Add DLSS for Better Framerates

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

Hello,

some users experience bad fps even on RTX graphics cards.
One way of helping them would be adding DLSS.

DLSS is a technology that uses a trained neural network to upscale the render resolution while maintaining or even improving image quality. For the player, DLSS is basically an AA method that improves his framerate.

With 2.3, the current version of DLSS, it is not necessary to train the neural network for a specific game.
Since Conan Exiles is a UE game, all you need to do is download the DLSS Plugin for UE, install it, and activate it for the next build of CE. You can also easily access all important settings for DLSS via blueprints if you want to allow the player on runtime control over the feature via the game settings. There is also a bool node available that automatically detects if a GPU has the necessary tensor cores. So you can easily disable/enable DLSS for the player with a single branch node.

If you are unfamiliar with DLSS or are afraid it might not work as intended in CE, just turn it off by default, mark it as “beta” and let the players experiment with it.

Here you can find the DLSS 2.3 plugin for UE:

Here is a dev talk with all necessary documentation about installation, activation, and setup:

And a demo reel just in case you didn’t test DLSS for yourself yet:

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Conan Exiles is UE4.
DLSS Plugin supports UE4.

Where is my mistake?

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4

I think it would probably be good to include FSR and DLSS in Conan Exiles. The devs know their code and I’m sure they are aware of these upscaling schemes, so when/if they decide it’s a good idea too I’m sure we’ll be seeing it. IMO for games like Conan, FSR is more interesting overall though.

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Is this only relevant for nVidia cards?

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DLSS is NVidia exclusive and requires an RTX enabled card, yes. FSR is open source and runs on pretty much any card released in the past 8 to 10 years. Both require trivial effort to implement.

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8

Okay, I was assuming, they would update the engine as long as they produce new content.

10

Also to keep in mind though is that the NVidia supplied plugin isn’t required to implement DLSS. Neither is any particular version of anything required to implement FSR.

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11

Exactly, not having a plugin for that exact version, doesn’t mean the engine doesn’t support it at all.

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12

/thread

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13

Why end the thread if the OP is asking for upgrade to the game that would improve game performance. Even if they (FC) didn’t want to upgrade the game to the point the OP asked for there is no reason that the thread should be ended and discussion stopped as there an achievable solution (though maybe undesirable to FC due to cost or time) to issues the game/players maybe be experiencing .

Seeing a number of concerned players (customers) providing feedback is always good even if it is not cost effective as it still gives insight to customers thoughts on your product. And I imagine if a number that FC sees as significant of customers subscribe or atleast further the desire to see this upgrade performed and see it as improvement to the game and thus their enjoyment of said game decides to perform the upgrade to improve the experience then the OP was successful in getting the ball rolling in the first place.

Bottomline: Why should the thread end just the basis of one factoid that is not a complete brick wall to the/a solution the OP is suggesting in this feedback piece ?

14

Because the difficulty in upgrading the engine is a complete brick wall. It’s not happening.

No, it’s still not happening.

Nope, still not.

Not then either.

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15

Um, ok . One issue, this is not for us to decide really is it ? I am not a developer of this game. I am unsure if you are or not though so you may in fact have the authority to make ultimate design and goal decisions for Conan Exiles .

If you are a developer I guess the OP could just ask you directly questions about why you are saying what you are saying about the proposed upgrade. If you are not like me also not a developer maybe we should let them decide these things and allow the OP feedback to stay open until such a time that Funcom decides to close it based on their rules. What do you say ?

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Actually, I’m saying that the plugin is not required AT ALL… Not, that it just might work anyway. There is more than one way to implement DLSS - no matter what game engine might be in use. Just to clarify…

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17

When you say “not required at all” does that mean they could up framerates within the engine a different way without this plugin ?

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18

Yes. Using official DLSS from NVidia.

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19

Cool. Thank you. I am not a programmer so I was unsure if I even asked you that correctly.

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20

Correct enough to be understood well. DLSS when it first released was not a plug-in. NVidia had to train their system for each game individually externally. The next major step in it’s evolution appeared in the game “Control” and wasn’t using the tensor cores at all, with no need to be trained externally. This joint project became DLSS v2.0 and was released driver-side so that developers could access it like any other driver functions (still no “plug-in”). That’s still in place. Currently DLSS 2.0 rev2, is using tensor cores once again and AI here too doesn’t need to be trained specifically for each game. A few months later they a released a plug-in that could reduce the effort needed to implement 2.0 rev2 if the game was based on the UE engine of some specific versions. The plugin is a “helper” and not a requirement.

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21

Ah ok that makes it clearer. So it would be up to Nvidia to make DLSS 2.0 rev2 compatible if possible with the UE version CE is using or for CE to upgrade their engine to make it compatible if they would see benefit in doing so to improve the framerate of the game?

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22

Well, those might be the long ways around, but yes. Probably the shorter and more direct way would just be for FC in implement it with their current engine and without the plugin - if the plugin doesn’t work with what they’re doing - and I assume it doesn’t.

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Tephra is summarizing the 500 times that the subject of “engine upgrades” has been brought up. If you want to spend the next several minutes or hours finding all the quotes and video snippets from when the dev team has talked about it, go ahead.

It’s been commented on, a lot, across multiple mediums. An “engine upgrade” is unlikely to happen. Sorry.

As for DLSS, that’s up to the dev team to decide if the resources necessary for implementation would be worth it. Though the OP’s assumption that Funcom needed an education on what DLSS was…something…I guess. Beyond that, Korahan, among others (as this is hardly the 1st, or 2nd, or 20th time), are expressing something they want in the game. Funcom has said that’s what people should do, so, nothing wrong there.

About the only other thing I’ll add is, be realistic about desires. In a recent dev stream, Funcom talked about how more then half of the Conan population is on console. Now an exact figure wasn’t given, not a ball park percentage, nothing that could be appropriately measured. Just “more then half.”

So, let’s just say 60% of players are on Console (just throwing out a number, it could very well be higher, or lower), which leaves 40% on PC. One can argue what the market share is between AMD and Nvidia since it ebbs and flows, but for the sake of the argument we’ll say that 20% is AMD, and 80% is Nvidia. Which means 32% are using Nvidia cards.

Now there isn’t really any solid data on how many RTX cards vs non RTX cards are being used. Steam’s Annual Hardware & Software Survey gives us a basic idea, so we can use that for the sake of the discussion. I’m being lazy on this part because I don’t really want to do all the math under the sun for my basic point about all of this. Give or take, of all the Directx12 cards in the survey, just 22% are DLSS compatible (RTX).

That means, if I’m doing my math right (math wizards feel free to chime in, my head is splitting as it is, I’ll correct and edit this post as appropriate), just 7% of all Conan players are using a video card that could use DLSS. And I’m willing to estimate that maybe 3% (I’m being generous on that one) of those players would actually utilize or need to utilize DLSS for Conan Exiles.

So, when I say “be realistic,” is it realistic to argue that the best use of the Conan Exiles dev team and available resources (implementation and back porting, testing, certification processes, etc etc), be used for 3% of the game population? Maybe, that’s the point of this suggestion threads though. Just be realistic in your expectation (which, a lot of these types of threads are not, no where near realistic).

As an Nvidia card owner for nearly 2 decades now and being incredibly biased in Nvidia’s favor, I still couldn’t in good conscious say I would recommend resource allocation to such purposes. But if FC decides to do so, then cool. If not, cool too, I trust their judgement on that.

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