AMD’s FSR 2.0 (Super Resolution FidelityFX) is still relatively new to the gaming scene and hardly any games yet – but modders have taken matters into their own hands in some cases when it comes to unofficially pushing support to the frame rate increase technology.
We’ve already seen a mod for Cyberpunk 2077 by the fun-named modder PotatoOfDoom, which essentially leverages DLSS support to bring in FSR 2.0, and this workaround is now also available in mods for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Dying Light 2. The latter were worked on by other modders on Nexus Mods, but still based on the original PotatoOfDoom mod.
As PC player (opens in new tab) reports, other players are now trying to employ this technique with the likes of Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition and Guardians of the Galaxy, and no doubt other DLSS-supported titles to follow.
So how good are the results of these mod solutions? Well, they’re not ideal as you might anticipate, although a performance boost is certainly provided, even if the upscaled image is noticeably smoother compared to running at native target resolution (and there are some minor issues with artifacts too).
With full FSR 2.0 support, the quality difference (to native resolution) is barely noticeable and closely rivals DLSS 2.0 in terms of upscaling.
Of course, we wouldn’t expect modders to be able to achieve the same results, and it looks like what they’ve done here works well enough, and could certainly act as a stopgap while waiting for developers to step in in the event that it brings FSR 2.0 Support.
Review: Patience is a virtue, but not when it comes to frame rates…
This is a measure of how interested gamers are in getting FSR 2.0 support for the titles they like, while at the same time it certainly highlights a degree of impatience to get wider support for rival Nvidia DLSS. So far, only three games officially support FSR 2.0 (Deathloop, God of War, and Farming Simulator 22), but more are promised soon.
Now, there are some big hitters on the entry list – like Hitman 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator and EVE Online – but also a lot of relative gaming minnows in all honesty. So it’s not too surprising that mod-skilled players are taking matters into their own hands to at least see the kind of results that are possible with workarounds.
It will take time to build a game library that officially supports FSR 2.0, of course – just look at how long it took Nvidia to move forward with DLSS support. The Green team, of course, has a big advantage in this regard, as DLSS has been around for four years (believe it or not).
There are important advantages that AMD has with FSR 2.0 being open source and freely available, with promises already made about ease of implementation for games that already support DLSS 2.0. In fact, AMD claims that for these titles, FSR 2.0 can be implemented in just a few days (best case scenario, but still, you get the general idea – it can happen really fast if you want to). And these modification efforts seem to support that claim, with them coming together very quickly.
Other fast routes to FSR 2.0 adoption include developers with games built on the Unreal Engine (UE 4 or 5) who can use the AMD plugin, and before long we expect to see more support coming quickly – in much faster fashion. than the timeline witnessed with DLSS for sure. That doesn’t mean Team Red still doesn’t have considerable ground to recover, but it should be able to cover that turf with a nice change of pace if those early signs and promises are anything to go by.
AMD will also be promoting its other big advantages over DLSS, namely wider coverage for graphics cards with FSR, including Nvidia models – as opposed to DLSS which requires an RTX GPU – and also keeping FSR 1.0 as a solution. of admittedly inferior quality. FSR 2.0 but which allows lower spec GPUs to still benefit from frame rate boosting technology.