DF Direct Q+A: The Big "PSSR2" Discussion - What Happens Next & What Should We Expect?

Hello there and welcome to the latest edition of the DF Direct Q&A show. Yes, in case you haven't noticed, we have already split out DF Direct into two shows now. A news show and a Q&A show. The Q&A show uh enables us to react to how people reacted to our direct. So, um I guess we should just crack on with the first question. But first, the panel. John Lennerman. Hello, >> Rich. Good to be here. It's time for Q&A show number two. Right. >> This is the third actually. Third. >> Oh, it's the third. Oh, I forgot whatever is the third one. And uh hello Oliver McKenzie. >> Yes, Rich. Uh John may have lost track of the Q&A shows. I certainly have not as I will be editing this in about uh an hour, hour and a half. I'll be I'll be cracking up. Yeah, cracking away. >> You'll be cracking up. I hope not. >> Cracking on. I think that's what we should do now. >> Yes. >> Okay. Our first question comes from having an AI newism. Uh, what are the games you're most looking forward to to testing with the new PSSR? The bad ones are an obvious choice, but what about the games that already look good and could now look slashperform even better? Bonus question. Based on how FSR4 presents, could the new PSSR prove superior to the solution Guerilla came up with for Horizon on Pro? Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it, Oliver? because um obviously there are some pretty good implementations of PSSR uh in its initial incarnation and typically it's games um that already sort of present with a higher resolution. Um so yeah, I think Stella Blade came up as one. Uh Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be an interesting one because I'm not sure whether we're actually seeing the the full benefits of PSSR or simply because the 1080p mode uh the performance mode rather on the base PS5 was so bad. So, I'm kind of curious about that one. What do you make of the question? >> Yeah, in terms of games that are pretty good with PSSR that I'd like to see improved, obviously, I mean, the one that comes top top of mind for me is Assassin's Creed Shadows. Now, that was a PSSR mode that had a little bit of compromise in it because it did exhibit significantly decreased performance on the PlayStation 5 Pro, so I'd be curious to see if that situation has changed at all. Battlefield 6 also had a very handsome PSSR mode, and as did um Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and it's a versatility mode. I think that's probably top of mind in terms of games that are pretty good with PSSR that could even be be even better with PSSR 2. In terms of games that I'm really looking forward to testing, I mean, there are some I got a lot a lot here. Silent Hill F, >> right? >> That's top of mind. >> Silent Hill 2 also significant in its fidelity mode because it still uses PSSR. Silent Hill F is probably the most compromised title with PSSR at the moment. I would think that at least that I'm aware of that I've covered that's has horrible noise with its rate tracing. I hope that would be cleaned up. Um I'd also think of a couple other titles. Black Ops 6 had that problem with speckling if you remember that problem with noise and speckling. >> Um Dragon Stoma 2 had that awful RTGi lag in it that was quite awful. Uh God of War Ragnar could be interesting because that's a title that you know we can test the frame times. We can work out the frame times using that title in it unlocked modes. Uh, Han Life 2 was not the greatest with PSSR. Again, noise issues. I'd hope to see that improved. Hogwarts Legacy was a little bit blurry with PSSR. Star Wars Jedi Survivor had some issues with PSSR. Still not great. Could be improved still further. And then there are the Outlaws and Avatar titles that had PSSR toggles. Again, somewhat problematic. Could be improved considerably from there. I'd hope to see all those titles. And then in terms of the FSR4 question, um, could the new PSSR prove superior to Pico, the progressive, uh, image compositor from Gorilla? I think that, you know, FSR4 and PSSR are probably much more general solutions than Pico. I think even we've seen with Pico that uh, potentially the the implementation in Desk Training 2 is like a little bit worse potentially than in the Horizon titles. So I think you know having an upscaler that works well for all kinds of game content and all kinds of game engines is like way more of a challenge than implementing something like Pico. So I suspect that PSSR would be preferable. And I I even think just in terms of the raw quality like Pico was operating from very high internal resolutions when you look at horizon west getting like a 1440p render to look like a clean 4K render is something that I'm sure PSSR2 would be more than capable of. >> Interesting. What do you make of that uh Pico question there John? So that's a that's a tricky one because obviously I would say no PSSR implementation has matched what Horizon Forbidden West offered with Pico, right? I think I think it's fair to say. But then Death Stranding 2 using Pico is perhaps less convincing. So it goes to show that it similar to PSSR itself is variable in terms of the end results. I'd be curious to know more about what Guerilla specifically is doing that has allowed Horizon Forbidden West to look as good as it does because it still is very much like probably the best image quality I think I've ever seen on a console game, right? >> I don't know if you guys agree, but it's like it's ridiculous. It's like how is it this good? >> But nothing else has come come close to matching it. >> But if they could find a way to get that to work elsewhere, that would be nice. But then again, we don't know the cost of it. We don't know the the pros and cons. Like what are the limitations? Like it was specifically crafted by