Pinball Arcade in 4K Resolution with new nvidia driver

[lio]

Nvidia have released a new driver that officially adds "DSR" support to GTX 500 and upwards (344.48 WHQL)

If you don't know what that means: "DSR" stands for "dynamic super resolution" and basically allows you to run games at a higher resolution than you screen supports and downsamples the result to you screen's native resolution - of course this has been possible before with various techniques but it has never been so easy. Using a DSR factor of 4.00x on a 1920x1200 resolution screen will result in 3820x2400 resolution in game that is then downsized to 1920x1200 again.
This improves image quality quite a bit, especially textures look better and the "moire effect" is almost entirely gone - also it anti-aliases the whole screen very effectively [though not efficiently as rendering everything in a higher resolution obviously requires more GPU horsepower]

TPA works quite well in 3840x2400 on my GTX 670 as long as I don't go crazy with the FSAA setting - 3840x2400 with 4x FSAA, 16x Anisotropic works at 60fps without any problems.
Except for the menus looking a bit strange with some labels in wrong places it seems to work flawlessly with TPA.
So this is really something everyone with a somewhat potent nvidia GPU should try!

 

[lio]

Two screenshots - seems screenshots are taken previous to downsampling though (you need to click the download button in the top right to get the full-resolution screenshot).

Ingame screenshot in 3840x2400
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uxs7qqwktneu4bl/JY4K_2014-10-23_00001.jpg

Menu Screenshot to show miss-alignment of items
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1h6kyz7ifaphdg/JY4K_2014-10-23_00002.jpg

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Hmm. Looks interesting! If you can handle it fine on a GTX670 my GTX760 should be good at 1080x1920, hmm?

 

[kimkom]

Yeah, sounds interesting and I've been meaning to give this a try too. Thanks for the screens lio.

TPA isn't graphically taxing so this sort of thing should run well on most machines, although not sure if it's g-sync compatible yet.

 

[Gozer]

I'm looking in the nvidia control panel but I can't seem to find any DSR settings. Where do you find it?

EDIT:

I see the DSR setting in global settings. Do you not set DSR by each game .exe?

 

[LeRoy3rd]

I just did a test with AA and DRS in TPA, have to say I'm disappointed. There's very little difference between AAx0-DSRx0 and AAx0-DSRx4, and no difference between AAx4-DSRx0 and AAx4-DSRx4. This was at 1080p on my EVGA SC'd 780ti, DSR is set to 4x (aka 4k). See below:

Comparison of AA and DSR


Below is a full sized crop of each:

AAx0-DSRx0

AAx4-DSRx0

AAx0-DSRx4

AAx4-DSRx4




And the obligatory animated GIF of the close-ups:

 

[kimkom]

[MENTION=3222]lio[/MENTION]

Great shout on this subject.

I can report that using DSR, TPA has never looked so good!

Pros:
Staggering resolutions possible
Everything looks a lot sharper and smoother
No more moire!
Works just fine in portrait and landscape mode
G-sync works perfectly even at 144Hz
Post-Processing effects also work without causing any ugly artifacts

Cons:
At the moment, all I'm seeing is the TPA interface issues but these are quite minor
Hell, this text is damn small!

For TPA I've tried 2160 x 3840px with 16x AA, 32x CSAA and 2x supersampling and it's flawless. I think ball movement appears smoothed out more too, must be another benefit of the downsampling.

So far, really impressed!

 

[Gozer]

I just did a test with AA and DRS in TPA, have to say I'm disappointed. There's very little difference between AAx0-DSRx0 and AAx0-DSRx4, and no difference between AAx4-DSRx0 and AAx4-DSRx4. This was at 1080p on my EVGA SC'd 780ti, DSR is set to 4x (aka 4k).]

Yup. Little difference if any.

That's a shame.

EDIT:

I just tried DSRx4 and AAX0.

It does get rid of the majority of the moire effect(I still see a little but it's barely noticeable). I'd say that's a big plus in my book.

Unfortunately, it really doesn't help with the textures. The UI doesn't scale and scrolling through the table menu is a bit slow.

I'd say it's worth doing just to get rid of that nasty moire effect.

EDIT 2: Also, I noticed that the pinball contours look much smoother too me.

 

[kimkom]

Further update...

So thought I'd push the boat right out to 4.00x DSR (5120px). TPA loaded but no start option appeared so game was unable to start.
Next, 3.00x DSR. TPA worked okay but was unplayable with approx 1fps. Huge drop from 2.25x DSR which just flies even with heavy AA settings.

For those saying there's very little difference, not sure what's going on there. Perhaps that's for 1080p? I'm running 1440p and the difference is massive.

Guess everybody will see different results depending on hardware, so I would say the only way to tell is try it for yourself.

