this still mysterious technology could be good for video games

Ahead of its official announcement next month, Microsoft is clarifying things regarding DirectSR, which does not intend to compete with Nvidia, AMD and Intel in the upscaling field.

We have been talking to you for several weeks about Microsoft’s DirectSR project which will be revealed next month during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024. After several leaks, many observers (including ourselves) were talking about an upscaling solution. home to compete with those of Nvidia, AMD and Intel.

But it seems that it is quite different if we are to believe an article published yesterday on the Microsoft blog dedicated to its DirectX API and its developers.

DirectSR, one API to rule them all

In this article, Microsoft announces the program for its presence at the GDC and visibly wants to clarify the objective of DirectSR ahead of its official announcement on March 21.

DirectSR will actually be an API made available to game developers under DirectX 12, facilitating the integration of existing solutions on the market:

This API enables multi-vendor Super Resolution through a common set of inputs and outputs, allowing a single code path to enable a variety of solutions, including NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution , and Intel XeSS.

If Nvidia, AMD and Intel often send their developers to studios to accelerate the integration and optimization of their own technologies, an API like DirectSR could be beneficial for smaller studios.

Integrating upscaling technologies into a video game is actually quite easy in engines like Unity or Unreal Engine, with manufacturers providing plugins and SDKs accessible for free.

What about the usefulness for players?

With DirectSR, you can expect even more games supporting image reconstruction technologies, which offer notable performance gains with minimal impact on image quality depending on the solution.

But who could use the option “Automatic Super Resolution» spotted in a preview version of Windows 11 at the beginning of the month? This promises to use “AI to make games smoother”, like DLSS and XeSS.

While many laptops planned this year will integrate an NPU, a chip accelerating AI-related tasks, we wonder if this mysterious option is indeed a proprietary technology for Windows, or simply an activation of the solutions supported by the card. player graphic.

There is therefore still a lot of unknown in Microsoft’s plans and we hope that everything will become clearer from next month when DirectSR is officially announced.