While we didn’t know it would land with the DirectSR name, we did for a few weeks Microsoft has been working on its own smart image resizing technologysa that Redmond’s plans indicated that this development will reach users in the expected major update of the operating system for this year, Windows 11 24H2. Of course, there is a very important nuance with regard to what was expected, which we will see a little later. And if you’re wondering why I put part of the title of this news in quotes, with that clarification you’ll understand too.

In a post on the DirectX Developer Blog, which was the space the company chose for this announcement, Microsoft confirms DirectSRa set of rescaling technologies and APIs that will be launched for the first time at the DirectX State of the Union, which will be held on March 21 during the GDC (Game Developers Conference) celebrations, which this year takes place between March 18 and 22.

And now I deal with the nuance that I indicated at the beginning. As you already know, there are currently three main scaling technologies, one for each of the major GPU manufacturers: DLSS from NVIDIA, FSR from AMD and XeSS from Intel. So DirectSR was expected to go head-to-head with all of them and try to leverage its default Windows presence along with the expected ease of integration to become strong.

The surprise and I think the good news came when we know it won’t. On the contrary, Microsoft is working with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA to In all cases, use climbers specific to each of these technologies.. So DirectSR is a technology related to scaling but It does not have its own descaler.

So that’s a summary of what Microsoft is up to with DirectSR make it much easier to integrate scaling into games, providing developers with an API that will act as an interface between the game and the scaling technology (or technologies) supported by the system the game is running on. In other words, it will no longer be necessary to implement DLSS, FSR and/XeSS individually in each game. Instead, using this API will provide universal support for the three technologies.

And who will win with the arrival of DirectSR? First of all, we could think of developers (which is true, with less work they will have access to three technologies), but mainly those users who play on PCand that they have seen for some time now how exclusives in this sense have prevented them from enjoying the rescaling of their graphics adapter in a new release more than once. As a recent example of this, we no doubt have Starfield, which as you recall only came with FSR 2 support, not DLSS or XeSS.

Of course, this might lead us to think that the tech companies themselves are against DirectSR, but as I suggested earlier, Microsoft confirmed that the technology was jointly developed with the three companies “disabled”, so we have already confirmed that there will be no problem in this regard. What is not specifically mentioned, and what we will have to wait to see if it is also integrated (although we understand that it is), are other functions associated with the solutions of these manufacturers, such as those for generating frames using artificial intelligence.

As stated earlier, we will have the first demonstration of DirectSR during GDC 2024, in a session where Microsoft will also reveal more information on a technical level. In addition, he also reports that DirectSR will soon be available in the Agility SDK as a public preview, allowing developers to test it and start providing feedback before the final version is released, which should happen no later than when the Windows 11 24H2 release is released.

Although there have been quite a few people who have argued that scaling is a “passing fad”, In recent years, we have been able to reliably verify that this is not the case.. On the contrary, as AMD, Intel and NVIDIA improve their designs in this regard, the result of using them is more than satisfactory. The main problem is that even if we take into account that these technologies have facilitated their implementation, we are talking about three different technologies that until now have to be integrated separately.

This may have less impact on big studios and blockbusters that have the necessary resources for this purpose, but the situation becomes more complicated if we are talking about lower-level development, carried out by smaller teams and with a smaller budget. This way, With DirectSR, access to superscaling is democratizedbecause we can also assume that Microsoft has focused on the simplicity of implementation and use of the API.

So does this mean that the exclusivity of this or that technology will end? Not really, because developers will continue to be able to implement only the specific solution of one of the technology companies in the dispute, which has become, as I mentioned, another of the battles between them. However, developers will have a bit more trouble justifying these types of actions to users, so it can be expected to happen less and less.

Can DirectSR superscaling be enabled in Windows 11 now? The truth is, yes, but no. Windows 11 build 26052, available to insiders, already has the integration of its manager section in the configuration of the operating system, although it is still hidden and it is necessary to use tools like Vivetool to display it. But of course, even if this operation is done, it is useless today, both because we do not know the level of implementation of this technology, and because, of course, there are still no games that integrate it.