Nvidia, we need better sharpen, for DLSS and in general

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by aufkrawall2, Jul 23, 2022.

  1. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    Nvidia offers three different sharpen shaders outside FreeStyle, but they are all heavily flawed:
    • New regular sharpen available in Nvidia control panel with GPU upscaling resolutions:
      • causes massive amounts of aliasing at higher strengths, especially in motion
      • disables MPO and causes performance regressions even with sharpen at 0% (I measured ~8% performance penalty in Vulkan applications on RTX 3060). Solely for this reason, it deserves to be nuked.
      • also causes ringing at higher strength
    • Old "classic" Nvidia driver control panel sharpen, available via registry tweak or when enabling integer scaling:
      • It seems to be less disliked by users than the new one, but it still causes massive amounts of ringing at already medium sharpen strength levels
      • Sometimes has weird conflicts with games' shader compilation, e.g. in CoD Warzone
      • There is some weird mishmash with new and olden sharpen not available at the same time that confuses or annoys users
    • Nvidia DLSS sharpen implemented in games:
      • it causes ringing in still images
      • it causes additional ringing in motion, causing glowing halo effects for object edges
      • some games offer to disable it, while others force it on the users

    Example of DLSS sharpen ringing in still image in Doom Eternal:
    DLSS sharpen 0.75:
    [​IMG]

    CAS via ReShade strength 1.2 (in ReShade, double click into the sharpen strength field, enter "1.2" and press enter):
    [​IMG]

    Less ringing with CAS and textures look more detailed at the same time.

    Ringing of DLSS sharpen gets worse in motion (really disgusting):
    [​IMG]

    ~Zero ringing with CAS in motion:
    [​IMG]

    So, apparently DLSS sharpen also affects some motion parameter of DLSS that is meant to cause less motion blur, but introduces even more bad ringing on top of the still image ringing that DLSS sharpen already causes. This is not just the case in Doom Eternal, but in all games that have DLSS sharpen enabled (either forced or optionally).

    So Nvidia, please give us users a sharpen shader that causes similarly little amounts of ringing as CAS does. Also Unreal Engine tonemapper sharpen looks way better than any of the three Nvidia sharpen shaders above.

    And to fight DLSS motion blur by introducing additional ringing/haloing on top is just the wrong way. FSR 2.0 partially introduces less motion blur than DLSS and FSR 2.0 sharpen also doesn't temper with motion parameters, but just applies CAS/RCAS that looks similar to the shader shipped by ReShade that is seen above. New DLSS versions probably will reduce motion blur further anyway without blunt motion image manipulations. This would be the correct approach.

    To conclude:
    • offer a better quality sharpen shader (read: as little ringing and aliasing at the same time as possible, CAS achieves this and is open-source) without bad side effects that isn't tied to weird and flawed GPU upscaling
    • also entirely replace DLSS sharpen by it
    • emphasize that developers should never make DLSS sharpen hidden from user control and forced on users
    • don't tie motion parameters that cause temporal ringing/haloing to sharpen strength, it's just a really bad idea in the first place
    • (there are also FreeStyle filters, but they don't match CAS in terms of avoiding ringing and Sharpen + performance hit is far bigger than of CAS (which basically is for free)
      • also, FreeStyle is not liked by all users and has restrictions with games with anti-cheat)

    What really demonstrates how absurd the situation is, is that the FSR 2.0 mod for Dying Light 2 gets rid of Nvidia sharpen issues and its RCAS implementation that replaces DLSS sharpen looks fantastic in this game (especially when additionally disabling the game's own sharpen via another mod).

    I know, there is a share of users who don't see the issue, have a different opinion, don't care or cheer for their favorite brand without caring for reality of other users. But as the mod that disables DLSS sharpen for Red Dead Redemption 2 (there also was such a mod for God of War, until the game developers implemented an option to turn off DLSS sharpen in the game's menu) shows, there is a noteworthy faction of users who really dislike the sharpen effects offered by the Nvidia control panel and especially DLSS. :(

    Ping @ManuelG
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
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  2. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    Regarding aliasing, I didn't notice serious aliasing issues with DLSS on max quality, in most circumstance I find it better than using TAA/SMAA/FXAA.
    Performance and High Performance are terrible though, in some games Balanced as well.

    I think that I linked some tests between different sharpening methods earlier, RIS is preferred when it comes to sharpening, think the sharpening with FSR 2.0 is what gets closest to it.

    Indeed, DLSS sharpen should be an option.

    ReShade always had and continues to have better filters anyway, besides adding choices, so why bother keeping FreeStyle alive?
    Marketing alone doesn't really justify it if most people prefer other better filters over it.
     
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  3. Nantes

    Nantes Member

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    In the third picture I only really notice ringing in the rocky outcrop between the building on the right side and the metal bars in the background (it's also between the crosshair and the green objective marker in the compass), nowhere else. And the textures are actually much more detailed in that image than in the fourth image (CAS in motion). I hardly think that's classified as "disgusting", but to each their own I suppose.
     
