Upscaling Visual Comparison
Now free performance is always nice, and if we can decrease the latency at the same time, even better, but what does that mean for visual quality? It’s here, when we compare images side by side and in Alan Wake 2, it shows that enabling upscaling and frame generation doesn’t make a whole lot of a noticeable difference. Looking at some finer details we can see a bit of a blur when upscaling is enabled, with the stand out examples being the yellow sign in the distance and the reflection in the puddle on the floor. Anything else we see would be pretty hard to notice, particularly when moving around and doing things, so it’s nice to see that in such a visually stunning game we’re still able to appreciate the detail in the environments without sacrificing on our frame rate or gameplay experience.
When we look at Cyberpunk 2077 we find it very difficult to notice any changes, but after putting our footage under the microscope, we find a few differences that I actually think makes the game look better. If we look at the black TV screen in the distance we can see that at native it has some film grain too it that is far less present when upscaling is enabled, obviously if you want the film grain then this is a problem, but honestly I’m not a huge fan of film grain, so having it smoothed out does make things look a bit cleaner. Something else I noticed was that at native we saw some gaps in the geometry, particularly near the top of the frame where you can see a white line appear briefly as the camera moves: this is actually a gap in the buildings geometry and that white line is either the sky box or just something untextured you’re not meant to see, but with upscaling enabled we actually see this gap get filled in and it’s far less noticeable if at all, making a more immersive experience as a result.
