A few weeks ago, users discovered that Microsoft is working on a native resolution upscaler for Windows 11. You can already enable some of it in recent Windows 11 preview builds, but the official announcement is nowhere to be found. Now, it looks like Microsoft plans to introduce his upscaler native to Windows 11 at his GDC conference in San Francisco next month.
The official schedule on the GDC website details “DirectSR,” the super resolution for Windows 11 apps and games. A demo will take place during the “DirectX Start of the Union” session scheduled for March 21, 2024. Here’s the explanation (from The Verge):
The DirectX team works with key partners from AMD and NVIDIA to introduce the latest updates, demos, and game development best practices. Work graphs are a modern way to take full advantage of GPU hardware and parallelize workloads. Microsoft is providing a preview of DirectSR, making it easier than ever for game developers to extend super resolution support across Windows devices. Finally, we’ll detail the latest tool updates for PIX.
Gamers can already benefit from a variety of resolution upscalers from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. Some of them (looking at you, Nvidia) require the latest and greatest hardware, while options from AMD and Intel will also work with older hardware from other manufacturers. It remains to be seen what approach Microsoft will take.
Microsoft plans to release a major feature update for Windows 11 in the second half of this year. It’s packed with a lot of AI features, one of which could be DirectSR. Although there is no official confirmation regarding the hardware requirements, reports suggest that some features will require dedicated hardware with a neural processing unit. You can already find system files that suggest it, such as his NPUDetect.dll library in Microsoft Paint files.