  4. BmB23

    BmB23 Active Member

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    I thought the old image sharpening was better, the new NIS is kind of bad. I can't speak to DLSS as I do not have a turing.
     

  5. SmokingPistol

    SmokingPistol Member Guru

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    That's good ole Edge (literally) for ya. A great reconstruction neural network sampler that is attached to the worst sharpener in the industry.

    I've **constantly** had sent NVIDIA dmp files, video samples, correction templates, repros galore, etc. over a year now but here we stand.

    You just can't make this snizt up, yo!
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2022
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  6. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    Yes, hopefully. As there are also people who are actually not totally insensitive toward obvious brightness artifacts that start to glow during movement:
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. Stevebutabi

    Stevebutabi Active Member

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    I noticed DLSS sharpen looked horrible in motion in God of War. Even if it's only one tick above off, it's immediately noticeable.
     
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  8. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    Red Dead Redemption 2 has received an update, there is a DLSS sharpen slider now. But even with it set to 0%, it still causes disgusting ringing in motion:
    [​IMG]

    Another infamous case where DLSS sharpen is a pure eyesore forced onto users and the sharpen slider is USELESS. Nvidia, what the heck is wrong? How can you not see this? What is going wrong with developer implementation guidelines? Apparently a lot (apart from the fact that DLSS sharpen is an eyesore at any strength that isn't actually 0).

    Fortunately the sharpen runtime disable patcher linked above still works for RDR2, but in games where there is no such a thing (e.g. Dying Light 2) DLSS is just dead to me and chances are I'll us FSR 2.0 instead when available. RIP DLSS? I'm quite certain that this image quality destruction will return in at least some of the future games with DLSS. :(
     
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  9. vf

    vf Ancient Guru

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    While old post... I never used it on God of War. I don't like its artificial sharpening. Same for Spider-Man Remastered. It's not natural looking.
     
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  10. oneoulker

    oneoulker Member Guru

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    https://imgsli.com/MTIyMzAx
    https://imgsli.com/MTIyMzAx/0/2

    here's a great comparison. look at how much artifacting and ringing NV sharpening creates at %43 and how blurry it is at %42 whereas AMD sharpening is subtle and just works. (and this "blurs below certain percentage and oversharpens above that certain percentage" is a new thing that affects both spiderman and dying light 2.

    i've been trying to create awareness towards this issue and it started to snowball.

    at this point I've just made up a conspiracy theory that they purposefully use a hideously bad sharpener so that when they announce DLSS 3.0, they can use a superior sharpening filter and can market DLSS 3.0 as this supremely improved version of DLSS 2.0.

    even going from dlss sharpen to a mere fidelityfx sharpen with reshade provides huge upgrades to IQ. they use their horrible sharpening algorythm on everything they produce and use:
    Geforce NOW AI upscaling, NV Shield "AI" upscaling, DLDSR Tensor-assisted downsampling, Nvidia Image Scaling and of course, DLSS.

    What I fear is that even if they eventually use an actal normal, functioning sharpener with DLSS, I dread to think that DLDSR and NIS will be left off with that horrible sharpener.
     
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  11. Rootax

    Rootax Member Guru

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    What about a less blurry DLSS from the start so you don't need sharpening...
     
  12. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    yup, I'd rather disable sharpening entirely in rdr2 it's quite fugly.
    fsr2 is not an option for me though as it produces awful amount of shimmer,which to me is worse than bad sharpening.
     
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  13. Krizby

    Krizby Ancient Guru

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    Would love to see Sharpen+ being accelerated with tensor cores.
     
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  14. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    yeah the result is great but the performance hit can be substantial.
     
  15. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    I think dlss in its current form is as good as it gets, even 1440p balancecd (850p internally) looks acceptable.
    sharpening is a problem though,op is absolutely right.
     

  16. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    TPU also have noticed and criticized it in RDR2: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/red-dead-redemption-2-dlss-vs-fsr-2-0-comparison/
    There are also articles by PCGH in which the author dislikes DLSS sharpen. Really hope this gets through to Nvidia...
     
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  17. Neil79

    Neil79 Master Guru

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    On my RTX system I have to use Reshade Sharpen for both Warzone AND Battlefield 2042! Not only does it look a lot nicer as DLSS is terribly blurry, but it performs way better than using it in the Nvidia control panel or Geforce Puke Experience. Both Battlefield and Warzone don't have inbuilt DLSS sharpen sliders :(
     
  18. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    I think Warzone either has DLSS sharpen force-enabled at a low strength, or applies its own crap sharpen. It doesn't look as clean as it should (as e.g. in Fortnite), especially not in motion.
     
  19. SmokingPistol

    SmokingPistol Member Guru

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    Technically, that's not how sampling reconstruction works, though. To TOTALLY eliminate (or severely reduce it to the naked eye) AA/smear, ghosting etc., hyper-rendering needs to be implemented in ALL "so-called NEXT-GEN :confused:" titles.
     
  20. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    CoD MW II open beta:
    [​IMG]

    Forced DLSS sharpen with excessive ringing and bad smearing by bad DLSS version (2.4.12) shipped with the game. Terrible, can't use.
     
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