Lossless Scaling: A Literal Game Changer

A little over a week ago, Nvidia announced its new graphics cards would support multiple frame generation. That is for every single “real” rendered frame, the card will generate two or more additional frames. For some of us it was old news – we’d already been living the dream thanks to Lossless Scaling.

This is a cheap, simple app available through Steam that enables you to play almost anything with additional frames. As though to add insult to injury when it came to Nvidia’s new £2,000 graphics card, the app was updated to provide up to x20 frame generation last Friday. Improvements were also made to the quality of generated frames.

I’m half joking when I talk about this being a rival to Nvidia’s tech. Obviously the work behind a Steam app shouldn’t be compared to the output of one of the biggest companies in the world. Especially since they make the graphics cards and have deeper access to what is going on in your game.

And yet the comparisons have been coming thick and fast. The latest update for Lossless Scaling has improved on something that was already hugely appreciated by its fans. And I’ve got to admit, I’m now amongst them. I’ve not used it for Indiana Jones or Call of Duty (although there are people that do), but it has a tremendous use case that will completely change the way I play games.

That is that it works on almost everything, including emulators. And those locked 30fps games take on a whole new quality when you increase their frame rate by two or even three times. And in my experimentation, I’ve got to say the experience has been pretty much flawless.

Lossless Scaling – Old Games, New Life

There are countless older games locked at 30fps. Some games get patches which often work fine. Sometimes they have unintended consequences.  These might be small – some graphical issues, perhaps. But not everything can be patched. Some content has its logic tied to the frame rate, which means things can go loco when you smooth things out.

No such problem with Lossless Scaling. And while some won’t find it replaces a patch, it will still have its use cases.

The graphical quality is really impressive, especially at x2 generation. The more you generate, the more issues you’ll see. I’ve heard stories of games which run at 15fps suddenly running at a smooth 60. For that level of enhancement, a few graphical artifacts are easy to ignore.

I shared my Lossless Scaling excitement with a friend, who suggested maybe the likes of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the PS2 wasn’t the ultimate test for this fantastic little app. He’s right, of course. Others are using it to smooth out their experience in Helldivers and other new games that can sometimes show the dust on our aging graphics cards. But that’s the beauty of it: it has so many uses, and punches well above the fiver or so it costs to buy.