Guerilla for Guerilla for their engine for that game, I would say. Right. So PSSR has to cover a much broader number of titles. And as we've seen with PSSR, sometimes it breaks, sometimes it looks amazing even in its first iteration. So that's always going to be >> uh the question with any of these new technologies. Yeah, it's interesting because we're not going to get any answers, any sort of definite answers with Horizon because that game is unlikely to be retrofitted with the new PSSR because why would it be? It looks perfectly fine as it is already. So, we're probably going to need to look looking at the uh PC version of Death Stranding 2 to actually compare all of the upscalers with Pico to see uh how how it presents. But, as you say, implementations, the quality of them varies on a game by-game basis. So, how it's actually all going to pan out, we just don't know. But maybe we'll get some indication um of of how it all presents u on the PC version of Death Stranding 2. Um let's move on to the next question. This one comes from the mighty Ethan. Hey DF exclamation point. With confirmation there's going to be a system level override on PS5 Pro to force games to use the PS newest PSSR. Is this a gamecher for pro enhanced games? Are games like Jedi Survivor SA saved from their unstable RT shading? Cheers and thanks for the great hashtag content exclamation point. Yeah. Well, this is an interesting thing from my perspective because um there are going to be like developer patches um and developer integrations of of PSSR uh the new PSSR into existing games, but we've also got the system level override. So the question is then well from my perspective logic would suggest that there is actually a difference between the two because if you could just have a drop in replacement for the old PSSR with the new PSSR then why would developers be updating their games. So it kind of suggests to me that there might be some limitations to that system level override. We just don't don't really know at the moment. But Oliver, I think that was one of the things we were talking about on the weekend, which is like, well, why don't we stop the upgrade on a supported game, run the system level toggle, and then continue the upgrade and see what the actual developer integration looks like. >> Yeah, that's that's part of my plans. And I've indeed scouted out a couple of disc based games that we could be sure will be updated um and and to do that comparison properly. But yeah, I mean I would suspect there would be a difference, but at the same time when you look at like FSR4 implementations in titles where you only have FSR 3.1, um it hasn't been tested, hasn't been validated, the developers have not done a whole lot of work on it. I mean, it seems to generally work very well. So, I'd expect I'd hope at least that it would be a comparable experience. And given that it is so similar to FSR4 in so many other ways, I'd hope that's uh the case. But I guess I'd really think about Silent Hill F though. I'd also think about maybe some other titles. I'm not too sure. Like going back to The Outer Worlds 2, that title had PSSR patched out. Could they patch PSSR 2 back in like that? >> Yeah, it similar with Silent Hill 2, right? Because that had one of the modes >> uh uh going back to TSR. So, what we're going to do there, I guess we'd need to go back to the disc copy of the game. I think Tom's got that. and then use the system level upgrade on the disc disk version of the game to see how that >> I I think when you do look at FSR4 titles on PC though um Unreal Engine 5 titles in particular when you compare FSR4 and TSR tends to have a similar RTGI presentation in my experience um or at least from what I've seen online I don't have an FSR4 capable graphics card so I would I'd hope that PSSR2 would match up similarly and I I my expectation my kind of baseline expectation would be that it would be hopefully fairly similar to that. >> Yeah. So, so John, the system level override was something that we were talking about pretty much, you know, at launch, I think. Um, the concept of being able to override the existing code with a new version of the technology, something we've seen obviously with DLL dropins on the PC side and the Nvidia app and Optiscaler and stuff like that. But in theory, this is pretty awesome, right? Because um one of the reasons why the PS5 Pro isn't a kind of slam dunk upgrade for the discerning PlayStation user is the fact that PSSR didn't really hit the target on a lot of games. So if this override does work, then basically you've got an entire library that's going to get a free upgrade. >> Correct. Yeah. And in fact, not just an upgrade, but like an actual fix, if you will, because there were a lot of PSSR titles where the image quality was arguably worse. Right. you had a worse experience and this could conceivably if it works as we hope solve that and suddenly the original promise will be fulfilled. >> Yeah. Which is >> and that's the key >> which is kind of crazy but you know that's kind of like the the genius of having these sort of drop in replacement technologies um that we first saw with DLSS2 onwards. Uh, and it is kind of nutty that you can sort of dramatically improve in some cases the quality of upscaling just by having a DLL changed. And, you know, we were kind of like 50/50 on whether it would actually happen on PS5 Pro. We weren't even sure it was possible, but it looks like it is. And I can't wait to test it, which is going to be awesome. >> Absolutely. >> Uh, let's move on. Another question. uh is it cross or X asks the questions in the questioner question questioner name there maybe but his actual question or their actual question is with PSSR 2.0 Z out and about is now finally in block capitals the time to introduce the in8 version of FSR4 to the market at this point. Is it a