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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

Reader mode
lemonfresh said:
is it possible we get a hardware tease, even a slight mention?
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I doubt they'd do it here. If the March thing is to be believed they might do something in October or November idk. Launch window stuff is up in the air we don't know anything.
 
carbvan said:
It's possible about as much as winning the lottery while being eaten by a shark which is getting struck by lightning and then dying from getting hit on the head with a coconut falling from a tree.
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1620234277641
 
I don't think there is much to speculate about the tweet itself, it's their basic tweet, they often use the words "focused, mainly" etc






 
carbvan said:
It's possible about as much as winning the lottery while being eaten by a shark which is getting struck by lightning and then dying from getting hit on the head with a coconut falling from a tree.
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So wait, in this instance you'd probably survive the whole ordeal since the shark is getting brutally killed before it can finish eating you?

I'll take it!
 
BDGAME said:
Iphone 15 pro will have a 6 cores CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and around 2~2.8 TFLOP GPU. With that kind of power, even a Ps4 wold be hard to be emulated, maybe impossible.

A more acceptable question would be whether or not the iphone 15 pro is stronger than the stem deck, which I think we can only be sure of by seeing games running on it in practice.
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And even then, mobile architecture TFLOPs are far funkier to calculate due to how their shaders/ALUs are factored.

Sure, we know it at least clears PS4 at 720p level (Which could put it in contention against the Steam Deck), but everything when comparing A17 Pro to T239 has a Asterix.

  • CPU?
    • A17: 6 Cores with way higher Single Thread performance....until it throttles after 10 Minutes
    • T239: 8 Cores with more Cache and a fixed sustain performance due to active cooling because it is a game console.
  • GPU?
    • A17: 2-2.8 (Speculative?) TFLOPs of FP32, but with an underutilized and still arguably immature API, RT Featuerset, and ML Upscaler, also it will throttle too.
    • T239: Bigger GPU, more mature API/Architecture, will 100% produce a higher quality resolve when docked. Likely will produce a more consistent resolve in portable mode due to console optimization and also a specific target resolution (1080p) versus iPhone screen.
  • RAM?
    • Even if iPhone 15 Pro has 8GB of RAM, that is 4 less than the 12GB Switch 2 should have, and the OS likely would take up more SysRAM anyway on iPhone.
 
Stephen said:
This is probably where we find out if Prime 4 is going to be cross gen or not.
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Nah, if it's revealed here for Switch 1 we would only continue to assume/speculate that it would be getting an enhanced port for Switch 2. Enhanced as in not just basic BC.

But I guess that assumption has been slowly building to a lock? Though this seems similar to the TotK release date hypothesis.
 
P4bl0 said:
Interesting they used the word Winter instead of Early 2024

That means in their marketing language Winter = December 2023 to March 2024

We also getting the Pokemon DLC 2 this Winter 2023

And if the Pokemon leaker prophecy is true, we getting the Switch 2 this Winter also
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Why do we think Switch 2 this winter if Pokemon leaker prophecy was true? Did he also mention something about Switch 2? I don't really follow Pokemon rumors/leaks.

I'm however almost certain we're not getting Switch 2 this winter. It's going to be 2024 release - just a question of if it's a reveal, or a release in March 2024. I think reveal in March 2024 is far more likely.
 
darthdiablo said:
Why do we think Switch 2 this winter if Pokemon leaker prophecy was true? Did he also mention something about Switch 2? I don't really follow Pokemon rumors/leaks.

I'm however almost certain we're not getting Switch 2 this winter. It's going to be 2024 release - just a question of if it's a reveal, or a release in March 2024. I think reveal in March 2024 is far more likely.
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Leak about the DLC said Game Freak was working on a next-gen update
 
0
Goodtwin said:
There is little doubt in my mind that SNG will launch at $399. People have to remember that Valve was able to ship a low volume product with Steam Deck in early 2022 starting at $399. SNG will sell more in its first month than Steam Deck has sold in its lifetime and the benefits of mass production correlates to being able to manufacture a superior product at a lower cost. With how popular the Switch OLED has proven to be, I wouldn't write off the possibility of a two SKU launch. The standard LCD model at with 256GB of storage for $399 and an OLED model with 512GB of storage for $499. At least one Switch SKU will be eliminated once SNG is out and a price drop is a given. Switch Lite can drop to $149 making it a great value for consumers looking for cheap access to the massive Switch library of games.
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Absolutely a sensible point of view, I also (for other reasons) thought that 449€/$ could be the launch price, but shortly after I think what the maximum ceiling is, for Nintendo it is also important to avoid situations similar to those of 3DS and PS3 otherwise they will have to make a price cut in the short term.
I have no idea what market research is needed in this case, as far as I know this threshold could even be 499€/$
 
Hosermess said:
Nah, if it's revealed here for Switch 1 we would only continue to assume/speculate that it would be getting an enhanced port for Switch 2. Enhanced as in not just basic BC.

