Submitted 2 weeks ago by Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz to steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
https://steamdeckhq.com/news/plugin-multi-frame-generation-steam-deck/
This is for multiplying your fps by 3x or 4x, but the input lag, ghosting, stuttering, and other issues make everything worse. Overall I’d recommend sticking to lossless scaling at 2x or not using framegen at all.
But they make the numbers bigger! Biggest number is best number!
Pfft, you get a chart with no legend, we don’t need no stinking numbers
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
do unsupported thing on unsupported hardware
it’s bad
*socked Pikachu*
Nvidia slop on an AMD GPU?
It depends entirely on the genre. Turn based games are EXCELLENT candidates for frame generation. Who cares if there is sub-second input lag if you have unlimited time to make your selections? It’s well with a little bit of lag to run a game on much higher quality settings, and still maintain 60+ FPS.
Last time I tried one of these filters, the game looked terrible (it was Death Stranding). It applied a weird squiggly, distorted look that wasn’t even remotely better looking. For games where you need precision and timing, I can see this making multiplayer games hell.
(NSFW warning)
When I had an RTX 2060 laptop, I had the most jank setup for Cyberpunk 2077.
I’d plug it into an older Sony OLED, which only supported low res HDMI input (can’t remember which res, I think 1080p?)
The RTX 2060 would run DLSS quality (for antialiasing) and output 2077 at low-res 60fps, and the TV would use its big ASIC to interpolate it to 120hz, and up to 4K.
And actually, it looked good! It felt smooth! Input lag wasn’t great, but absolutely playable.
I don’t have a PC that can do framegen (3090 now), but ironically, the DLSS framegen demos I’ve seen didn’t have interpolation as good as the Sony. And I believe Sony/Samsung support “no next frame” interpolation, so they don’t blow up input lag.
This is anecdotal but I don’t get all the frame gen hate, I’ve had to tweak it a little bit toward the quality setting but everything looks normal and it’s totally smooth in maxed Cyberpunk at 165 fps
If the rendered framerate is ~60fps (which I’d wager is the case for you), it probably looks great.
Interpolation isn’t psychic; of course its going to look like jello “guessing” what’s between frames at a slideshow pace, especially with the constraint of low latency, without any future frames to use.
But I do have issue with some devs (and some of Nvidia’s marketing) treating it as a crutch. It’s not a fix to 15fps, but it’s a fine way to get 60 to 135 smoothly.
The steam deck just isn’t powerful enough for the games I play now. It’s a shame because I love the device.
I think a lot of us are eventually going to upgrade to stronger systems (steam machine or something else), but it’s going to be a long freaking time in that scenario before I stop streaming to my Deck when I’m home. It’s just the king of comfy, kicked back on the couch or bed gaming.
rogsson@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Frame Gen is by its very design a really stupid technology
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Upscaling tech (DLSS/FSR/etc) is nice as a way to help older/weaker hardware play newer games, and I’ve really appreciated it on the deck. I really don’t like it when games use it as a crutch to avoid having to optimize their game to an acceptable level.
Frame gen is in a worse spot because it usually only works well on hardware that can already hit 60fps. I’ve never found a built in framegen option that was actually usable on the deck without horrendous input lag and/or graphical issues.
Lossless Scaling’s Frame Gen is a sometimes exception, I’ve found a few Deck games that it works really well with. There are still occasional graphical issues/ghosting with it, but it can help out quite a bit. It’s weird to me that 3rd party software from a small dev would work better than integrated FG from the game devs/GPU makers, but it is what it is.
real_squids@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
It’s pretty cool even if your hardware isn’t struggling, FSR’s Native AA at 1440p helps a bunch especially if a game has fucked up TAA/sharpening
HoloPengin@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I think it’s valid for boosting raw 60fps to 120fps (or whatever your max refresh rate is) in games that aren’t super latency sensitive. Boosting something like 180 or 240FPS to 360 or 480 is probably valid for more latency sensitive things like competitive shooters since it would (theoretically) increase readability during motion at an imperceptible cost to latency. I’d probably use multi-frame-gen for boosting 120->480 if I had a super high refresh rate monitor so long as the system has very good native frames to start from (which is… Arguable in a ton of modern titles).
Using it to boost, like, 30->60, or even 45->90 is hellish, as the latency at native 30 is already annoying and at 45 is just barely pushing into the range where latency is less noticeable, so adding latency is just a really bad trade.
lyralycan@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
If DLSS can reach its fifth generation AI can destroy component supply for a second year
rogsson@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Can’t wait!