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Comment on DLSS Multi-Frame Generation Is Now Easier To Enable On Steam Deck, And It Makes Gameplay Worse

This doesn’t surprise me. Raw math, frame gen makes no sense to me unless you’re already hitting 120 FPS natively, and therefore you need at minimum a 240Hz display to make use of it.

Basic math, to generate frames, you must have the next frame ready to generate an in-between. Which means your frame display is delayed by a frame, meaning your input lag is equivalent to natively running at half the rate you’re natively running at. And this is assuming flawless, instant frame generation. For “motion smoothness”, a vague, not all that important element of game feel, IMO.

So, crunch some numbers. Natively running at 60? Neat, you can have the “motion smoothness” of 120 for the input lag of 30. Not worth it IMO, 30 feels pretty rough when you’re used to 60.

Native 120? Alright, the difference in input lag to 60 is way less. 8ms of added lag is tolerable, and with 4x frame gen you can drive a 480Hz monitor. Pretty good, and the time gap is small enough you’ll have minimal visible errors in the generated frames. The question of course being… do you own a 480Hz monitor? Not to mention 120 has solid motion smoothness already, so it’s still kind of a questionable trade. I’d still personally prefer native 120, but it’s at least reasonable.

A debatable sweet spot might be 80-100, 40-50FPS is more than halfway to 60 from 30 (in milliseconds), and you can multiply into more reasonable monitors than 480Hz. 360Hz to fully leverage 4x frame gen is something you’re more likely to actually own.

End of the day though, my core takeaway is that frame gen is incredibly niche. You either need to be obsessive about motion smoothness without caring about input lag, have a hella fast monitor and great performance, or uh… most likely, not understand any of this and want framerate go bigger.

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Datz@szmer.info ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Extra smoothness for a frame of input delay is a good boon for any non-action games that just have cool animation. Or even less hardcore action games. I’m one of the few people who doesn’t want the higher fps for gameplay, I just think 30 -> 60 looks better. On the other hand, I don’t see the 60->120 jump well.

I never used framegen though, because Steam Deck is all I have and didn’t play around much.

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- Hazzard@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, that’s reasonable. I think it’s pretty cool tech, even if my own priorities and my display prevent me from using it as well.
  
  The only place I really take issue with it is when someone like Capcom pushes it hard in a game like MH: Wilds to reach 60FPS. 30->60 is adding 33ms of input lag, in an action game, reaching a level of input lag we haven’t seen in the mainstream since N64 games that couldn’t push past 15-20FPS.
  
  Once you’re at least at 60FPS native, you’re only adding 16ms of input lag, and that begins to feel like a pretty reasonable trade if you really like that smooth look.
  
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Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
A lot depends on the game too. Some games are naturally slower movement, slower to swing a weapon, etc. In those slower paced games, some added input lag can be unnoticeable, while feeling like a major issue in a more twitchy game.

It’s also worth mentioning that the popular lsfg frame gen option doesn’t work this way, unlike baked in frame gen, the game engine’s ability to accept input isn’t delayed at all since the additional frames are added after. This means the generated frame quality is lower, but input lag is much less on most games.

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AngryMob@lemmy.one ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Your concept of halving the framerate is wrong though… If you’re natively at 100fps, each frame takes 10ms to render. Enable frame gen and you get 10ms of additional latency (plus the latency from generating the frame itself which is often 1 or 2ms). Thats a lot less than you would claim, which would be 20+ms from feeling like 50fps.

Its more comparable to the latency from vsync if anything, which people have been using for decades even on 30fps content.

There are plenty of tests that show this online, you dont need to even napkin math it out like this.

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- Hazzard@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  What? Your numbers are right, if you were running the game at 100FPS it would take 10ms to render a frame. Plus your 10ms of additional latency from holding the frame. 10ms + 10ms is 20ms.
  
  If you were running the game natively at 50FPS, it would take 20ms to render a frame. That’s the same number. The total input lag from rendering is identical. Add in the slowdown from your GPU rendering the in betweens and its even worse.
  
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