NVIDIA’s DLSS To Gain Native Support In Unity With 2021.2 Release Later This Year

Since the release of NVIDIA’s DLSS (deep-learning super-sampling) in 2018, the company has been adamant about the fact that the technology is easy to integrate into most games. Despite that, up until recently, every developer has had to work with NVIDIA in some capacity to get DLSS fully implemented, because the tech had yet to become natively integrated into any game engines. That’s quickly changing.

A couple of months ago, NVIDIA brought DLSS to Unreal Engine via a plugin. Any developer can search for DLSS through the official UE marketplace, quickly get it installed, and then work with it from there. Naturally, as soon as UE’s plugin released, many wondered what engine would be next. Perhaps not surprisingly, that’s going to be Unity.

Unlike Unreal Engine, which needs a separate plugin install to implement DLSS, it appears it’s going to be natively integrated with Unity’s upcoming 2021.2. Unfortunately for those hoping to dive in quickly, the 2021.2 release isn’t due until later this year, but the video above can attest to just how seriously Unity is taking DLSS.

While DLSS is typically associated with gaming, its usefulness is quickly gaining awareness in other markets, as well. That includes industrial design, along with media and entertainment. Generally speaking, any heavily visualized workload could benefit from a technology like DLSS.

An example of DLSS added to a Unity game is provided in the same video above, revolved around Light Brick Studio’s LEGO Builder’s Journey. The game may look pretty simple in a still image, but its use of real-time ray tracing proves it’s a treat to the eyes when in motion.

At 4K resolution, no DLSS ran the game at 18 FPS, while DLSS Quality mode more than doubled that to 38 FPS. Sacrificing a pinch of image quality for improved performance with DLSS Performance mode can hike the frame rate to 57 FPS. That seems to be a bit bigger of an improvement than we’ve seen in our testing of other DLSS-infused games, but scenes in Builder’s Journey may not be as complex as those others.

One can only wonder when AMD’s competitor to DLSS will arrive. At this point, it seems like it couldn’t get here a moment too soon.