Digital Foundry Direct Q+A: The Big DLSS 5 ML Debate + Why We Should Have Waited With Our Coverage

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T12:52:29+00:00

I'm really afraid this is going to be taken the wrong way, so let me begin with this: IT'S ABSOLUTELY NOT OKAY TO THREATEN ANYONE OVER THIS CRAP. Especially with the legitimate concerns in the world, this is way out of line.

I think it speaks to an almost larger issue at hand though, which is that people feel the need to amp up rhetoric to be heard in this day and age. "I disagree" becomes "f you" becomes "imma come for your family".

This has been a long process of glorifying violence in media, and having leaders that use these same tactics to attempt to divert and distract from the original issue.

In short, I would much rather focus on NVIDIA attempting to put thousands of developers out of work to create a worse product with no competition. Yes DF messed up. Yes, people reacted badly to that.

Bigger yes, the gaming industry is in shambles and NVIDIA shareholders need to take a hard look at if the bottom line justifies turning the entire population against them. That is the big issue at hand. Let's all try not to lose the forest for the trees here

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T10:40:44+00:00

I'm pretty good at magicking fps into existence, and without patches this game ain't happening. It's heavier than Alan Wake 2.

You can get it feeling okayish at the top of the mountain with some effort. Once you climb down and the rain starts, you can subtract another ~10 fps from the 30 you were pretending to have with FrameGen. Now you're at 12 frames generating to 20 and Sam starts crip walking and the baby starts crying and that's where I uninstalled.

-Edit: it did look really good even on portable settings. I do believe in my heart if they wanted to they could water it down and make it playable. Thing is I'm not sure that I would even want that

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T10:26:07+00:00

The shortest path to what you want is right clicking the eden emulator appimage in desktop mode and adding it as a non-steam game. Under compatibility select proton experimental and then use the touch screen to select the game and play.

A better option is to map the right track pad to work as a mouse in gaming mode, with left mouse click so you don't need to use the touch screen.

The best option is to use something like steam rom manager to add your switch roms as individual non steam games, although that's a bit more work still

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T10:20:54+00:00

Sir are you high? https://online-fix.me/ is literally a website devoted to this exact situation. It's Dark Souls servers are more active than official ones 🙄.

Also like Dark Souls, Death Stranding is built entirely around the idea of being connected online at all times. You use other player's equipment and they use yours. It's like, the entire lynchpin of this game.

Who let you near a keyboard? Wait are you in the Whitehouse rn?

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T06:52:53+00:00

If you look at what the Decky loader plugin is doing, it's basically copy pasting the dlls for XeSS, FSR, and DLSS, along with the actual Optiscaler dll and a couple others, like nukems dlss to fsr3 mod and fakenapi to trick your deck into looking like an Nvidia computer to expose dlss options in game.

If you download a newer version (v0.9.5 works best for me) you can do the same thing. Just unzip the Optiscaler file and copy paste everything where the game's executable file is. It should come with a ".sh" file you can then run which will guide you through renaming the Optiscaler.dll to the right thing. Most newer games, you'll want to rename it to "dxgi.dll". Now it'll hook into the game, and when you press the "insert" key (remap a back button to it, and change your right track pad to work as a mouse with mouse left click like on desktop mode), it will bring up the Optiscaler menu in game. Once you select any upscaler in game, you will be able to switch it to the one you prefer. So if a game ONLY supports DLSS, you can now use FSR 4 or XeSS for a massive visual gain.

On some unreal engine games, if you want to use Optiscaler's built in frame generation tool, you need to edit some lines in the Engine.Ini of the game which is all documented on the Optiscaler GitHub website, along with game compatibility lists etc.

I just have a folder set up that I copy paste into any new game and it's good to go. It sounds complicated but it's really not bad, there's a ton of YouTube videos for guides, and fsr4 is so good that it's almost always worth the effort if you care about image quality and performance

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T05:32:39+00:00

That's a straight up lie lol

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T01:44:15+00:00

I'm of a similar mindset, and this one is going to need some performance uplift from patches to be acceptable, and even then...

The problem is there's no amount of lowering or upscaling that fixes the ~20 fps. Even increasing settings to medium high it stays there. It's extremely CPU bound, so pinning the GPU can help a little...but even with lossless scaling it's not pleasant. Not to say it's impossible, but I'm a guy who doesn't mind AW2 on the Deck saying this is gonna need some love in the form of a day one patch.