pipe dream to think it will come out officially at all? Um, I'll answer this one cuz I've obviously used the int8 version of FSR4 on PC and um um there was actually some interesting points being raised on the weekend which is like well if the PlayStation 5 Pro doesn't have full FP8 is it actually using the int8 version of um FSR4 and I don't think it is. I think it is a port of the full fat thing. You can't really know for sure though. Um but I think the bottom line is the concept that um uh AMD has access to an upscaling technology that would be of particular benefit to RDNA2 and RDNA3 and 3.5 users and not releasing it. Um is is uh borders on on the insane and we've not had a good reason as to why they haven't put it out. I mean is is there a problem with the leaks version? I mean it's been pretty robustly tested at this point. Um, is there a quality issue? The quality was degraded somewhat um in certain respects compared to the to the full version of um FSR4, the FB8. So, um it's kind of like one of these things where logic suggests and sanity suggests that you should just put the thing out because it's going to be of great utility to a lot of users and holding on to it, especially when there's been this leak just does not make sense at all. What I would like to see if it's not going to come out is actually a proper explanation for why it's not coming out. You know, that's kind of like it. That's that's sort of like the only thing that would sort of mitigate what is on the face of it a very very bad decision. Um Oliver, >> yeah, I mean given that PSSR relies on integer math or seems to rely on integer math, intake math, it seems to be a question of software and support. I mean, obviously we know that from the leaked FSR4 in8 version. Um, that does seem to run well and does seem to produce acceptable visual results. I'd have to think that here maybe there's some brand confusion, potentially some brand confusion around what FSR 4 entails because you could have, you know, two versions of FSR4, one having marketkedly better image quality, one running at marketkedly higher performance levels on similar hardware, and that would be obviously the FSR4 version running in RDN4. At the same time though, I I can't help but think that AMD is not exhibiting the best behavior on FSR4 themselves because they've renamed it to I think first it was FSR4 AI and now they just want to call it FSR upscaling with the uh nomature just like a complete mess. I even noted that in um Mark Cernney's introduction of PSSR2 he called it FSR4. So evidently he's not even on board with new branding which is uh slightly confusing. So yeah, I I think it's a potentially a branding question, potentially a software question, potentially a segmentation question, but ultimately I don't think it's a technical question, which is what makes it so frustrating. I think especially in a world where AMD continues to ship RDNA2 based products, RDNA3 based products, RDA 3.5 based products. There are so many products out there in the marketplace and so many still being sold. It seems like a big shame to not implement uh some version that can run on those cards. And adjacent to that, there was a discussion this week about the fact that um the Z1 Extreme Z1 Extreme processor isn't getting driver updates anymore, which again is kind of like just seems to be like a mass massive own goal. Yeah, I just don't understand what's going on there. I mean, why why do that? I mean, I believe that the um the parallel AMD Ryzen APUs based on the same architecture are getting the updates. Um I don't know how how that all works, but it's it's utterly utterly bizarre. I think >> it's BS Rich. First they took the Radeon 7 from us. Now this No, I'm not I'm done. >> Yeah, Vega. RIP. >> Um, let's move on. Question here from Marcus. Hi, Foundryman. How do you feel about being incorporated to the marketing for PSSR2 in this way? Do you think it's affecting your position as a neutral reviewer to release a review for a game talking about how good the image quality is on the PS5 Pro without being able to reveal the reason for it until a separate video comes out later? Might this have been a good opportunity to do a base console review and then maybe a Switch review and then a PS5 Pro review that also introduces the new upscaler which would have gone public. Thanks. Thank you for all your hard work. Exclamation point. Yeah, I think you know Marcus I think if we had been incorporated into the marketing for PSSR2 what you're suggesting is entirely the logical way forward right. Um however um we received the game and um John you played it first on PS5 Pro. you notice that it has ray tracing. It has incredibly good image quality and that's therefore seemed to make it the focal point for the review. And at that point, we didn't know it was PSSR2. We had some suspicions which is why we asked Sod about it. But what do we do? Do we put the review on hold? Do we, you know, how that doesn't work. So ultimately, you know, you had to kind of wait 26 hours ultimately to find out that it was PSSR2 or whatever. But um I think the bottom line is it's not really sort of coordinated marketing in the way you're suggesting and that's borne out by the fact that the coverage is the way it is. Uh we we didn't know what the technology was. It might have been a homegrown up Capcom thing for all we knew. You know, that's that's that's kind of the way it worked out, right, John? >> Marcus, what is he doing here, man? I know. Uh, it's um, yeah, this was actually a really tricky situation because we didn't know, like you said, what this was at first and I was already deep into production on the video, right? >> Yeah. >> And all that capture and the shots, that stuff takes a lot of time, right? And I was planning on addressing the ray tracing stuff and all that. At the time, I didn't