Microsoft DirectSR Now Available In GPU Drivers: Enabling Easy AMD FSR, NVIDIA DLSS & Intel XeSS Super Resolution Support For DX12 Games

Microsoft's DirectSR technology is now available as a preview, making super-resolution tech support such as NVIDIA, DLSS, AMD FSR & Intel XeSS easy.

Back in February, Microsoft introduced DirectSR "DirectX Super Resolution", a technology that aimed to make integration of super-resolution upscaler within games easier. Today, the technology is finally available as a preview and supported by multiple vendors such as NVIDIA, AMD & Intel through GPU drivers.

The list of upscaling "Super Resolution" technologies is growing very quickly as it has become the new means to boost FPS in games while delivering similar or better image quality. While GPU vendors themselves are providing the necessary tools and software stacks to make sure that their technologies see wider support within games, there's still somewhat of a disparity that separates each tech from the others. Certain games might use one scaler & leave the rest while some games may feature all 3 upscaling technologies but only one would look the best. So to overcome these drawbacks, Microsoft's DirectSR is here to save the day as one API to do it all.

We went into a bit more detail on the specifics of DirectSR here and how developers can use it by providing a list of common inputs for the algorithm.

According to Microsoft, native supported is provided for DirectSR through GPU drivers and there's also built-in support for GPU-agnostic variants (available on an application level). As a start, DirectSR will be available with built-in support for AMD's FSR 2.2 technology while driver-level support with be provided for both NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS technologies.

Following is what the partners have to say about DirectSR:

“It was a pleasure to collaborate with Microsoft on the design and development of DirectSR as a way to unify developer access to super resolution technologies across all platforms. We are excited to have AMD FSR 2.2 delivered as a built-in implementation in DirectSR as part of this preview release.”

– Andrej Zdravkovic, Senior Vice President of GPU Technologies and Engineering Software, and Chief Software Officer at AMD

“Intel strongly endorses Microsoft’s DirectSR specification, and the collaborative efforts involved in its creation – it simplifies the lives of game developers and ensures more gamers will experience Intel’s XeSS up-scaling technology on Intel GPUs.”

– Alexander Kharlamov, Senior Director, Intel GPU Rendering

“NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution is available in over 400 titles and has become a standard feature for gamers. We are excited to give developers even more ways to bring DLSS to the next generation of games.” 

– Jason Paul, Vice President, GeForce Platform Marketing at NVIDIA

Microsoft DirectSR should make sure that we see increased and better support for super-resolution technologies within future games. The tech is now available via the Agility SDK 1.714.0-preview. You can find the latest Intel XeSS and NVIDIA DLSS "DirectSR" drives in the drivers here (31.0.101.5534) and here (560.38).