DF Direct Q+A: Will AMD Deliver Its Own DLSS 5? Will CD Projekt RED Bring Back The RED Engine?

Richard Leadbetter (0:02)

Hello there, and welcome to the latest edition of the DF Direct Q&A show. You ask questions, we provide answers to the best of our ability. It really is that simple.

Joining me to go through some of these questions today, first of all, Joel Inman, hello.

Joel Inman (0:17)

You got questions, we got answers, maybe.

Richard Leadbetter (0:21)

Possibly.

Joel Inman (0:22)

Possibly, we'll try.

Richard Leadbetter (0:22)

Baseless Conjecture, Educated Gatsies, a whole bunch of stuff, possibly some answers. Also joining me, of course, Oliver McKenzie, hello.

Oliver McKenzie (0:32)

Yes, Rich, I like to sit between baseless conjecture and uneducated answer myself.

Richard Leadbetter (0:39)

Right, okay. Yeah, it's probably the best position to be in.

Okay, right, yes, before we crack on, just a shout out to the DF Supporter Program, patreon.com, slash digital foundry. Early access to a bunch of stuff, early access to DF Direct, the chance to pose the questions for this particular show, a bunch of stuff going on there, ad free website, ad free video downloads, all good stuff. Okay, so our first question, well, there's a bunch of questions actually in the wake of the launch of Dlss 5 It's actually not so much questions concerning the quality level. I think at this point, you know, quite subjective, different people think different things, people coming to their own conclusions, and we've actually only, of course, only actually seen one proper game. The rest is all modding. But yeah, very interesting questions here coming nonetheless. Going to start with this one from Skyrim 26 FPS Edition. How do you think AMD should respond to Dlss 5? Do they need their own version or should they approach the next leap forward in graphics quality in a different way? Is there a different way? That's a pretty good question. Brute forcing it through selling more silicon felt unrealistic even before AI hoovered it all up.

Yeah, this question from CarVox. Bonjour, DF Crew, in the wake of the launch of Dlss 5, I'm curious where AMD goes from here, given FSR is quote unquote behind Dlss. Does the panel think AMD will move to mimic Nvidia or continue on their own path? Thinking out loud, the frame time cost and delicate hand required to implement likely means few games will implement natively without Nvidia support. Then there is consoles, Nintendo aside, being AMD units as well. Will this feature realistically see significant adoption for developers if it requires that much potential oversight and resourcing? Merci! Exclamation point. Going back to Skyrim Vest 26 FPS Edition, what would you want to see from a Dlss version 2? Do you think there is a ceiling with what seems to be a screen space finishing pass could offer?

Do you think a version 2 might be improved by passing game engine data more relevant to its task rather than it relying on information designed to help with upscaling? There is a broad range of topics here, but fundamentally, I'm going to go to you first on this one, John. I mean, where do you think the competing vendors in the graphics space are going to go with this?

Because fundamentally, as has been pointed out, it does seem to be the case that we've got a clear pattern that's been established at this point, which is that Nvidia produces a PC-based technology, and Intel and AMD produce their own variants of it. Do you think it's the same thing that's going to be happening here or something different?

Joel Inman (3:19)

Yeah, I suspect that we'll see more GPUs taking this approach. I mean, just this morning, I was reading an article about Inside the Arm Mali G2 Ultra NX GPU, where they talk about this sort of exact thing. So they're doing it. There's no reason to believe that Intel and AMD are not also looking at this.

But I'll be curious to see how far this goes, what this is used in. I'm still skeptical that a screen space style solution is the best approach for game rendering. I almost, I was thinking the other day, if we're in a stage similar to when we first got things like screen space ambient occlusion back in Crisis One, where essentially they were trying to solve a problem that was still, the computational cost was still too high to do it in any other way. So these screen space solutions ended up being a good option. And I'm kind of feeling like that might also be the case here. And that doesn't mean that neural rendering can't still be used in other ways. But I'm wondering if this is sort of like a stopgap, where it's a way to get some of those advances, but they're applying it in this specific screen space way.