actually even realize that ray tracing wasn't on the other versions because I usually start with the main version and go from there, right? >> And then after I'd already done all this production and can and we cuz we decided initially due to how the embargo was was that it was just going to be a graphics showcase and just PS5 Pro and just to show it at its best. Uh but I only later loaded it up on the other consoles and was like, "Oh, wait. there's like no rate tracing here at all and the image quality was a lot worse and that all made us start to like wonder like wait a minute what like what's going on here like uh and then you know the other weird thing was like it took two codes to activate and the one code triggered like a firmware update for the PS5 and that's when we started thinking about like wait could this be PSSR2 I don't think that's actually I don't know what what the firmware update thing's about John because um I think Oliver you removed that from the main direct right because um I did >> you didn't actually figure any firmware updates for us looking at the game on pro. >> I don't know. All I can say is like when I was first doing it, I had my system online as usual. I put in that second code and as soon as I put it in, it didn't just say it didn't say anything about Resident Evil. It just popped up like, "Oh, we need to update your system from this." And I never saw that before. >> Weird. So like what for whatever reason that happened uh and it was directly due to to that code. So I'm not I'm not sure what's up with that but that's what it did. >> Okay. >> So um but yeah so it this whole thing was a situation. It was also like man it was really annoying because there was also like the the ray tracing um the dinoiser which sucks in this game. It's not good. Capcom's dinoiseriser is not good. And I originally thought about covering in the initial video, but then in my mind, I was more focused on this PSSR 2 stuff. So, I was like, "All right, well, I want to talk about it in the PSSR video, and I can't really talk about it here." Because the idea was like address it like, "Yeah, there's this noise in the game, but guess what? It's not PSSR at this time without thinking like that doesn't mean the noise isn't still a problem, right?" It was more like shifting where the problems the source of the problem was. And so that's why I wanted to put it in there. And it just kind of all of this just created a situation where things were in flux a lot. Like my video originally did not, like I said, it had no platform comparisons in it at all. >> Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think there might have been some confusion in there because you were in your social media talking about embargos being the reason why we delayed the video. And the reason we delayed the video was because your um the amount of footage you had um exceeded the amount that Capcom was allowing us to use on the Wednesday embargo. >> That's the embar that when I said embargo, I wasn't talking about the PSSR embargo. I was talking about that like specifically where my video was too long. Yeah, that was nutty because what we actually ended up doing was shipping your review at the point that the game went live in New Zealand, which is the t the territory that typically goes live with games first because of their geographical area. So that was kind of like the way that one worked. >> But you know, ultimately, you know, there was 26 hours of confusion about what the upscaler was and then everything was revealed. So I don't think it's like a I think the bottom line is you know Marcus that you're quite right in that if there was a coordinated marketing campaign then maybe you know there would have been a reason to do things differently but we weren't really involved on that until much later on and when the much of the work had been done. So that's why we talked about it. Um but you know um just crazy stuff things just kicking off all the time. You don't really know what's happening. It's part of the love that we have for this industry. things just happen organically and you have to kind of roll with it. Okay, so we got a question here from Angry Cloud shouting at AI. AOY DF Crew exclamation point. Rumors are swirling that the quote unquote next box will run a full-fledged version of Windows 11. Although there is benefit to having a unified development for both Windows and Xbox, does this even make sense as the next box? as it hopefully should be running a trimmed or slimmed down version of Windows requiring a branch or fork. Anyways, since the Xbox OS already utilizes Nano Visor, modified hypervisor to boot games in a VM, wouldn't it make more sense to just have the VM boot with a Windows 11 OS or wrapper inside the VM created by the Nano Visor? Or is there another reason why you would want the quote unquote full-fledged Windows 11 OS over the current Xbox OS solution? excited to hear your thoughts. Cheers. Exclamation point. I think my point to that is there's no reason you can't have both. And if you do have both, it basically means that your standard Windows 11 will enable you to run um uh Steam games, Epic Game Store, any games. You can use it as a PC. I think that's quite valuable. I think that's a good thing to have. I do think the Xbox side of things will be kind of like hived off into a separate partition that it is its own thing and um we'll have that curated feel that um I think Sarah Bond was talking about um way back when. Uh that kind of makes sense to me. I just think maybe we need to sort of start thinking about the next generation Xbox as not just an Xbox but also a PC. I think John that's kind of like what they've been talking about. I think >> I mean that's the whole point as I understand it at least it has been well based on what we know is like the idea is that you're bringing