Microsoft has released the DirectSR API for developers. Although still in the preview stage, it is important to the industry as this set of guidelines is intended to standardize the use of high-resolution graphics in Windows.

In the announcement, Microsoft points out what is already known. That the main suppliers of graphics chips (NVIDIA, AMD and Intel) have their own Super Resolution, DLSS, FidelityFX and XeSS technologies on the market for a long time, or The Redmond company understands this “As the number of SR variants continues to grow, developers are looking for a common SR API that can scale seamlessly across the hardware ecosystem.”.

And hence the motivation to create something common. This is understood if possible, as it must be clear that the DirectSR API will only work on Windows operating systems and games (or other graphics applications) that use D3D12. This means that it is limited to using Microsoft DirectX 12 and will not work on other video game development platforms (APIs) and 3D graphics applications in general, such as Vulkan.

How the DirectSR API works

In case you’re a little lost on this super-resolution thing, say that it’s a set of techniques and algorithms designed to increase the spatial resolution of an image. Get to work: these techniques render the game at a lower resolution than the screen’s native resolution and scale it to try to reconstruct the details lost in the process. It’s a “hack”, yes, but it offers a significant and verifiable performance boostallowing us to maximize the game settings, which we could only do with much higher level hardware.

By default, Automatic Super Resolution Graphics in Windows or DirectSR provides an upscaling technology based on the AMD FSR 2.2 specification, but Microsoft insists that it was created in cooperation (and agreement) with three large suppliers dedicated AMD, Intel and NVIDIA graphics cards. “By exposing these technologies in a single interface, SR integration becomes simple and scalable: developers can deploy SR once and distribute it across a wide range of Windows devices!”they assure.

Support for GPU vendors

Native support for DirectSR is provided in the drivers of the same graphics cards, where vendors tune their SR implementation to achieve optimal hardware performance. In addition, DirectSR includes built-in support for GPU-independent variants that are available at the application level, making them available on all hardware configurations.

DirectSR currently ships with built-in support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.2, along with Intel XeSS and NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution support at the driver level. This flexibility Ensures use with a diverse set of hardware environments while providing the options and quality that players enjoy today.

Perhaps most interestingly, the API allows users to choose between available scalers at runtime depending on their underlying hardware. “And the benefits don’t stop there: DirectSR is a self-contained solution, which means it eliminates the need to integrate vendor-specific development kits or package libraries into each game.”they say from Microsoft.

The company has published the full developer specs on GitHub, and you can see a preview of how it works on AMD’s dedicated FSR site.

What does the user have to do?

Very little. The DirectSR activation option will be located in the graphics section of Windows General Settings (System > Display > Graphics) and can be activated with a simple button. Apps that support this will also have their own configuration. We expect the stable version to be available in this year’s big Windows update, 24H2, which arrives next fall. The bad news is that it will only be available on Copilot+ Snapdragon Elite PCs to begin with. We expect it to expand to more teams later.

Considering Microsoft’s strength with Windows and its DirectX libraries in game development, a large number of compatible games are expected, even if they will be limited to begin with. This should be kept in mind it will also work with software other than games and Microsoft in their announcement cited improvements to the quality of video captured by webcams in Universal Windows Apps (UWP) such as Teams, Skype, and Camera, using the capabilities of neural processing units that all modern processors already include. It should also work in media players in a similar way to how already available high definition graphics technologies work.