Author Topic: “Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade  (Read 2242 times)

Republic DC-9

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“Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade
« on: September 01, 2024, 08:39:29 AM »
I’ve spent a great deal of money over the years upgrading to new PCs (and more recently upgrading existing ones myself) as I’m an avid flight simulation enthusiast and such applications tend to be very CPU and GPU intensive, especially as they’re “single threaded”.

But without (and sometimes even with) a robust setup these simulations tend to really struggle to produce the smooth frames per second (FPS) needed for enjoyable and realistic flying.  And of course every few years there are new versions of the sim that increase the load so the spending for upgrades continues.

This AM I purchased an app called “Lossless Scaling” with a duck logo for $7 from the Steam store and it’s made a 2-3X improvement to my FPS in both my X-Plane 12 and MSFS flight simulators, the equivalent of a massive processor upgrade (it does this by inserting AI generated frames in between the “real” frames.

In any case it seems this app works similar magic for other gaming where FPS are important as well, so I thought I’d pass it along to anyone else contemplating spendypants PC upgrades as it’s really been money well spent for me (and FAR cheaper than buying or building a new top end computer).

As I mentioned flight sim hobbyists often chase the FPS dragon with either tons of $$$ or tons of time on questionable “tweaking” and this was a cheap, fast, and easy improvement.

neo von retorch

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Re: “Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2024, 09:29:41 AM »
This certainly sounds like DLSS and FSR. See https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/fsr-31-vs-dlss-showdown-how-does-amds-latest-upscaler-version-compare-to-nvidias-finest-for-performance-and-image-quality/

What I'm wondering is how an additional program running in the background "takes over" the graphics pipeline. Did you check your DLSS / FSR settings before and after installing the program? Could it just be flipping some switches in the Flight Sim program to enable upscaling and turn down your resolution? Or flipping the switches in Geforce / Radeon software to enable it / force it?

Republic DC-9

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Re: “Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2024, 10:10:52 AM »
It is indeed frame generation via an outside app - how exactly it does it I’m not sure, but it works well.

And yes, I believe that frame generation can be turned on (for free) with more advanced GPUs by both AMD and Nvidia, but not using my bargain Nvidia 3060.

Certainly something to check into for anyone chasing higher FPS, especially before upgrading.


neo von retorch

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Re: “Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade
« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2024, 10:57:11 AM »
All RTX cards support DLSS, though you may need RTX 4xxx cards for DLSS3.

https://www.techjunkie.com/what-gpus-support-dlss/

Affable Bear

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Re: “Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade
« Reply #4 on: October 23, 2024, 09:14:18 AM »
Developers have to program games to make them compatable with FSR (AMD Frame Gen) or DLSS Frame Gen (Nvidia only). Not all developers have programmed compatability into their games and I think this is where this app comes into play as it claims it adds this feature to games that dont support frame gen by default.

Pretty cool app if it works across a lot of games, might check this out to see if its any good, cheers!

Republic DC-9

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Re: “Lossless Scaling” App in lieu of gaming CPU upgrade
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2024, 08:17:33 PM »
Developers have to program games to make them compatable with FSR (AMD Frame Gen) or DLSS Frame Gen (Nvidia only). Not all developers have programmed compatability into their games and I think this is where this app comes into play as it claims it adds this feature to games that dont support frame gen by default.

Pretty cool app if it works across a lot of games, might check this out to see if its any good, cheers!

In my case I’m getting good value out of it with X-Plane 12 where it keeps things smooth in “heavy” CPU areas like downtown Los Angeles or Seattle flying (flight sims are largely still single-threaded though hopefully that will change with the upcoming MSFS 2024).  The only downside is at 3X the FPS I get some blur around the edges in certain situations.  Certainly better results per dollar than continuing to chase the FPS dragon with hardware upgrades! :)