But I guess that assumption has been slowly building to a lock? Though this seems similar to the TotK release date hypothesis.
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I might be misremembering but I'm curious if anyone recall when we saw BOTW footage, and it was eventually realized (later, after the fact - as in we realized only later) - the footage was running on Switch (that was announced October 2016), we just did not realize it watching it at the time, thinking it was Wii U footage?

Did that happen? Mind you it's more than 6 years ago, I might very well be misremembering stuff.
 
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Hosermess said:
Nah, if it's revealed here for Switch 1 we would only continue to assume/speculate that it would be getting an enhanced port for Switch 2. Enhanced as in not just basic BC.
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Fair enough. I moreso meant that this feels like the last chance to unveil it as just a Switch game. If it misses this Direct then I am almost certain it will be cross-gen title.
 
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karmitt said:
And the Wii U sold 13 million in its life - what’s your point? Sentiments and fortunes can change at any moment. I already said before that it’s not about where these companies are now, it’s where they could be in the future. Steam Deck is already doing exceptionally well for itself, and the story around Windows handhelds is only improving.

“They are just stuck with hardcore enthusiasts” is exactly what Nintendo shouldn’t be saying. It’s not much of a leap in my mind for the Steam Deck one or two generations down the line to be a bit of a juggernaut in the gaming space.
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I mean in the recent years the steam deck has had every possible advantage except one over the Switch; The price point of each system. The steam deck is more modern, better specs in every way, able to emulate Switch games and play them better than they do on Switch. The list goes on and on. And still the Switch will sell about 15 million additional units into its 7th year, once again comfortably outselling the steam deck.

So why do you think a system that has failed to compete against the Switch only because its unable to attract casual gamers and families even though on every metric its a better system than the switch will fare better against the switch 2? The Switch 2 basically erases the advantages the steam deck had over the original switch. No longer being able to emulate Switch 2 games, no longer being able to run those games significantly better if even at all, still going for a higher price than Switch 2. What will all of this lead to? Switch 2 will continue to get all the families and casuals buying it over the Steam deck, and even some of the hardcore spec obsessed gamers will buy a Switch 2 over a steam deck in the coming years. The fact that the Switch 2 will not only be much harder to emulate but will also get much more and better ports than the original Switch got basically makes the challenge for the steam deck incredibly hard, it had no chance to compete at all against a basically 10 year old chip in the original Switch, and will now have to compete with a modern chip with DLSS capabilities. The steam deck will of course continue to have its market, but any chance it ever had of being a viable competitor died even before the release of the Switch 2, due to it having every advantage overthe Switch and still being unable to put even a dent against the Switch into its 7th year of existence. The Switch 2 will make the concept of the steam deck being a Switch killer even laughable to everyone except the most extreme Nintendo haters.
 
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darthdiablo said:
I might be misremembering but I'm curious if anyone recall when we saw BOTW footage, and it was eventually realized (later, after the fact - as in we realized only later) - the footage was running on Switch (that was announced October 2016), we just did not realize it watching it at the time, thinking it was Wii U footage?

Did that happen? Mind you it's more than 6 years ago, I might very well be misremembering stuff.
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I don't really understand your question, but no one publicly saw BotW footage until that October 2016 Switch reveal video.
 
darthdiablo said:
Why do we think Switch 2 this winter if Pokemon leaker prophecy was true? Did he also mention something about Switch 2? I don't really follow Pokemon rumors/leaks.

I'm however almost certain we're not getting Switch 2 this winter. It's going to be 2024 release - just a question of if it's a reveal, or a release in March 2024. I think reveal in March 2024 is far more likely.
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Yes he said he was working on next-gen enhancement patches for the new Switch which should release alongside DLC 2 (now dated Winter 2023)
 
ReyVGM said:
I don't really understand your question, but no one publicly saw BotW footage until that October 2016 Switch reveal video.
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Didn't we see first bits of BotW in 2014?