the PC to the living room. Yeah. >> So and yeah they can certainly hive off part of the OS and create like a super like uh optimized section just just for Xbox stuff. But I think the whole point here is that um they've they will create a box that just runs PC games, right? And that's hugely beneficial to them, I think, because that also potentially solves the whole like Xbox support problem, >> right? >> Because the issue here is that on current Xbox OS, you have to make a a dedicated version for Xbox. But if this plays out as we hope it might, essentially, you just have to optimize your PC game to like support maybe custom configurations for Xbox similar to the way the Steam Deck has. Or maybe not. Maybe you don't even need to do that. Depends on the game. But the idea is that even if you don't optimize for the system, you should still be able to get it going on your Xbox. I assume anything sold on Microsoft Store through Game Pass will have that optimization like designed to be like a simple console-like experience, but the the point here is that you have the freedom to do whatever the heck you want. >> Mhm. >> And that's that's kind of what we're thinking they want to go for. And I think that's really cool. and find. But I guess the question is is how this is going to be presented to the audience and like how you're going to be able to do this. I think it would behoove them to create something that is a little bit more like higherend user in a similar again to the way the Steam Deck is and where the Steam machine might be where you have a simple layer that anyone can use but if you want to dig in deeper you can just use it as a PC you can. Um, and I think that creates a compelling thing that's that is potentially more interesting to tinkerers than the traditional console. Uh, and they could serve a slightly different audience as a result. And like I said, you don't have to worry about this the compatibility for the specific hardware platform. So, it just kind of potentially solves a lot of problems that they have right now. Uh, okay. So, here's a question from Norby. Greetings, DFers. Exclamation point. long-term follower, shorttime subscriber, and first-time commenter here. Any nowadays, everyone is talking about the sudden changes within the Xbox camp. With all the other changes happening, not just in the gaming industry, do you see it as viable that Microsoft would partially change its focus to work on a lower spec, quote unquote, Steam Machine competitor in terms of better spec and a lower price? I'm hoping for a compact Series S lookalike. I love the design of Series S, but with specs strong enough not to hold back the nextG. What are your thoughts? Thanks, and keep up the good work. Um, Oliver, what are your thoughts? >> I'm not totally sure what the outcome that Microsoft wants is. If they're aiming for like a mass market device, if they're aiming for broad market share, if they even want that as a platform holder, I'm not totally sure because Magnus is really aiming towards a much higherend system. So, I'm not sure that this is something that Microsoft would want to do. I think it's something that would would potentially be viable. Obviously, everyone has access to the AMD part spin that Valve rumaged through. Anyone can uh can get those technologies or maybe not I couldn't but certainly Microsoft could >> you could you get them from Amazon >> get them from >> bits of it. >> Well that's certainly true. I mean Rich has Rich has done a bit of that. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit in the future. But um yeah I mean in terms of better specs and a lower price than the Steam Machine. Well, we don't know what the price of the Steam Machine is at the moment. So that's kind of a hard question to answer. But uh yeah, I think I think it mostly comes down to what what is Microsoft interested in with their next generation Xbox? Is it to create a Halo product, help standardize the PC gaming industry, or is it to create a mass market box that like drives all their third party OEMs out of business? I'm not I don't think it's the latter. I think it's more the former, at least from what we've seen so far. Um and Valve will have to pick up that lower-end box, although exactly how low-end and how cheap that box is remains to be seen. Yeah, I think it's basically a case of what is this strategic partnership with AMD all about? Um, they're talking about a range of devices there, right, which could potentially include um your lower-end machine in the form of like AMD APU, uh, which have been getting progressively more and more powerful over time. And maybe by the time the next generation comes around, you know, they've got a really good APU coming out that is Xbox compatible. Maybe they'll have like well they will have a stricks Halo successor that might actually fit the bill there which isn't quite Magnus but sort of sits in between and has Xbox compatibility. We just don't really know what this strategic partnership with AMD is about beyond them creating the um silicon for Magnus or whatever the next generation Xbox is going to be. Um anything to add John? No, I mean there's just still a lot of question marks in the air about what they want to achieve here and I think everyone's very curious because they're not leaving the market, but they're clearly changing what they're doing >> and we don't know what that's going to look like. >> Uh so yeah, I'm I'm interested either way. I'm happy they're doing something. >> Um okay, let's move on. Question here from Teasing Hilarity. A warm greeting of sorts to you all. Exclamation point. Uh, I love your work and I'm pleased to have very recently become a newly minted supporter. With Recreum's impressive Switch 2 port, we have another example of a modern game being brought to the Switch 2 with a range of cuts whilst only