DL(S)SS-RR

This post aims to provide detailed information about Deep Learning Stereoscopic Super Sampling Ray Reconstruction, or as I like to call it, DL(S)SS-RR, because who says acronyms must have a finite number of letters?

In short, what that mouthful means is that I fixed Ray Reconstruction for VR. You will now be able to use NVIDIA's hardware/AI powered acceleration for path tracing with any game in our R.E.A.L. VR collection, as long as it offers support for DLSS Ray Reconstruction (see https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-games-engines-apps/ for the growing list of titles that do).

Yep, ray tracing is here to stay. And after seeing it in action in VR, despite the hardware limitations and the compromises needed to run it at a decent, consistent frame rate, I have to say that it does look mighty sweet.

Also, it grows on you. At first you are likely to see it just as a gimmick. Oh wonderful... accurate reflections, so the game will look better when it rains. Who cares! But after a while you start appreciating all the tiny details, the subtle improvements that together contribute to make the virtual world and the characters in it more realistic and credible, and when you turn it off suddenly everything looks flat. I mean, not "flat" flat, because we're still in VR. But flatter and a little dull. And that's when you'll want to be able to push that magic button in every game.

Before you get too excited though, keep in mind that even an RTX 5090 will sweat bullets running this in VR. So in a sense it's kind of like a tech demo that you can experience if you want to take a peek at how games will look in a couple of years, for those fortunate few who will have the boatloads of money and the PR connections needed to lay their hands on a next-next-generation GPU. But in another sense it is very R.E.A.L. ^_^, and you can use it even now to play complete games, provided that you are willing to accept a few compromises with the graphics options and the resolution.

DL(S)SS-RR will activate automatically when needed, but as usual with my framework if you encounter problems with it you can turn it off from the game-specific tab of the R.E.A.L. overlay, like for instance the "INDY" tab for https://store.steampowered.com/app/2830500/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Great_Circle_The_Order_of_Giants/. There is a single checkbox that controls both kinds of DL(S)SS fixes (the previous supersampling one and the new one for ray reconstruction), because they are mutually exclusive anyway. Meaning, a game can't use both at a single time: when you turn on Ray Reconstruction in the game settings, my software will automatically switch from DL(S)SS for SuperSampling to DL(S)SS for Ray Reconstruction.

Several games available now really shine (pun intended) with this technology improvement. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2842040/Star_Wars_Outlaws/ can at last be played without the disco-lights effect on every surface that its normal (and compulsory, grr) ray-tracing denoiser exhibits. Ray Reconstruction stabilizes the image perfectly, and the lighting is solid and believable. https://store.steampowered.com/app/990080/Hogwarts_Legacy/ looks MUCH better with ray tracing, and the shimmering that was still present for example on vegetation even with the DLSS fix is completely gone. Titles like https://store.steampowered.com/app/3017860/DOOM_The_Dark_Ages/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/2677660/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Great_Circle/ are perhaps a bit more understated, with many levels taking place in semi-dark non-reflective environments where the improvements brought by ray tracing are subtler; but they also have their magic moments. For example with INDY, the initial level in the huge college rooms with glass everywhere is truly a sight to behold.

Unfortunately NVIDIA drivers are no longer as stable as they used to be in the past, and many recent versions have been affected by regressions, crippled functionality or even BSODs. If you have a powerful card and want to try out Path tracing with Ray Reconstruction, please be advised that you might stumble into driver problems. They might manifest as checkerboard patterns, flashing lights in one or both eyes, super-grainy and noisy images, you name it... and you can immediately tell they are driver problems because once they start they persist through different game sessions until you reboot the system.

If you fall victim to these issues, I only have three remedies to suggest: first clear the shader caches, both the game's and the driver's; if that's not enough, reboot; and if even that doesn't fix it, try to downgrade or upgrade your drivers until you find a version that works acceptably with your card.