NVIDIA upgrades their open source Image Scaling SDK

Back in November 2021, NVIDIA released their free and open source Image Scaling SDK for game developers to add in a spatial upscaler that can run on any modern GPU – and they’ve continued improving it.

What is it exactly? As NVIDIA describe “The NVIDIA Image Scaling SDK provides a single spatial scaling and sharpening algorithm for cross-platform support. The scaling algorithm uses a 6-tap scaling filter combined with 4 directional scaling and adaptive sharpening filters, which creates nice smooth images and sharp edges. In addition, the SDK provides a state-of-the-art adaptive directional sharpening algorithm for use in applications where no scaling is required.”

NVIDIA also say it offers the “best-in-class in comparison to scaling offered by monitors or other in-game scaling techniques” but it’s nowhere near as advanced as DLSS. It’s basically their simple answer to AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).

The source code is available on GitHub (MIT license) and just recently their team put up v1.0.2, here’s what’s changed:

• Added multiple performance optimizations
• Moved edge-map the interpolation and weight computation before the directional filter response generation
• Increased detection ratio by a factor of 2
• Fixed host and compute shader compilation warnings
• Adjusted sharpness minimum value and normalization
• Updated copyright notice