Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS)
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Background
I started playing computer games when my Dad brought home our first computer, an NEC with a 133 MHz processor. The first game I played was Wolfenstein 3D, created by John Carmack and the team at id Software.
As a kid I didn’t think too much about how how fast a computer could be until I started playing Quake 2. Our computer didn’t have a good video card, and I remember playing Quake 2 using software rendering at a resolution of 320x240. We had 56K dialup which would give me pings of around 180 to 280 milliseconds. It was in this hellscape of performance that my love for first-person shooters was born.
Later on I realized that I *needed* a better video card. I finally ended up getting two Voodoo2’s by 3dfx. I can still remember how good it felt to turn up the resolution to 800x600 and move my mouse around, feeling the smoothness.
Times have changed quite a bit and the graphics settings menu in video games have grown from a few options to 10+. Every time I launch a new game I do the same routine of going through each graphics setting, applying it, walking around a bit, changing it, and rinse and repeat until I get what I feel is the best look with maintaining 60 frames per second.
DLSS
I recently loaded up Fortnite and found a new graphics setting to play with, DLSS!
Deep learning super sampling (DLSS) is by far the coolest graphics setting I have seen in my 20+ years of gaming. It is such a clever and huge win from Bryan Catanzaro and the deep learning team at NVIDIA.
The premise of DLSS is this — can we take a low resolution image and feed it into an artificial…
