Soundwave said:
Why would you ever run any game at native resolution on Switch 2 to begin with? There's no point when you have DLSS, undocked really never needs to go above 540p as far as I'm concerned. Yes native looks slightly better, but not good enough that it's worth forcing the system to render 4x the pixels. On top of that DLSS gives you basically a "free" form of anti-aliasing. Running at native + wasting resources on top of that for AA is just brain dead, in fact I would postulate that DLSS implementation is the automatic default for Switch 2 dev kits, the system will be designed to run with that on. |
1) DLSS is propriety, Nintendo would need a licence to use it on their console and that will potentially have a corresponding cost, whether Nintendo enables the technology remains to be seen.
2) DLSS would break backwards compatibility if Nintendo's next console (Aka. Switch 3) doesn't use nVidia technology.
3) DLSS gets it's best resolve with more data that you feed it, you will always introduce artifacts.
4) DLSS needs to be implemented by the developer, Nintendo doesn't get a choice in that, some developers will still prefer FSR or their own internal algorithms for upscaling. DLSS will be on a game-by-game basis.
So the better question is... Why hedge all your bets on DLSS?
DLSS isn't the magic answer for all things performance, it's not going to turn a Playstation 4 into a Playstation 4 Pro, doesn't work like that.
In the end, games and game engines will still use dynamic resolution scaling, but the UI will continue to sit at native output and look clean and sharp.
Soundwave said:
Especially on a freaking small 7-8 inch-ish display, the regular joe, even most "game enthusiast joes" are not really going to know or care that their game is actually only rendering from 540p, shit I think you could go even lower than that. |
The most notable improvement going from 720P to 1080P on a 7-8" screen is the reduction in general rendering artifacts like stair-stepping caused by aliasing.
Otherwise, I agree, the difference would be marginal... However not everything in a game runs at the native output resolution, many rendering aspects are done at half or quarter resolution, like Shadows... So they would see marked improvements running at a higher resolution.
So on a Switch 1 a quarter resolution shadow resolve with a 480P game would actually be 240P and you *do* notice that in a game as they are chunky blobs.
Soundwave said:
Yes you can move sliders around on PC games that have a performance overhead to "match" lower console settings, that doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying. I'm saying if the Steam Deck version of Ratchet & Clank runs at 30-40 fps, if Insomniac sat down with a team of 20-30 people who worked on the port for 6-7 months JUST for that one hardware, do I think they could get that up to a solid locked 40 fps and/or maybe even bump the settings from Low to Medium 30 fps ... yes, I do. Optimization does matter. |
No one builds games to the metal anymore, so you don't get that "hardware optimization" these days.
When was the last game you remember being built in assembly? ;) I rest my case.
It just doesn't happen due to:
1) Time.
2) Cost.
3) Marginal improvements as compilers these days are extremely good.
4) Compilers can optimize for certain hardware nuances and features.
5) Consoles aren't a single device. Xbox Series S and X, Playstation 5 and potentially a Pro console? Plus supporting the Xbox One and Playstation 4 and PC? Bit of a mess to optimize for.
PC also gets game optimizations, there is reason why nVidia, AMD and Intel release graphics drivers extremely frequently to optimize games for the PC.
Soundwave said:
Actually I will say 720p to 1440p DLSS does look great. It does look like you are playing something very close to real 1440p. |
It doesn't. As often the temporal information just isn't there for finer details like particles, hair etc'.
The best result you get with DLSS is run a game at your native resolution, then use DLSS on top to upscale, then downsample to your native resolution.
Soundwave said:
I've tried it and tested it on a 77 inch display, on a 27 inch PC monitor that I sit right in front of too, it looks great either way. I have larger displays in my house than "Joe Average" does. |
Then what do we call the smallest display in my home at 85"?
Either way, display size itself is actually irrelevant.
If you are viewing your panel from 20 meters away, then someone with a 40" TV and sitting a meter away will be able to perceive more information.
Soundwave said:
You have to push DLSS down to to about 360p (which is ridiculously low) to really have the image quality look actually bad. From 540p it starts to look good more than good enough for a small screen display, 720p to 1440p looks very good, 1080p to 4K looks fantastic. Someone would have to present a pretty compelling case as far I'm concerned for why you would ever really want to render above 540p undocked, and 720p-1080p docked on Switch 2. There's no point. Even 1080p is kind of ridiculous, I think 900p DLSS would be more than good enough, you can get a very nice image quality from just 1280x720 pixels going to 1440p, and yes I'm talking about for big screen TVs. |
The quality of the DLSS resolve varies from game to game... And even then, will vary from scene to scene in a game.
There are scenarios where DLSS starts to breakup and fall apart. Especially in fine-grain details.
I can assure you, no PC gamer with a decent GPU is running games at 720P and using DLSS to take it to 1440P or 4k, because in the end, native is simply better.
Soundwave said:
For actual fucking Nintendo fans, you should be very pleased if the Switch 2 has DLSS technology. It is the real fucking deal, way better than that jaggy shit called FSR 2.0/3.0, you're going to be getting fantastic image quality at a fraction of the pixel budget, so much so that there's no point I believe in rendering natively on the Switch 2 at all. You are in for a treat. |
No guarantees that developers will use DLSS, making your proclamations as DLSS being the best thing since sliced bread, ultimately redundant.
Keep in mind there are other up-scaling technologies rolling out. We are in the era of A.I inferencing.
I would not want to see Nintendo games locked and tied into a propriety technology, it's asking for trouble.
Louie said:
Would Switch 2 in that case be able to handle a significant proportion of new third party games released on Xbox Series and PS5 with acceptable visual sacrifices? And would it be able to handle a bigger proportion of third party games than Switch 1 during its run? |
Yes.
Just in the same way the current Switch is able to handle "Xbox One" titles, there are significant cut backs and it can do it.
Games can be cutback to extremely bare-bone levels and run on some very antiquated PC hardware, there is actually a community of PC gamers who will take the latest and greatest games and mod/tweak those games to run it on the slowest hardware they can.
For example, take Elder Scrolls Oblivion or Fallout 3 which was an Xbox 360 tier title... PC gamers managed to mod those games and run it on Original Xbox-tier hardware. (I.E. Pentium 3/Geforce 3)