AMD's FSR 4 gets a big boost in compatibility

[harlan4096]

AMD's FSR 4 gets a big boost in compatibility as OptiScaler now supports upconverting any modern upscaler to FSR 4 with frame-gen, as long as the game isn't Vulkan-based or has anti-cheat

FSR 4 the masses.
 
AMD has finally caught up to Nvidia's latest DLSS technologies with its recent FSR 4 update. For years, the Green Team have dominated upscaling, delivering near-native quality while boosting frame rates. Nvidia took the AI route from the start, training its neural networks on massive datasets, so each iteration improved automatically, even without manual intervention. FSR, by contrast, relied on traditional techniques — until this year, when FSR 4 finally made the jump to an AI-driven approach as well. Now, FSR 4 sits between the Transformer-based DLSS 4 and the older DLSS 3, which is to say, it’s very good. Unfortunately, the strength of any upscaler depends on adoption, and the Red Team still lags behind.

Fortunately, third-party (and often open-source) solutions are abound, if you know your way around a few files and repositories. One such app is OptiScaler — previously known as CyberXeSS — and it works to replace upscalers in a game with a different one that might be better in certain scenarios. For instance, if the game supports FSR 2 and was never updated beyond that, OptiScaler can take that FSR 2 input and convert it to DLSS, XeSS, or upconvert it to a newer version of FSR. And now, it supports FSR 4... as long as the game isn't running on Vulkan API or needs an anti-cheat. Apart from replacing upscalers, OptiScaler can also, by extension, replace frame-gen tech and even handle anti-lag features like Nvidia Reflex.


(Image credit: OptiScaler on GitHub)

This means that any game with older FSR or DLSS tech is now technically FSR 4-compatible. We use the word "compatible" here on purpose because "FSR 4-ready" is a bit of a stretch as there is no guarantee you'll have a stable experience. Firstly, it's not a simple toggle that you can enable in some GUI. You have to manually tweak files for every single game, and then further mess around with some settings in order to get the best experience possible. This is before installing FSR 4 in the game's directory, individually, which will be different for every game. It's certainly not convenient, but for a free solution that modernizes upscalers in a wide variety of games, it can be a worthwhile tradeoff for many.

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