Resolution scaling, a topic that was once so taboo that it was only spoken in the gloomiest places in the gaming community, and yet today all the big companies are with it: we have NVIDIA with its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), to AMD with FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and even Epic with Temporal Super Resolution (TSR). And now, from the looks of it, Microsoft he gets on the bandwagon, although in this case it seems that it could only be for his Xbox consoles.
Microsoft seems to have realized that for the next generation of games to stand out in both graphics fidelity and popularity, people will need the ability to take advantage of their 4K TVs with them without being caught up in “capped” FPS rates. As such, it is quite likely that users of the Xbox Series X and S consoles will very soon try Microsoft’s own resolution scaling solution in the form of AI-based machine learning software (so the source says).
Microsoft’s resolution scaling… for consoles
It seems that initially this solution will only be available on Microsoft consoles, but that does not mean that PC users will not end up benefiting from technology at some point as well, and as an example we have DirectStorage, which initially may end up arriving first on Xbox and then to PC.
According to the source, Microsoft is preparing to fill the Xbox team with capable minds for this task; looking for senior and not-so-senior software engineers specializing in PC graphics and machine learning and have posted several job openings for this. It seems that Microsoft is taking this task seriously to make the dream come true… and of course to beat Sony in the realm of console performance.
«Xbox is leveraging machine learning to make traditional rendering algorithms more efficient and to offer alternative enhancements. “ it reads in one of these job offers.- “The Xbox graphics team is looking for an engineer to implement machine learning algorithms in graphics software to delight millions of gamers and work closely with partners to develop software for the future machine learning hardware«.
By using Microsoft’s DirectML API, which gives your team access to a veritable cornucopia of machine learning intelligence, you have a good chance of making console games look and feel much better at high resolutions. This will manifest as an NVIDIA DLSS-style solution (or so it seems since it’s clear they are basing the technology on machine learning with AI), though perhaps it could end up being a complete overhaul of the process to create something new.
It is in any case also striking that they mention the future machine learning hardware, something that suggests that in the future we could see Xbox consoles with dedicated AI chips to help with resolution scaling (there is no information on this, but it is the first thing that has come to mind when writing these lines).