I'm referring to the lead up to October 2016 Switch reveal - at some point before that, did we see BOTW footage, that we later realized was actually footage of it running on Switch, but we thought was Wii U at the time?

I most likely am misremembering. I cannot imagine Nintendo showing footage that the public would assume to be Wii U footage, but was really Switch footage. That would piss off Wii U owners who had no intention of getting Switch until much later.
 
I meant to post this last night:

Lugia667 said:
so uhhhhh when will the fruit talk die down?
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12 hours or so, because -
eye0h said:


I'm not saying that Games focusing on Winter means anything for our potential spring launch date
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- there it is.
bloopland33 said:
Oldpuck, I’d be curious to hear what you think of Nate’s March 2024 comment and the possibility of a March release. I know before the episode you had said you were leaning H1.
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Nate's comments about March were as much news to me as to the rest of you.

What started to shift my opinion on scheduling toward earlier in the year was what I might call "micro-details." There are a number of tiny, but concrete details about this thing that are floating around in the dev-o-sphere. Six months ago it was "I've heard it's a second Switch" or "it sounds pretty powerful." Now it's "it has six hydrocoptic marzlevanes to prevent side fumbling."

These micro-details are both uninformative and incriminating so I'm not gonna talk about them at all - though I expect at least one of them to break out into the public sphere any minute now - but the increased pace and specificity of them made my ears prick up.

Nintendo's products are about the whole pitch, not just the RAW POWER, which is why they tend to be more controlling about their reveals. The increase in these little details makes me think they're ramping up to a reveal, but that is pure speculation.
 
darthdiablo said:
I might be misremembering but I'm curious if anyone recall when we saw BOTW footage, and it was eventually realized (later, after the fact - as in we realized only later) - the footage was running on Switch (that was announced October 2016), we just did not realize it watching it at the time, thinking it was Wii U footage?

Did that happen? Mind you it's more than 6 years ago, I might very well be misremembering stuff.
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There wouldn't be a way to tell, really, even now.

IIRC, pre-launch BotW demo builds ran at 720p on the Switch, taking away the biggest giveaway between the two platforms. I guess the E3 2016 trailer theoretically could've been on the Switch, but that's about the only opportunity that was there. It's also pretty unlikely, given the Wii U version was likely much more stable at the time that trailer would've needed to have been cut together. Remember - the Switch version wasn't that much better performing until the 1.1.0 update at the end of March 2017. Dev builds were likely lackluster for a while.

All other trailers were put out after October 2016.
 
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darthdiablo said:
Didn't we see first bits of BotW in 2014?

I'm referring to the lead up to October 2016 Switch reveal - at some point before that, did we see BOTW footage, that we later realized was actually footage of it running on Switch, but we thought was Wii U at the time?

I most likely am misremembering. I cannot imagine Nintendo showing footage that the public would assume to be Wii U footage, but was really Switch footage. That would piss off Wii U owners who had no intention of getting Switch until much later.
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This was E3 2014. Switch hardware didn't exist till Spring 2015, and they didn't decide to go with the TX1 until holidays 2014. The decision to make Breath of the Wild cross gen didn't come till 2016.

This is an offline render, not in-game footage. The team has talked about how making this video is what forced them to settle on Breath of the Wild's core concepts. At the time of this video, they didn't even know what the Guardian's were.
 
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oldpuck said:
Nate's comments about March were as much news to me as to the rest of you.

What started to shift my opinion on scheduling toward earlier in the year was what I might call "micro-details." There are a number of tiny, but concrete details about this thing that are floating around in the dev-o-sphere. Six months ago it was "I've heard it's a second Switch" or "it sounds pretty powerful." Now it's "it has six hydrocoptic marzlevanes to prevent side fumbling."

These micro-details are both uninformative and incriminating so I'm not gonna talk about them at all - though I expect at least one of them to break out into the public sphere any minute now - but the increased pace and specificity of them made my ears prick up.

Nintendo's products are about the whole pitch, not just the RAW POWER, which is why they tend to be more controlling about their reveals. The increase in these little details makes me think they're ramping up to a reveal, but that is pure speculation.
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pure uncut speculation

H4CYcDKS9cGt5KLz58e3Po-970-80.jpg.webp
 
oldpuck said:
Nate's comments about March were as much news to me as to the rest of you.

What started to shift my opinion on scheduling toward earlier in the year was what I might call "micro-details." There are a number of tiny, but concrete details about this thing that are floating around in the dev-o-sphere. Six months ago it was "I've heard it's a second Switch" or "it sounds pretty powerful." Now it's "it has six hydrocoptic marzlevanes to prevent side fumbling."

