No Man’s Sky is one of the first VR games to get Nvidia DLSS support to improve framerate and fidelity on PC headsets.
DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling and was created by Nvidia to help boost the performance and visual fidelity of PC games while reducing the demands they place on a machine. It uses AI rendering to achieve high-resolution images comparable to native rendering without doing as much of the leg work. Extra overhead can then be used to improve other areas, like framerate. We haven’t seen the technique used in any VR games so far, but there’s been high demand in the PC VR community.
Check out the example No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games posted below, which isn’t running in VR. It shows the game running side-by-side on a 2060 Super card at high settings. With DLSS on, the game is able to nearly double its framerate, jumping from high-30s to mid-70s. However, a post from Nvidia itself claims that the game runs at 90FPS on Ultra settings with a 3090 card when the setting is enabled.
Other games adding support today are STALKER-like VR FPS, Into The Radius and in-depth mechanic sim, Wrench.
Some users reported performance issues with No Man’s Sky’s VR support when it launched on PC a few years back, so it will be interesting to see if this technique has a big impact on the game. It’s not the only big update the game’s VR support has seen of late – over on PSVR the PS4 version of the game can take advantage of running on PS5 to deliver improved fidelity.