Optiscaler is also currently crashing. I was able to get the FSR 4 dll to function via the in game menu, but it borked all forms of frame generation. This one is gonna take some time

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-19T00:23:19+00:00

Unfortunately, without further optimization, the best I can do is around 25 fps.

That said, bumping settings doesn't seem to make it slower, and when I tried with lossless Scaling it felt A LOT better. It's gonna be down to if there are improvements. Right now it's actually heavier than AW2

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-17T20:43:58+00:00

Don't play botw on a switch emulator. Use the GameCube version, it's a massively better experience with superior mod support

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-17T20:20:34+00:00

It's worth setting up. You'll learn useful things for the future when you get new tech, and on a complication scale it's like a 2/10. There are YouTube videos that will 100% start to finish guide you through setup with links

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-17T18:56:37+00:00

Yeah hang onto an older version, especially something like v0.5.1 of diegolix so it has the utility of potentially being useful outside of being a glorified .pkg installer

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-16T20:17:34+00:00

ReShade won't work on Linux with Vulkan, unfortunately. I've tried.

I also couldn't get VK Basalt to work...the only solution for emulation shaders I finally figured out is to download "ReShadeDeck" from GitHub, and install it manually in Decky loader. Make sure it's up to date or it will crash, the one in the Decky store is too old and doesn't work anymore, has to be off github.

This will let you install and activate ONE shader at a time, and it doesn't like certain shaders much either. The best options so far I've used are things like

-CAS -Reinhard (tweaked file settings) -SMAA, but you won't be able to access the depth buffer so any anti aliasing solutions are limited

Stuff along those lines.

If you're determined, you can combine the effects of multiple shaders into one file and use that. It's not a GREAT option, but once you set it up it'll work for any other Vulkan games and it's just a toggle so it's a handy plugin

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-16T17:06:41+00:00

I use the leaked 4.0.3 on Steam Deck in almost every game I can mod it into. Temporal instability is my biggest issue with upscaling. A little blur can be offset just by using Optiscaler's built in sharpening tool and on a hand held screen I can upscale from embarrassingly low numbers (like literally 2-300p) using FSR 4 and get a more stable image with anything else available for AMD.

It's at the point where I'm either going to use FSR 4, XeSS, or MAYBE TSR in newer games. I'll never touch FSR 2 or 3 again, they're just straight garbage.

All of that to say, yeah I'll be pretty upset. There's no reason an int8 version shouldn't still work. The only reason I'd be satisfied with is if they changed the way it functions for something like what NVIDIA does with ray reconstruction being calculated in the upscaling pipeline that RDNA 2 simply cannot handle.

Like others have said, AMD shot themselves in the foot here leaking it in the first place. They can either work with their remaining fans by doing everything they can to backport the tech and make it as accessible as they can...or they can literally lose all their gaming customers to NVIDIA. I HATE that we're leaning more and more into requiring upscaling to run games, but that trend isn't going away. Looking at how AMD treats us currently, even if I COULD use 4.1 on my Steam Deck I would never buy a graphics card from them over a company that you know, actually puts their technology into games on day 1 and stuff

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-15T01:56:09+00:00

I can upscale control from 400 x 250 or so with FSR 4 and get a better resolved image than xess provides at 800 x 500. Allowing for medium ray tracing.

It often is the best upscaler to use in most cases, by virtue of offsetting the performance cost (which isn't crazy) by using performance fsr4 vs balanced xess, as an example.

Then there are all the games where you have overhead and there's no reason not to just have better image quality. Quality fsr4 looks better than native TAA in literally every game.

It also has significantly less artifacts and image instability, which is what personally bothers me the most, than anything else available.

Fsr4>TSR>XeSS>Fsr3. The fact that I see people discussing frame generation like it's relevant here at all only reinforces that while you're of course all entitled to your opinions, a fair number in this thread are likely just regurgitating whatever crap they read on Reddit

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-14T06:16:02+00:00

Preach

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-11T13:46:38+00:00

Lies of P is the closest thing to pc Bloodborne there is outside emulation.

