Red Dead Redemption 2 respectively Red Dead Online will get the update Blood Money next week. Included is DLSS for more frames per second
Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best looking games of recent years. The stunning graphics of Rockstar Games’ action adventure hit come at a correspondingly high price:
For example, in 4K resolution including a high detail level, just under 60 frames per second are possible with a Geforce RTX 2080 Ti. At the time of the PC release of Red Dead Redemeption 2 in November 2019, the RTX 2080 Ti was the fastest gaming graphics card in the world.
Accordingly, gaming in 4K was out of the question for very few gamers. In the meantime, there are new graphics card generations from both AMD and Nvidia, but Geforce RTX 3000 and Radeon RX 6000 are still a long way from reaching everyone willing to buy due to supply bottlenecks.
RDR2 gets DLSS support
Nevertheless, many players should soon be able to enjoy the Western epic in all its graphic glory: With the update Red Dead Online: Blood Money, both the single player Red Dead Redemption 2 and the multiplayer mode Red Dead Online will receive support for Nvidia’s AI renderer Deep Learning Super-Sampling, DLSS for short.
However, the prerequisite is at least one graphics card from Nvidia’s RTX 2000 series, i.e. an RTX 2060 or better. Users of AMD graphics cards are unfortunately left empty-handed. You can find out exactly what Deep Learning Super Sampling is all about in the following video:
What is DLSS?
Depth Learning Super Sampling is where AI algorithms based on neural networks (NGX) are trained in Nvidia’s data centres to display low-resolution images at a higher resolution. Ideally, the result is indistinguishable from the native resolution (or even looks better) and at the same time brings significantly increased frame rates.
In concrete terms, two neuronal networks interact with each other. The so-called “generator network” generates high-resolution content from the low-resolution images. The second network is called the “Discriminator Network” and functions as a control unit. It analyses the images produced by the first network and compares them with the template (images rendered at 64 samples per pixel). This is done until the results are indistinguishable or barely distinguishable from the original.
Put simply, DLSS can create an image in 4K/UHD resolution (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) from an image in Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) virtually in real time.
Another important advantage of DLSS
DLSS could solve another problem of Red Dead Redemption 2: So far, only the edge smoothing options MSAA and TAA are available, which have to contend with disadvantages. With TAA deactivated, there is a lot of flickering, especially with regard to vegetation. If TAA is activated, it adds a visible blurriness to the game. With MSAA, the blurring is removed, but the flickering remains.
DLSS not only functions as an upscaler as described above, but also as an edge smoother (TAA and MSAA are automatically deactivated when DLSS is activated). Annoying flickering and blurring could soon be a thing of the past.
When will the Blood Money update be released?
Red Dead Online: Blood Money will be released on 13 July, i.e. Tuesday next week. It’s free for all Red Dead Online owners.
What do you think? Is Red Dead Redemtpion 2 worth returning to the Wild West thanks to DLSS, or did you play Red Dead Online anyway? What do you think about the graphics update? Feel free to post it in the comments!
