Valve Posts Updated Steam Deck FAQs To Address More Community Questions

[jaxa]

How does FSR work for games as an external feature, is it a Vulkan layer?

I have to sleep. You can look at these:

AMD FSR Can Be Applied to (Almost) All Vulkan Games via Proton’s FSHack

Here’s How To Get AMD FSR Running In Any Game Using Lossless Scaling Tool

While the technology can be implemented within a day or two in any AAA game, there are certain older games that developers no longer support. For those titles, programmers have built specially designed tools that can inject the AMD FSR scaler for almost similar performance & image quality. The most commonly used tool is Magpie which injects the spatial upsampling technique in almost any game title you could think of but users have been reporting issues such as stuttering and input delays when using it.

[shmerl]

I have to sleep. You can look at these:

AMD FSR Can Be Applied to (Almost) All Vulkan Games via Proton’s FSHack

Here’s How To Get AMD FSR Running In Any Game Using Lossless Scaling Tool

Interesting, but it seems to be Proton only? Vulkan layer still probably would be the only really portable solution that can work for all games including native ones (well, except OpenGL ones).

[cl333r]

How does FSR work for games as an external feature, is it a Vulkan layer?

Don't confuse Vulkan validation layer(s) with Vulkan extensions. Features are added thru the latter, while the former is for debugging.

https://vulkan-tutorial.com/Drawing_a_triangle/Setup/Validation_layers

[smitty3268]

How does FSR work for games as an external feature, is it a Vulkan layer?

Possibly by adding it to gamescope? Applying FSR after the UI/etc. bits are added isn't ideal, but probably better than nothing.

[shmerl]

Don't confuse Vulkan validation layer(s) with Vulkan extensions. Features are added thru the latter, while the former is for debugging.

That's simply wrong. Vulkan layers can be used for overriding and augmenting features. They aren't limited to debugging by any means.

Case in point - something like VkBasalt is a Vulkan layer: https://github.com/DadSchoorse/vkBasalt

So I wonder why can't FSR work in a similar fashion.

[theriddick]

It would be nice if Valve did a little more work on gamescope to support passing variables into the game environment a little better instead of passing them to gamescope AND the internal window environment. There is also stutter bugs in some games and mouse performance issues.

Gamescope has made some games run much smoother for me vs native desktop kwin environment where I'd see these weird nano-stutters when panning around in some games, often this doesn't happen in gamescope
(which currently can't use FSR due to fullscreen limitation under xorg, wayland has a special wine build that may work with it however)

PS. Gamescope works by making a fullscreen window; that is NOT exclusive fullscreen.

[cl333r]

That's simply wrong. Vulkan layers can be used for overriding and augmenting features. They aren't limited to debugging by any means.

Case in point - something like VkBasalt is a Vulkan layer: https://github.com/DadSchoorse/vkBasalt

So I wonder why can't FSR work in a similar fashion.

Layers are a means of hooking into Vulkan functions, which is why almost the only use for them is validation or trying to hijack some behavior. Therefore what you're pointing to is more of a hijacking situation, if you read the readme it says:

Will vkBasalt get me banned?


Maybe. To my knowledge this hasn't happened yet but don't blame me if your frog dies.

Which is also why every new official functionality to Vulkan is provided as extensions.

[shmerl]

Layers are a means of hooking into Vulkan functions, which is why almost the only use for them is validation or trying to hijack some behavior. Therefore what you're pointing to is more of a hijacking situation.

There is nothing new with such idea. It's been called hooks for ages. Vulkan provides official way to implement hooks called layers. So functionality can be extended in such way. Clearly not meant only for debugging.

I'm not really interested in debunking this.

[cl333r]

There is nothing new with such idea. It's been called hooks for ages. Vulkan provides official way to implement hooks called layers. So functionality can be extended in such way. Clearly not only for debugging so check your sources.

How much functionality was implemented in Vulkan in the last several years thru layers vs extensions? Will you dodge it just like with the question what is WSI?

[shmerl]

How much functionality was implemented in Vulkan in the last several years thru layers vs extensions? Will you dodge it just like with the question what is WSI?

Dude, discussions with you is a complete waste of time. I wish there's be ignore button here. Go read what layers are for. And then re-read it again.