using DLSS to bridge the gap, impressively so. Granted, does this indicate that Switch 2's other capabilities, notably hardware RT, are too limited in performance terms for use in practice? or is it more a case of developers needing to design for their use from the outset rather than trying to scale games based on CPU GPU RAM capacities? On a related tangent, this is also a pertinent question in the more relevant UE5 space where Nanite and Lumen are extremely supported in switch to hardware at current UE5 optimization levels. Um, interesting point, right Oliver? I don't think Resident Evil Recquum is probably the best example of that based on the fact that the current gen console versions don't have RT either. >> Yeah. Well, that's very troubling. Well, except for the PS5 Pro, of course, as as John featured. But yeah, the fact that Resident Evil Recreum doesn't have RA tracing on those mainstream consoles really tells you all all you really need to know about its potential scalability for use in the Switch 2. Um I think that we have a pretty clear answer this to this question in the sense that you know you have a Star Wars Outlaws which looks good runs well good good enough image quality good enough performance certainly good enough performance and it's using two ray tracing effects at similar quality in many respects in some cases even better respects than series s that seems like a pretty comprehensive question or rather a pretty comprehensive answer to this question in terms of could these techniques be used in real time in a real shipping game advanced title AAA title it absolutely Good. We also have Layers of Fear, which we don't think uses hardware retracing. We think it uses SDF based software retracing. Um, it's obviously a U5 title. Very limited in some respects, but it does target 60 fps and does hit 60 fps a lot of the time. That's very exciting. Um, in terms of games that aren't just ports, designing from the ground up would always be a solution. I can imagine a version of, you know, Luigi's Mansion 4. I don't know that title's in development, but presuming it is, supposing that it is, you know, relying heavily on rate trace reflections or rate trace shadows and other rate traced effect and just budgeting for that effect from the ground up. I'm sure that will always be an option. In terms of the Unreal Engine 5 question, you know, Nan is very stressful on bandwidth. Um, Lumin is very CPU intensive to build the SDFs, build the BBHs. Um, I think there's like it's it's it's really an open question at this point as to whether any AAA games will be able to work on Switch 2 under the constraints of Switch 2 with all those technologies plus VSSM. Um, I'm not sure it's going to happen. Obviously, Epic has the radiance cache lumen luminance radiance cache that is that seems like it produces acceptable visual quality and seems like it could work. The rest is kind of an open question and I think the recent cancellation indefinite delay to Borderlands 4 on Switch 2 suggests that there's some remaining friction here potentially. And and it also suggests I think that the lack of major AAA Unreal Engine 5 sitting switch 2 isn't just a coincidence. There's probably some fire in that smoke so to speak. >> Mhm. Yeah. John, it's got to be said though that DLSS has been a real gamecher for Switch 2. In a way, I think we probably underestimated. Um, when you think about Resident Evil, you know, essentially 540p docked looking good on a big screen and um producing better image quality than the Series S with like 56% of the internal resolution. Kind of nutty, isn't it? >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's very smart because it very specifically solves this problem in that one of the easiest ways to buy back a lot of performance when you're GPU limited is to drop the resolution, right? And Series S is all about that as well. Uh but because of DLSS, they're able to claim a lot of image quality back essentially using this hardware feature. And it is indeed working as one would hope. I think even more is the the portable one being more around 360p. Yes. because on the actual screen it looks like impressively sharp. >> Yeah. >> But uh so I do think it's very important to leverage DLSS but it is like when he he specifically talks about ray tracing here and we have seen some cool examples obviously like outlaws right Star Wars Outlaws which retains that but Star Wars Outlaws Resident Evil and various others one of them more interesting. So, Series S would usually pair back things like textures due to lack of memory, but but switch 2 seems to not only drop that, but we always see reductions in polygon models as well, >> which I think might be also an issue of uh limited memory bandwidth, right? Like streaming all those vertices per frame is not cheap. You know, there's also less room for a lot of high-res textures and geometry that you can do at the speed you need in addition to all the normal power power and thermal limits and all that, right? So, reducing geometry has been something that is fascinating to me. And when done well, it's actually pretty uh seamless. Like Star Wars Outlaws is a great example. If you actually look at any of the background detail, you realize, wait, like all the rounding and detail that was in every other version, it's just like reduced, but it's not in a way that it's like makes it look bad. It's something where you really have to do a comparison and then you start to notice these like drops in detail. And that to me shows like supremely impressive efforts from the developer where they're essentially like solving for this problem. Um, and Capcom does this too. like it's almost hard to tell until you compare it, but all the models are simplified, right? >> Uh and there is an option in the PC version, which also that kind of optimization has benefit