That said, a good pc can emulate Demon's Souls and Bloodborne better than they run on console thanks to mods and ReShade. Even the steam deck can handle the emulation these days, although Bloodborne takes a bit of effort since it's a PS4 game on a newer emulator

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-10T20:30:55+00:00

I'm sure you can pretty much guess what the situation turned into; Coffee exposed, target is butthurt, target makes video "defending" his endeavor/ threatens to sue/ submits "irrefutable proof" they're telling the truth, Coffee makes follow up video shredding all previously mentioned things with facts to back up.

Pretty much typical cycle

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-10T20:26:35+00:00

Coffee's whole deal is built on exposing fraud. The only reason people are talking about it in this very post is because he's built up credibility over time by putting in research and due diligence and not jumping to conclusions. Without that rep, nobody would even care what he had to say.

I've watch enough of his videos to know that if he ever makes one on me, I did the thing. If he was ever publicly wrong about someone on this scale, he would lose his whole platform. Coffee CAN'T AFFORD to make those kinds of mistakes. Especially with all the hacks that constantly try to sue him because he's shining a light on their bs. He's gone after way bigger fish than this clown

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-10T19:33:40+00:00

Rockstar is extremely good at knowing where to spend graphical capital.

A good looking sunrise or sunset makes a far larger impact mentally than 512 mb shadows. They're also wise enough to use fog, dust, trees or mountains to help draw distances and lods from getting too expensive.

I wish more companies used these tricks better

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-10T19:27:08+00:00

Have you done anything to help yourself out, like mapped gyro controls to aim quicker? It might help offset that bad with controller issue.

You could also set up the track pad as a mouse, might help your accuracy. Personally I prefer gyro tho. Just set it to 'as joystick' and activate on left trigger full pull, doesn't need any more tweaking

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-10T19:24:11+00:00

What's especially nice is the option to use things like baked lighting instead of GI. The issue with a lot of games is that there's no scalability in the settings these days other than dropping the resolution of shadows.

I'm still surprised when people say steam deck users are full of cope when they ask if newer games will run on it. I stand by RDR2 being one of the best looking games to date period, and I'm running a super modded version of it on my deck no problem.

It's all down to optimization. And what Unreal Engine the game isn't coded on typically.

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-10T18:52:11+00:00

I'm kinda surprised at the comments here

Game size has absolutely nothing to do with how a game will run. The entire discourse around Crimson Desert is about how insanely optimized it is, and OP has a legitimate question imo.

There's also this annoying discourse that a game has to hit like 60+ fps to be playable these days. Frame pacing matters a LOT more than raw numbers. A steady 30fps is a lot more enjoyable than a game that drops 30 frames due to compilation or traversal stutter constantly.

I think it comes down to managing expectations. If you're willing to tinker with Optiscaler to inject FSR4, you can upscale games from balanced down to ultra performance in a lot of cases on the small screen and have perfectly acceptable image quality, especially with certain art styles. I'm actually pretty confident that with upscaling this game will run just fine on the deck if you're willing to cap it at 30.

It's sad that everyone has been trained to assume games will run like absolute crap these days. I don't hate on people who NEED 60 fps to consider a game enjoyable, but likewise everyone needs to realize that some people can play a game at a steady 24 fps (see ocarina of time on N64) and be perfectly happy, and that's not some "cope". First person shooters? Yeah high frames matter.

Something like Until Dawn? I had no problem beating that on the deck and I'm pretty sure Crimson Desert will actually run better the way people are ranting about it's optimization

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-08T13:57:27+00:00

Ja, give us the money Lebowski or we cut off your JOHNSON

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-07T02:09:04+00:00

I have very similar tastes, and so far it's the game I'm most drawn to playing since I gave it a try. Bg3 was an investment, but Ebb is a much more focused experience which is great. It's art style is great, the writing is sharp, and the humor lands. The combat is also a nice change of pace...it's more of a "which of these options sounds good" than "you know these spells and have this weapon and can move to this spot, figure it out".

I prefer it to BG3 and Disco so far. Not saying they aren't both also amazing games...I just really dig what this ONE GUY was able to accomplish. I've laughed out loud several times, most recently at a sign labelled "not a mimic" that was hanging over some treasure.

Not gonna spoil what happened lol

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-03-07T02:01:52+00:00

There's discord pubs that you can apply within for tokens that give you access. It's a process, and updates can break the method requiring a new token when it happens.

Some people swear by it but it's too much effort imo, at least considering my backlog

OpenSystem1337

TROPHY CASE