These micro-details are both uninformative and incriminating so I'm not gonna talk about them at all - though I expect at least one of them to break out into the public sphere any minute now - but the increased pace and specificity of them made my ears prick up.

Nintendo's products are about the whole pitch, not just the RAW POWER, which is why they tend to be more controlling about their reveals. The increase in these little details makes me think they're ramping up to a reveal, but that is pure speculation.
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Nice. I appreciate the reply! What I’d give to be in those dev circles. Sounds fascinating.
 
P4bl0 said:
I don't think there is much to speculate about the tweet itself, it's their basic tweet, they often use the words "focused, mainly" etc






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Agreed.

Though I do wonder if removing 'mostly', 'mainly', etc. was intentional. Last year's tweets all had that wording, this one just says focused.

Does this mean anything? No. Is it fun to look for meaning? Yes lmao
 
oldpuck said:
I meant to post this last night:


12 hours or so, because -

- there it is.

Nate's comments about March were as much news to me as to the rest of you.

What started to shift my opinion on scheduling toward earlier in the year was what I might call "micro-details." There are a number of tiny, but concrete details about this thing that are floating around in the dev-o-sphere. Six months ago it was "I've heard it's a second Switch" or "it sounds pretty powerful." Now it's "it has six hydrocoptic marzlevanes to prevent side fumbling."

These micro-details are both uninformative and incriminating so I'm not gonna talk about them at all - though I expect at least one of them to break out into the public sphere any minute now - but the increased pace and specificity of them made my ears prick up.

Nintendo's products are about the whole pitch, not just the RAW POWER, which is why they tend to be more controlling about their reveals. The increase in these little details makes me think they're ramping up to a reveal, but that is pure speculation.
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First live footage leak of Nintendo's presentation at Gamescom:

fallapart.png
 
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They didn't say "focussed exclusively" nor deny a hardware mention, so, I'm gonna say my "Is it gonna be teased or revealed here?" setting has now changed to "iffy".

Unlike Scott, I didn't need brain surgery for it, but much like Scott, it is at risk of rapidly flipping to "not a chance".
 
Jersh said:
Agreed.

Though I do wonder if removing 'mostly', 'mainly', etc. was intentional. Last year's tweets all had that wording, this one just says focused.

Does this mean anything? No. Is it fun to look for meaning? Yes lmao
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It means the next console is "The Nintendo Mainly"

🤯
 
bloopland33 said:
Nice. I appreciate the reply! What I’d give to be in those dev circles. Sounds fascinating.
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I mean, most of the time it's just folks talking about work. Last night I heard about Secret Project From Indie Darling, but the context was "I hope I get this job, the commute for the current gig is killing me."

No matter how much you love your work, if you're excited about it all the time, you'll blow out your limbic system.
 
I wanted to post it earlier (when the Gamescom rumor took out) but didn't have the time: "NSW2 reveal" video using the Chinese animation series Fog Hill of Five Elements (Netflix has the rights for more than a year but didn't yet officially anounce it).

 
RedSpring said:
I don't have the experience to look up components but I was leaning toward $400 before this month. With all the leaks, I'm leaning towards $500 since it's comparable in cutting edge hardware to the other consoles with which have recent price increase outside of US. Add in that Sony/MS is more willing to take a loss on hardware, I don't see a large price difference. Maybe $450 but not $400.
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They’re referring to cost, not price. What it would cost Nintendo to make the Switch 2, not what they intend to sell it for.

Of traditional pricing is a thing, you usually double the cost and assign that as price, so it’s possible that the Switch 2 costs $200-225 to make, and they could sell it at $400-450 ($399.99 and 449.99 as marketing prices, MSRP).

Or it’s a Sony situation and the device costs $300, 350 or 400 to make and they’ll sell it for $50-150 extra to not incurr on a loss.

They could control the profit margin a bit by mitigating possible losses with subs and software.

TheSentry said:
can’t see a world where they announce Switch 2 in this Direct.
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Not Switch 2 éxplicitly, but maybe to look forward for a specific date for reveal or next gen switch. Or not.
 
Stephen said:
This is probably where we find out if Prime 4 is going to be cross gen or not.
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chaos scenario: they show off prime 4, it looks good, but no mention of Switch 2 (because it won't be mentioned without a hardware reveal/announcement) and we engage in another 4-6 months of arguing about cross gen until the March 2024 Switch 2 reveal.
 