for the PC version, right? Because that also means that now your game can target portable PCs and lower spec PCs as well. So you get a double whammy there, both benefiting Switch 2 and PC. Um, so it's it's fun to see the ways in which developers are exploiting the Switch or taking advantage of the Switch 2 to optimize their games to run on them while still producing results that seem comparable. And I think there's specifically something like DLS especially is the tool that Switch One lacked, right? >> Switch One had no recourse for this. If you needed to run it at a lower resolution, like you look at Vulenstein uh too on there, right? They had to drop the resolution very very low. It was like 360p or worse or something in dock mode, I think. Like it was very low, but there was no solution to get it back up. There was no way to recover those pixels. So, you just ended up with this like ultra smeary uh taa look. And now DLSS basically solves that for us. And I think this is going to continue to be the secret weapon for uh the Switch 2. And it's not as good as what we have now, you know, with the transformer model, the modern DLSS's. It's the older CNN model and everything. And it's, you know, also there's multiple there's even the lower uh the the less demanding version of a tiny DLSS, but all of them are still awesome. Like older DLSS was already great. It's gotten better, but it was already great. And what we're seeing on Switch 2, like you look at Resi9, it's good. It's really good. It's funny you mentioned 360p because the thought of 360p in the original Switch. I mean, we had that number a lot of other similar numbers come up pretty often and it was kind of like a necktie tightening moment there on the original Switch cuz it looked miserable. But now, >> you know, hearing 360p on the Switch 2, if it's in the context of using DLSS, specifically the CNN DLSS, it's not bad at all. It's actually looks perfectly good in some cases. looks very competitive with other handhelds, better than other handhelds. So, I I actually think it could go probably go lower than 360p at Dural. I'm sure we'll see some of that and actually produce an acceptable looking image, although I'm not encouraging anyone to do so necessarily. Actually, as a funny thing, I was playing with Steam NextFest demos this weekend and I loaded up Super Meat Boy 3D and for whatever reason, it default I switched to TSR. It didn't have it just had like FXA, TSR, nothing else, right? So I turn on TS TSR the epic solution and for whatever reason it defi it it does it started from 10% rendering resolution. So, since I was at 2160p, it was 216p. And uh it just turned into like a painterly. It looked like some sort of like like I don't know like an art project. Like it was trying so hard to take that 216p and turn it into something, but it was just like a weird shimmery mess of like pixels that looked like not actually the game. And it's it's funny to see when you push these upscalers to the limits, but I think DLSS handle would handle 216P better than TSR >> probably. Uh well, I'm just going to round this off by invoking the doctrine of Chad Warden. We ain't doing geometry, just trying to play some games. >> Games. >> Yeah. And that's sort of pretty much summed up by by the switch too there. Final question. Anxiously followed figured asks, "Hey DF crew, time to read some old tea leaves." Exclamation point. What if Microsoft had gone with an Nvidia GPU for the series generation? Would have made the architecture quite different from PS5s and maybe given them a few aces up their sleeve. Wast way stronger rate tracing, great image quality and perhaps some other unique features along the way. Curious to hear your thoughts. Uh exclamation point. Cheers exclamation point. That's an interesting idea. I think you're looking at a very very different machine though. Probably would have had some backwards compatibility uh concerns to address there. um probably would have needed an ARM CPU because they would have been going for SOC there. Uh but uh oh there could have also been process node issues because um um obviously Turing was on like a 12 nanometer pro uh process. I guess they moved to um Samsung 8 nanometer for um Ampair which is about the same time. >> Uh it would have been a very different machine. It would have been uh a chance for developers to incorporate more PC features. I think you would have had DLSS which would have been a gamecher. I think ultimately though it was probably an option that wasn't available to to them logistically for many many reasons. So I don't know what you think there. >> Yeah I mean there are a lot of questions that would be open on that. Um one question would be just who builds the SOC or who designs the SOC I suppose. I mean also who builds it what what process is it manufactured on but you know is Nvidia really equipped to deliver like a fully integrated CPU GPU design? Do they have the engineering resources to pull that off? Obviously, they do with the Tegra products, but can they spare that for this kind of design? I'm not sure. Um, do they split CPU and GPU? That's another possibility, although you're going back to like the bad old days of seventh gen consoles, and that introduces problems for cost scaling things like this. The CPU architecture is another open question because ARM CPU architectures are pretty good in 2026. In 2020, 2019, this kind of era, they were relatively weak relative to x86 processors. So that would be a concern especially when the your compet competing console has such a massive improvement in CPU capability. Um backwards compatibility issues obviously and then and then another trance trunch of issues which I just think come down to the fact that Xbox is like the minority console platform going into that generation they probably do not have an expectation that even in