 

[Megahurtz]

TPA already had massive menu/alignment issues running at 2880x1800 on my macbook. Not surprised the UI isn't even on the screen at 5120.

 

[Crazy Newt]

I have a GTX770 (2GB version) and normally play at 1080p (1920x1080) with the PP on, AA at 16X, Texture Filtering to Aniso(x16), and ball reflection at high.

My GPU is not capable of x4.0 DSR as the game suffers a severe slowdown in performance, but I can maintain an Adaptive FPS at 60 with DSR set to x2.0, which is a resolution of 2715x1527.

I was certain that the image quality was improved with DSR enabled, and a screen capture zoomed in seems to indicate that is true.

Left zoom is 1080p, right zoom is using DSR x2.0.

 

[Cuddlebuddie928]

Dual GTX 970's in SLI (all settings maximum):

Without DSR:


With DSR 4.0:


Frame-rate is fine, but the table selection menu is a bit sluggish.

 

[rehtroboi40]

For those who, like me, who have low-end GT610 NVIDIA Graphics cards, be advised. Your performance is unlikely to change. Mine still stutters regularly even with resolution set to 1024x768, PP off, no texture filtering or ball reflection. This is not a complaint, just a fact. I've logged in nearly 200 hours on the PC version at this setting and own every table up to POTO.

I still love the PC version, I'm just saying that this NVIDIA update did nothing. Once I get a better PC I'm sure I'll be better able to tell what their upgrades actually do for TPA.

 

[spoonman]

All it seems to do is make the table art artifacting and lower res images more obvious.

It's cool that you can set it to 4k, but until Farsiight improves their source artwork scans I don't think it's worth it.

 

[kimkom]

I was certain that the image quality was improved with DSR enabled, and a screen capture zoomed in seems to indicate that is true.

Left zoom is 1080p, right zoom is using DSR x2.0.

Nice screens. What I find most interesting there is the improved image smoothing on the textures, not just the geometry.

 

[lio]

My GTX 670 also can only handle 4xFSAA with 4x DSR (but that without problems), moving to 8xFSAA slowes things to a crawl (but that seems to be a video memory problem as 4x DSR & 4x FSAA already uses ~1900mb of memory and my videocard has only 2GB), but you can easily reduce the FSAA amount due to the increased and downsampled resolution because that will automatically provide you with extra AA.
Before I was running TPA with 16xFSAA, 4x Transparency AA, 16x Anisotropic and high image quality with all "cheap optimizations" turned off in the driver panel at 1920x1200.
Now I went to 4x DSR, 4x FSAA, 2x Transparecy AA (the other settings remain) and it certainly looks a lot better in certain areas.
And even though some TPA textures certainly are too low res to really benefit from the extra resolution it still looks better overall - especially on the newer tables with their better playfield textures.
Also you can play around with the "DSR smoothness" slider right below the DSR resultions in the global settings of the driver panel (which affects the downsample filter and results in a sharper or softer image) - so far I like 25% for TPA.

As rehtroboi40 said: it's not suitable for weaker hardware - as all it will do is decrease your performance while providing better image quality.
If you already notice a significant slowdown in the menu you can basically exit TPA right there and try a lower setting as it will not get any better when you load a table.

 

[Gozer]

If you already notice a significant slowdown in the menu you can basically exit TPA right there and try a lower setting as it will not get any better when you load a table.

I experience slowdown on table selection but I still get a solid 60fps once I load a table.

I have a GTX 780 and using DSR x4.

 

[kimkom]

Decided to have another mess about with settings, going back to 4.00x (5120px) but switching all AA off. Yeah 32x CSAA maybe was a bit silly but hey, what the hell right?! Worked fine. Worked up to 8x AA still working and 62fps, although I didn't think the image quality was better at 5120, if anything it was a bit worse, no matter what AA I used.

Dropped to 3.00x (4434px) and image quality improved. Bumped to 16x CSAA. All fine, still running solid 62fps. Went to 16xQ CSAA and that's where it hits the cliff for me. Performance plummets to 3fps, more than likely hitting the VRAM limit.

Not convinced there's any gain from 2.25x (3840px) but that was running perfect at 32x CSAA. Still probably crazy overkill but I may go back to that.

 

[Megahurtz]

For those who aren't seeing any visual improvement: are you remembering to change your resolution in the TPA config utility after setting your DSR scale? It isn't like forcing other video options in the Nvidia control panel. Setting DSR just makes that resolution available to games, but you still need to manually set it.

I tired 4x on my 1080p monitor, but my old GTX 560 can't drive that. Game runs slower than even on my macbook. I wish Amazon would ship my 980

 

[Nolan]

Dual GTX 970's in SLI (all settings maximum):

Frame-rate is fine, but the table selection menu is a bit sluggish.

Are you getting utilization of your second card? There doesnt seem to be a profile for it in nvidia inspector.