Dekuman said:
chaos scenario: they show off prime 4, it looks good, but no mention of Switch 2 (because it won't be mentioned without a hardware reveal/announcement) and we engage in another 4-6 months of arguing about cross gen until the March 2024 Switch 2 reveal.
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Chaos scenario:

The Direct is broadcast in 4K with no hardware reveal until January.
 
ziggyrivers said:
They’re referring to cost, not price. What it would cost Nintendo to make the Switch 2, not what they intend to sell it for.

Of traditional pricing is a thing, you usually double the cost and assign that as price, so it’s possible that the Switch 2 costs $200-225 to make, and they could sell it at $400-450 ($399.99 and 449.99 as marketing prices, MSRP).

Or it’s a Sony situation and the device costs $300, 350 or 400 to make and they’ll sell it for $50-150 extra to not incurr on a loss.

They could control the profit margin a bit by mitigating possible losses with subs and software.


Not Switch 2 éxplicitly, but maybe to look forward for a specific date for reveal or next gen switch. Or not.
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They asked for cost to infer a price that Nintendo could shoot for. I don't have a cost so I just gave a guess for the price.
 
We definitely need these 2 posts to be pinned or put up as a thread mark for basic explanation. Beautiful explanation.

oldpuck said:
I won't say "easily" but I'll say "that's about what I would expect." Thraktor did a deep dive on loading times, but let me give you an ELI5 on it all.

When a 4k60fps game starts from a menu it needs to :
  1. Load the data off of storage
  2. Convert it into something it can use
  3. Start up the game's simulations
    • These first 3 steps take about 30 seconds, currently.
    • The first menu screen takes ~1.4 seconds to fade out, before the loading screen.
    • "Instant" needs to be about 1.5 seconds, then.
  4. Draw 8.3 million pixels to the screen
    • On Switch, Zelda is 900p, so that's only 1.4 million pixels
  5. Draw 8.3 million pixels again, 16.6 milliseconds later.
    • On Switch, Zelda is 30fps, so that's 33.3ms
Let's go step by step, and talk about how the "expected" Next Gen Switch changes these steps, to make this no-loading, 4k60 Zelda happen.

1. Load: Storage go brrrr​

This is by far the slowest part of this process, and the Switch has three places it might load the data. From internal storage, from a cartridge, or from the SD card. Switch NG updates at least two of these

The same kind of storage that is in a phone
Switch's internal storage is eMMC - which is basically dead. It is sticking around in budget phones, but modern phone chips don't even have the option to use it.

Just about every Android phone has moved to UFS. At the low end, you can expect something like 5x improvement over the Switch.

A new cartridge format to match
There are solid rumors that Nintendo has updated their cartridge format to something much faster. That's not just for Moar Power, but large carts with the old tech were getting expensive to make, and games are only getting larger.

What about expansion storage?
There isn't any clarity here yet, so this is kind of an asterisk

2. Convert: Zip Zap Zop​

The second step is mostly decompression - turning compressed assets on disk to uncompressed formats that the game can consume. Switch NG adds two new tools

Dedicated decompression hardware
Switch NG is pretty much confirmed to have dedicated decompression hardware. In days of slower storage, compression actually sped things up too, because storage was so slow. Reading smaller amounts of data that you then had to decompress was faster than reading giant gobs of uncompressed data to memory.

Modern systems have the opposite problem. Storage is fast, but CPUs are busier than ever. But games are also big so compression is still necessary. Decompression hardware takes the CPU out of the equation entirely, decompressing faster than the CPU could, but without any CPU load.

New formats
It's not just the hardware that is evolving but the software. Nvidia has been developing new compression formats designed to work with faster storage. This demo likely wasn't just "Breath of the Wild on new hardware" but "Breath of the Wild ported to our new set of tools" including new formats.

3. Simulate: Strong ARM​

For game startup this is might take longer, but in normal game play you have to do this every frame. The thing to keep in mind is that this mostly have nothing to do with resolution. Breath of the Wild physics is the same a 4k as it is at 540p, same for Bokoblin AI. So it's all about frame rate. 30fps->60fps is twice as fast.

Just plain faster CPUs
Pretty much what it says on the tin. The Switch CPU was designed in 2012. The Switch NG CPU was designed in 2020, by the fabled ARM Austin team, and is still in many ways the peak of their work, with new ARM cores only now getting back to where this one was.

