaller titles, it's only the big heavy hitters that need it - like Cyberpunk. I think going forward more triple A titles will use it. It's even in the new COD.

 

[dgrdsv]

xbox has additional hardware to accelerate that, its not just stock RDNA2, they talked about it in the hotchips presentation

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It really don't, it's just stock RDNA2.

Although DLSS 2.0 is a cool piece of technology, it's important to recognize that it is still only available on a small handful of PC games.

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Only a small handful of PC games require a technology which would improve performance as DLSS does. 90% of PC games are running fine without it.

 

[Deleted member 16908]

Console games have been using reconstruction for performance benefit since PS4 Pro.

 

[modiz]

they could always (and they are, AMD literally announced it 3 months ago), make their own ML reconstruction technique that uses compute power and use rapid packed math to speed that process up. would it be as accurate as DLSS? probably not because they will settle on a faster and less compute intensive approximation for it. Sony has been investing in reconstruction solutions for console games since 2016 and have come up with pretty nice solutions of their own.
So the whole "not having DLSS technology" is wrong at its basis, DLSS technology is software, NVidia are just speeding the process up with their Tensor cores, which is a great use case for them of course, but there are always alternate software solutions that exist/ are in development.

 

[Bony Manifesto]

I could understand that being true given the similarities between TAA and DLSS. And yet, DLSS 2.0 adoption still seems low, even among TAA games. This is what makes me suspicious that it's not so trivial. Given the marketing value that DLSS has for Nvidia, I'd think they would be throwing engineers at companies to help them implement DLSS.

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The restriction is entirely on Nvidia's end though. It's still officially in 'Early Access', and there's no way for developers to access the tech unless they've been hand-picked by Nvidia. If takeup is still slow after it's been made publicly available, then you'll have a point, but until then, hand-wringing how it's in so few games is premature.