Valve's Gamescope Compositor Adds AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve's Gamescope Compositor Adds AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Support

Valve's Gamescope as a Wayland compositor for running games on Linux now has integrated support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Gamescope-AMD-FSR

[tildearrow]

With Valve presumably using Gamescope on the Steam Deck, this is good news for easily enabling FidelityFX Super Resolution across games and also benefiting those using this compositor from the Linux desktop for games too.

But isn't the Steam Deck's screen small enough to not require FSR?
Unless battery savings of course, or games that only run in fixed resolutions.

[oiaohm]

But isn't the Steam Deck's screen small enough to not require FSR?
Unless battery savings of course.

Not quite you forget Valve has some really old legacy titles on Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/20644...4952784350282/ Yes 640x480 is some games on steam max built in resolution So you need to upscale from 640x480 to 1280 x 800 for the steamdeck.

So it what you are thinking. Its not that the Steam Deck is small enough not to need FSR its that Steam Deck screen is too high of resolution for some games. Who would think people would be still buying games today that have VGA resolution limits. Of course these old games are not going to be patched to support FSR this is where gamescope comes in.

[furtadopires]

But isn't the Steam Deck's screen small enough to not require FSR?
Unless battery savings of course.

This and steamdeck can be plugged into a bigger screen.

[bple2137]

But isn't the Steam Deck's screen small enough to not require FSR?
Unless battery savings of course, or games that only run in fixed resolutions.

I know it's not the primary use-case for the Deck, but Imagine connecting it to a TV and using 1080p native resolution, but rendering game at 720p. FSR might make the output image less terrible, I guess.

[oiaohm]

Bigger screen is really only the icing on top. The numbers of application valve has in steam that don't do 1080p and don't do 1280 x 800 that valve will want to sell to end users. Yes retro game experience..

Please note the steam deck screen is not 720p either. 1280 x 720 is 720p There is 80 extra pixels vertically on the steam deck screen. So the steamdeck screen is going to have trouble with quite a few games. Yes 1280x800 is a laptop screen result-ion commonly on laptops not for gaming.

[skeevy420]

Bigger screen is really only the icing on top. The numbers of application valve has in steam that don't do 1080p and don't do 1280 x 800 that valve will want to sell to end users. Yes retro game experience..

Please note the steam deck screen is not 720p either. 1280 x 720 is 720p There is 80 extra pixels vertically on the steam deck screen. So the steamdeck screen is going to have trouble with quite a few games. Yes 1280x800 is a laptop screen result-ion commonly on laptops not for gaming.

I've been wondering if they're gonna run games at 720p and use the extra 80 for a notification or status bar (or something along that line) similar to how (well designed) media players place the video playback controls in the extra black bars, the 80 pixels here, from 16x9 videos on 16x10 screens.

The alternative to that would probably be an overlay to show wifi strength, battery levels, time, FPS, yada. Since some games lose performance and anti-cheats can be triggered by overlays, some form of permanent status bar would be a good alternative as well as would be a way to pad the screen into 16x9 to assist with odd resolution scaling issues.

[bple2137]

Bigger screen is really only the icing on top. The numbers of application valve has in steam that don't do 1080p and don't do 1280 x 800 that valve will want to sell to end users. Yes retro game experience..

Please note the steam deck screen is not 720p either. 1280 x 720 is 720p There is 80 extra pixels vertically on the steam deck screen. So the steamdeck screen is going to have trouble with quite a few games. Yes 1280x800 is a laptop screen result-ion commonly on laptops not for gaming.

Yes, and Gamescope does great job rescaling any image to any resolution, but keeping proportions. I used it on my desktop and in some circumstances Gamescope was truly saving the day - some Windows games have broken full screen when running under Wine. It doesn't matter what my native resolution was and what was rendering at.

BTW. I wonder if there will be UI toggle to simply switch it on for any game or at least some global setting. I also wonder if they make it possible to change gamescope settings on the fly (which is kind of needed for applying frame limiter anyway). Not sure if it's capable of reloading dynamically yet.

[heavyjoe]

is there an advantage, besides up-/down scaling, when using this compositor? less input lag? will this be implemented in the steam application by default in the future on linux?

[skeevy420]

is there an advantage, besides up-/down scaling, when using this compositor? less input lag? will this be implemented in the steam application by default in the future on linux?

It can be used to bypass the desktop environment window manager which can result in lower input lag and better frames since it runs in its own sandboxed envrionment. You can use it on GNOME or KDE to take Mutter and KWin out of the equation.

Just read the readme. I'm basically copying it in a dumbed-down manner.