Modders unlock FSR 4 support for Vulkan games with OptiScaler

[Daniel Sims]

In a nutshell: Radeon RX 9000 owners who play Doom Eternal, Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, or No Man's Sky should consider installing the latest preview build of OptiScaler, which brings the full benefits of AMD's FSR 4 upscaler to numerous unsupported games. Although many titles can enable the feature through OptiScaler, DLSS Swapper, or AMD's control panel, Vulkan-exclusive games were left out – until now.

A recently released preview build of OptiScaler, a popular third-party upscaling tool, is the first publicly available method for implementing FSR 4 in games that only use the Vulkan graphics API. While the update, labeled "0.9.0-pre10," is not yet available on the app's official GitHub repository, users can download it from the developer's Discord channel or through unofficial mirrors on Google Drive and MediaFire.

AMD's FSR 4 upscaler offers significantly improved image quality over FSR 3, but it is only officially supported on the company's Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards. Furthermore, the list of games that include FSR 4 remains limited.

While AMD's Adrenalin software can manually force FSR 4 into many titles, the method only works on games that officially support FSR 3.1. Third-party tools such as DLSS Swapper and OptiScaler have stepped in to fill the void by allowing users to switch between FSR, Nvidia's DLSS, and Intel's XeSS, even in games that only officially support one of those tools. OptiScaler can translate commands from any temporal upscaler into any of its rivals as long as the game at least supports DLSS 2, FSR 2.2, or XeSS.

For example, activating FSR 4 in Horizon Forbidden West is possible through Adrenalin, since the game supports FSR 3.1. Meanwhile, achieving similar upscaling image quality in Control, Alan Wake II, or Baldur's Gate 3 requires OptiScaler, which can convert commands from DLSS.

However, unlike DLSS, FSR 4 still requires DirectX 12 and does not yet officially support Vulkan. As such, the translation method was not possible in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Doom: The Dark Ages, No Man's Sky, or any other title that only utilizes Vulkan before the latest OptiScaler update.

Also Read: How Far Behind is AMD? DLSS 4.5 vs FSR 4 Tested

Redditors have lauded the patch, and YouTuber RockingFPS demonstrated the results in a video showing the opening of Indiana Jones running with FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 in 4K Performance mode. The test was run on an RX 6800 XT, a GPU released in 2020 that does not officially support FSR 4.

The YouTuber likely utilized the INT8 version of FSR 4, which modders compiled after AMD inadvertently leaked the upscaler's source code. While older Radeon cards suffer a performance penalty when using FSR 4 due to their lack of FP8 computation support, the INT8 version still appears superior to FSR 3 while achieving modest performance gains compared to native resolution. AMD has not announced plans to expand FSR 4 support to its older GPU generations with the INT8 build.

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Modders unlock FSR 4 support for Vulkan games with OptiScaler

 

[opckieran]

At this point, AMD needs to open-source everything. Drivers, upscalers, etc. They simply don't have the luxury of keeping things closed-source like nVidia does.

 

[yRaz]

At this point, AMD needs to open-source everything. Drivers, upscalers, etc. They simply don't have the luxury of keeping things closed-source like nVidia does.

You forget that corporations work for investors, not customers. Investors want this and as long as AMD keeps taking out billion dollar loans, they need all the investors they can get.

And under the DMCA, this is illegal and they can be throwing in jail for releasing the tools to do this, so there is that.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

You forget that corporations work for investors, not customers. Investors want this and as long as AMD keeps taking out billion dollar loans, they need all the investors they can get.

Im so tired of hearing this argument trotted out for everything. One can demonstrably show that longer support and better support leads to more sales. Just look at nvidia.

Perhaps maybe, just maybe, this isnt because of investors, its down to good ol AMD incompetence? Remember, they STILL SELL rDNA 3 HARDWARE. So degrading the value of the stuff they currently sell is NOT good business.

And under the DMCA, this is illegal and they can be throwing in jail for releasing the tools to do this, so there is that.

That would require them to file takedown requests, those requests to be ignored, then court cases, injunctions, fines, and years of back and forth.

Its like saying you can go to jail over a traffic ticket.