Though we’ve known about the existence of Microsoft’s DirectSR supersampling feature for some time, the jury’s been out on what, exactly, it might be. Now, thanks to a recent Microsoft blog, we finally know that it’s a comprehensive attempt at unifying all the disparate supersampling standards under a single banner.
Notably, while one of the previous theories was that Microsoft would end up offering something like a universal alternative to vendor-specific supersamplers on the operating system level, this isn’t the case. Instead, DirectSR is going to be a collaborative effort between Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to deliver a single implementation API that will “seamlessly” scale across the entire breadth of modern PC hardware. With FSR 2.2 used as the fallback technology in case you don’t have access to Nvidia’s DLSS or Intel’s XeSS, this may well be the universal supersampler solution we’ve been waiting for.
Microsoft DirectSR could be a huge deal for supersampling technologies
“DirectSR enables multi-vendor SR through a common set of inputs and outputs, allowing a single code path to exercise DLSS Super Resolution, FidelityFX™ Super Resolution, and XeSS,” said Microsoft’s program manager Joshua Tucker. In practice, what this means is that “developers can implement once and ship SR across the broad landscape of Windows devices!”
In other words, the situation where old, out-of-date games simply stop receiving new, hugely improved versions of their supported upscalers should soon be a thing of the past. Users will no longer have to manually switch out supersampler DLL files whenever an update is released. Instead, the feature will be universally supported at the driver level, readily accessible to any game that supports DirectSR.
“Today, DirectSR is shipping with built-in support for AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR) 2.2, along with driver level support for both Intel XeSS and NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution,” Tucker explained.
“This flexibility ensures DirectSR supports a diverse set of hardware environments, while still providing the optionality and quality that gamers enjoy today. But most exciting, this API allows users to select between the available upscalers at runtime depending on their underlying hardware. And the benefits don’t stop there – DirectSR itself is a standalone solution, meaning it removes the need to integrate vendor-specific SDKs or package vendor-specific libraries with your title. Integrating multi-vendor SR has never been easier!”
Naturally, it will take some time before we start seeing games with full DirectSR integration, but something like this has been a very long time coming. Microsoft DirectSR is now available in preview format, and developers will presumably begin implementing the standardized API as soon as their production pipelines allow for it.
The specifics of how this will all work and whether power users will still be able to tweak their upscalers to their hearts’ contents remain to be seen, but things are very much looking up this early on. In theory, DirectSR should lead to a situation where all supported games always have access to the latest and greatest version of FSR, DLSS, and XeSS, but time will tell how the standard pans out.