their wildest dreams that they'd beat PS5 into the ground or something. They were probably hoping to draw level or at least compete reasonably against PS5, which they have not really done this generation. But regardless, um it adds complication for developers and makes crossplatform games less viable in that situation, which is a little dicey if you're sitting there as like the minority console shareholder and you're on a totally different architecture. Um I I certainly think the situation nowadays might be actually a little bit worse if they were to have, you know, 30 million Xboxes sold and and be in this position with a totally different architecture. Um, on the flip side though, you you know, DLSS, rate tracing, acceleration, all that good stuff. I think I think you end up with an architecture that interestingly can kind of do a lot of the things that we see with PS5 Pro with PSSR2 in 2026, but in 2020 has a lot of those fundamental capabilities. I don't expect that it would be as fast in raster obviously, but at least it can play in that ballpark where it feels at the moment like Series X and PlayStation 5 are not really there. Um, but also correspondingly, you know, if you're building a game like Avatar for PlayStation 5 consoles, you're you're not going to be pushing out rate tracing fidelity necessarily to the upeenth degree on Series X because you're designing on the lowest common denominator, which at that point would be PlayStation. And then there's the whole what does Series S look like in that situation. That's also you know just I don't know I don't know what that would look like and uh you'd have to achieve very good cost scaling in their console too. So a lot of open questions in that one. >> Yeah I think it's one of these things one of these whatifs where you can think about the positives right with the benefit of hindsight but at the time you know there's stuff like the GDK where um Xbox was unifying console PC and you know crossgen development under one development environment. I don't think that would have been anywhere near as viable as it was using an Nvidia uh GPU. There's also, I think, uh still lingering questions over who owns the IP uh which was I think of the disagreement that happened with the OG Xbox. I don't think um uh Nvidia want to I think they're okay licensing, but they don't want to actually sign away the rights to the IP. Um thoughts, John? All I got to say is while it's a fun thought experiment, it's it's it doesn't make sense. Hardware isn't the issue for Xbox. The Xbox Series X is a great console. It's a really really great piece of hardware. That's not why it's struggling, right? >> Okay. >> It's clearly everything else around it. That's the problem. So, I think just having a more powerful box, but still the same kind of experience would have done absolutely nothing, >> right? I actually think it would have made sense more for uh the upcoming Xbox if there is this >> that would have made a lot more sense. >> If you're looking at alignment with the PC market, >> um that kind of makes a bit more sense. I also think there's, you know, probably uh they would have had a lot more time to develop um that that sort of system um if they sort of consciously made a decision to uh move away from AMD a lot earlier in the generation. Um, so yeah, there's interesting >> that would also create an interesting thing because in a way like they're kind of you feel like they're competing with Valve's work, right? And the Steam Machine stuff and and Valve is >> the Steam machine and Linux are generally pretty rooted in AMD still. Like Nvidia stuff's getting better, but like Nvidia is generally not the recommended route for that. Whereas if Microsoft has partnered with Nvidia, it'd be like Nvidia plus Windows versus Linux plus AMD and create an interesting sort of like uh battle there. >> Yeah, absolutely. Interesting though, nonetheless. Uh but that was the final question there for the end of the show. 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We've now split the DF Direct Supporter Q+A section into its own show! Want to get involved? Join the DF Supporter Program, support the team, join us in our amazing community: https://bit.ly/3jEGjvx Update: Sony has been in touch to say that the new PSSR "is based on the co-developed super resolution algorithm from Project Amethyst, not on FSR 4. AMD has taken the results of the co-development into FSR 4, while we've taken them into the new PSSR." In the third Q+A show, the DF team have lots to discuss - there's a bunch of big questions on the "PSSR2" reveal and we can share what we think about what's to come next month. Meanwhile, in the wake of Phil Spencer's departure from Xbox, there are many more queries about the nature of the next-gen machine and Microsoft's strategy. But there's more! Are we already seeing the limits of Switch 2 RT and what if Microsoft had partnered with Nvidia for Xbox Series machinery - could that have changed the outcome of the console "war"...? Visit The DF Website: https://digitalfoundry.net Go here to check out DF merch! https://store.digitalfoundry.net Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe 00:55 Supporter Q1: What games are you excited to test with the new PSSR? 06:14 Supporter Q2: Is the new PSSR override a game-changer for PS5 Pro? 10:39 Supporter Q3: With new PSSR imminent, why won’t AMD release their INT 8 version of FSR 4? 14:41 Supporter Q4: Can DF remain fair and impartial on new PSSR? 20:38 Supporter Q5: Will Windows on next-gen Xbox be ‘full-fledged’? 24:20 Supporter Q6: Should Microsoft change tack on next gen Xbox and release a Series S replacement? 27:25 Supporter Q7: Is ray tracing on Switch 2 too much for AAA games like Resident Evil: Requiem? 36:36 Supporter Q8: What would Xbox Series look like if Microsoft had opted for Nvidia tech over AMD?