Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales is offered on PC, following up on the smash success of the bottom recreation, Marvel’s Spider-Man, on PC earlier this yr. Like the unique launch, Miles Morales is filled with the newest PC gaming tech and easily polished to run on completely different {hardware}. It’s a fantastic PC port. Except for DLSS 3 Frame Generation, that’s.
Nvidia’s newest upscaling tech joins Intel XeSS and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) in Miles Morales. They’re all nice upscaling choices, however the distinctive frame-generation capabilities of DLSS 3 are a sore level. If you propose on choosing up Miles Morales on PC, ensure to maintain DLSS Frame Generation turned off to keep away from an occasional mess of AI picture era.
AI-generated points
Miles Morales joins a rising checklist of video games that help DLSS 3. This tech combines DLSS Super Resolution, which is offered to all Nvidia RTX graphics playing cards, with DLSS Frame Generation. On RTX 40-series GPUs just like the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, your GPU can generate a singular body each different body with AI, massively enhancing efficiency. One body is rendered by your graphics card, one is from the AI, and back-and-forth they go.
And certainly, DLSS 3 massively improves efficiency, particularly with the heavy CPU bottleneck in Miles Morales. The compromise is picture high quality with Frame Generation, which is especially nasty within the fast-paced motion that comes with any Spider-Man launch. The Super Resolution portion nonetheless runs and appears improbable.
You can see a video of some gameplay segments within the video above with DLSS Frame Generation turned on. You’re capable of combine and match Frame Generation with DLSS Super Resolution, XeSS, or FSR, however I stored upscaling turned off to get a transparent view into what Frame Generation was doing. I captured this footage at 120 frames per second (fps) in 4K with simply DLSS Frame Generation turned on and slowed it by 50% (YouTube solely helps as much as 4K at 60 fps). Keep in thoughts encoding artifacts and YouTube compression when watching the video. There are undoubtedly points, however the video doesn’t present the total high quality of taking part in a recreation on an precise display screen.
Combat sections see the most important points, particularly with the snowy cityscape of Manhattan that Miles Morales is about in. The snow is a ache level itself, as you possibly can see within the two screenshots under. In the rendered body, the snow reveals up completely, but it surely vanishes within the AI body.
That’s a constant development. Particles like snow disappear with the AI frames, which manifests as a faint flickering with Frame Generation on. It’s by no means a problem in sluggish sections and far much less noticeable if you’re swinging across the metropolis. But Miles Morales is a recreation the place you’re continuously in movement, beating up baddies and flying by way of dense metropolis streets. Having the picture crumble when there’s any object in fast movement isn’t ideally suited for a recreation like this.
To illustrate how stark of a distinction there may be, you possibly can see the AI body stacked up towards a natively rendered body under. One was captured with Frame Generation turned on and the opposite with it turned off, so that they aren’t sequential frames.
And simply to point out that this isn’t a problem with encoding, right here’s the body instantly after for each scenes. The streaking strains disappear, and tabbing to the subsequent body within the scene, they return.
The concern extends past quick fight and flashy ending strikes as properly. DLSS Frame Generation doesn’t take note of components in your display screen just like the HUD. With upscaling, these components are ignored or masked out as a result of they aren’t demanding to point out on display screen, and lowering the standard may be very noticeable. DLSS Frame Generation tries to create a brand new body, HUD and all, resulting in unlucky conditions the place the HUD smears throughout the display screen like you possibly can see within the screenshots under.
Although DLSS Frame Generation doesn’t make Miles Morales unplayable, the unstable high quality turns into noticeable as soon as something on the display screen begins shifting shortly. The excellent news is that DLSS Super Resolution, FSR, and XeSS all present stable efficiency enhancements with upscaling, so I’d advocate sticking with these.
Much extra work to be performed
Just like with Marvel’s Spider-Man when it was ported to PC earlier this yr, Miles Morales is an litmus check for DLSS Frame Generation. It’s quick, and any picture reconstruction method — be it upscaling, body era, or one thing else — is pushed to the restrict when there’s loads occurring shortly on display screen.
This isn’t unusual conduct for DLSS Frame Generation, although. As you possibly can learn in my RTX 4090 evaluate, these artifacts present up when cruising round Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 and even doing one thing as mundane as operating by way of grass in A Plague Tale Requiem. They aren’t as extreme or frequent, however they’re current.
Frame era isn’t going anyplace. AMD has already revealed that its upcoming FSR 3 will embody a body era characteristic, and I wouldn’t be stunned to see Intel look into body era with its XeSS upscaling as properly. There are some rising pains with the know-how proper now, although.
As time goes on, I don’t doubt Nvidia will proceed to enhance picture high quality for DLSS Frame Generation. That’s what occurred with DLSS itself just a few years in the past, with the primary model showcasing some nasty visible artifacts.
My essential concern is DLSS 3 on graphics playing cards additional down Nvidia’s product stack. We have the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 proper now, however much less highly effective playing cards just like the rumored RTX 4060 and RTX 4050 may amplify picture high quality points with DLSS Frame Generation. Every different body is coming from the AI, so issues will turn out to be extra noticeable at decrease body charges.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
Although DLSS Frame Generation is disappointing in Spider-Man Miles Morales, the PC port is something however. Across a number of check machines, I had rock-solid efficiency and the graphics menu is dense with settings to optimize your body charge. This is certainly one to select up for those who missed the unique launch on PlayStation 5 — I’d simply follow upscaling over DLSS Frame Generation.
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