Upscaling Visual Comparison
Speaking of visuals, we decided to compare how upscaling looks at a variety of different settings. We did find however that the difference between DLSS and Frame generation was negligible to non-existent, so for the sake of time we’ll only be looking at running the games natively versus MFG set to X4. Starting off with Cyberpunk set to Ultra (above) we can see that not a whole lot has changed, but there are just a few little details that we can spot, for example if we look at the support beam on the food stand, we can see that using upscaling has made it a little bit less smooth, making the jagged edge more noticeable, but this isn’t something you’d really notice while moving around anyway and is more because we’re zooming in and really looking for it.
Enabling Ray Tracing makes things look a lot more realistic as you would expect. In particular, the reflection in the puddle on the floor, where upscaling actually seems to be reflecting a little more. This could quite possibly be the upscaler enhancing the details that were already there but weren’t as noticeable before. That support bar from before is no longer an issue now which is a little odd, but welcome nonetheless.
When we turn on path tracing we see the most realistic visuals yet, and we also see that the support beam is again, not an issue, but within the reflections of the puddle we see another interesting change. For some reason we see upscaling providing a bit of a clearer reflection, as in it’s slightly less cloudy and there is again some more detail present here. This isn’t something I can really explain, but instead is only something I can speculate on, and I would assume that the upscaler is taking the smaller details and simply trying to enhance them. It’s hard to say which one is more realistic but what I can say is that I think I actually prefer the look of the upscaling here.
Moving over to Hogwarts Legacy for one more game to look at, and here we see that upscaling doesn’t really affect much in terms of the visuals. The textures don’t show any noticeable differences and there isn’t any more grain than we see without upscaling. Interestingly though we do see a bit more of a foggy look to the upscaling version, making it look just a bit more washed out. This is again probably the upscaler taking smaller details and enhancing them a bit, making this pretty bright scene look a little bit less colorful.
Finally, we enabled raytracing and this really changes how the game looks, with the great big window now giving a massive reflection on the floor of the great hall, but this doesn’t look the best as the reflection seems to wobble a bit. Discussing this in the office we decided that it must be related to the bump mapping on the ground as well as the camera’s consistent gentle movement causing some confusion for the reflections and this doesn’t change with upscaling enabled either. In fact it only gets more intense, so again, the small details being enhanced, which is good when it comes to textures and geometry, but not so good when it’s an imperfection being enhanced to be more visible.
