Intel XeSS 1.2 Released - Xe Super Sampling Still Driven By Some Windows Binary Blobs

Intel this afternoon released the Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) v1.2 SDK as this gaming image upscaling tech that leverages AI deep learning for better performance and less image degradation on Intel Arc Graphics as well as from other GPU vendors.

While Intel originally talked about XeSS as being "open source" for this image upscaling tech, XeSS 1.0 wasn't open-source. There are some sample files and header files, but the key tech consists of a set of Windows DLL binaries. There hasn't been any public source code to the XeSS libraries themselves and it continues to be that way with XeSS 1.2.

XeSS 1.2 still consists of a set of static libraries, HLSL shaders, and various binary demos. The SDK includes the header files for integration with custom software. So sadly it's still not "open source" software. Making matters worse, even the Intel Linux graphics driver for running Windows games with Valve Steam Play that make use of XeSS have resorted to hiding the fact that Intel graphics are used to avoid the XeSS code paths and associated problems. Hopefully Intel will eventually rectify these XeSS "open-source" shortcomings that would also make it easier to natively support XeSS on other operating systems.

As for the changes with XeSS 1.2, there is support now for dynamic resolution scaling. XeSS 1.2 also has various bug fixes, stability improvements, and performance optimizations. The new libxess.dll library is also intended to be redistributed now with the application. The XeSS SDK 1.2 maintains backwards compatibility with the v1.0 and v1.1 release series.

Those interested in the XeSS SDK 1.2 can find out more details via the Intel GitHub repository.