Here is an overclocked Switch up against the Orin NX (which is basically Switch NG's cousin, with nearly identical CPUs). Way more than a 2x leap

Just plain more of them.
Switch has 4 cores. Switch NG has 8 of them. Not all tasks can be split up to run twice as fast on twice as many cores, but one of the better contenders is, in fact, loading where lots of different setup tasks happen independently of each other.

4. Draw: Fastest in the West​

1.4 million pixels to 8.3 million pixels. That's a 6x leap. How?

A big ass GPU
The Switch has a 256 core GPU. Switch NG has 1536 cores. That's your 6x leap, done. GPUs are very good at scaling with more cores, unlike CPUs, and this kinda of "just throw more cores at it" really does work exactly how you'd naively assume it would.

That's all assuming that the cores run at the same speed as the Switch. Generally, the advances that let you stick more cores into a similar sized chip also bring along with it a little extra power efficiency, letting you push clocks higher. So 6x represents the floor here, with additional clocks getting anywhere from 7-8x.

5. Repeat: A Super Sampler
But we're still only 30fps. It's pretty clear how we get the game logic to 60fps - we have twice as much power in the CPU, we just go faster. But we have just enough GPU power to get to 4k, much less do it twice as many times per second, right?

DLSS 2
The answer is Deep Learning Super Sampling. DLSS is an Nvidia technology that lets you get (most of) the detail of a high resolution game with (most of) the frame rate of a lower resolution game.

There are a lot of deep dives on how DLSS works in thread, but I'll give you the short-ish version. Temporal reconstruction is a group of techniques that remember details from older frames, and combines them smartly into a new frame, at a higher resolution.

DLSS is Nvidia's version of that technology that uses AI to do that combining. That AI is possible on a home computer because of special AI accelerators that Nvidia has built, called tensor cores. It is widely considered the highest quality upscaling technique, producing the best looking results, in the fastest time.

Here is a video comparing Starfield using "real" 4k on the left, AMD's temporal reconstruction (called FSR) in the middle, and DLSS on the right. I wouldn't even call it "good" - the DLSS version just plain looks better than native, to me. But that's not the real point, look at the frame rate graph at the middle. Notice how DLSS is nearly double the frame rate of native?

That's because the GPU is only drawing half the pixels each frame, with DLSS preserving that detail across frames. And that's the ticket here. Switch NG's big as GPU "only" has to draw 1440p images each frame, with DLSS making a gorgeous 4k image out of it, and with DLSS, anti-aliasing is effectively free on top.

TL;DR. SWITCH TOO GOOD​

Breath of the Wild's assets are converted to a new format designed for modern hardware. They gets blitzed into memory by an ungodly fast storage solution, decompressed in real time by special hardware. Meanwhile a cluster of 8 CPUs working at quadruple speed setup the initial game data in milliseconds. A new, more powerful GPU draws 3 times as many pixels as before. AI transforms those pixels into 4k, while the CPU and the GPU run ahead to render at 60fps.
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oldpuck said:
A Quick Deconfuser on DLSS 3.5 - it's not your fault you're confused. It's Nvidia's.

DLSS is a tool for using AI to improve the visual quality of video games. DLSS 2, 3, and 3.5 each introduced major new features. Because of that, gamers tend to use the version number to refer to the feature added.

But the version you use doesn't mean you use every feature.

There are four features we care about in DLSS.

DLSS Upscaling - this was the only real feature in DLSS 1, and DLSS 2 radically changed how it worked, vastly improving. So most of the time when people say "DLSS" they mean "DLSS 2 Upscaling." It lets you take a low res game, that runs at a higher frame rate, and then keep that good frame rate while upscaling the image to a higher resolution.

DLAA - a high quality antialiasing. DLSS Upscaling always includes AA. DLAA just lets you use the anti-aliasing by itself.

DLSS-G is the official name of DLSS Frame Generation. This uses AI to make new frames between the frames the game draws directly, increasing smoothness. It was introduced in DLSS 3 so it is sometimes called DLSS 3, which is confusing, and we're all trying to stop. It is very cool, but it has lots of non-obvious limitations.

DLSS-RR short for DLSS Ray Reconstruction. This replaces part of the ray tracing pipeline with the same AI that Upscaling uses. It can vastly increase RT quality, and sometimes increases RT performance too. It was introduced in DLSS 3.5, so it is sometimes called DLSS 3.5, but I think at this point you can see how that is super fucking confusing.

These DLSS features can be combined in lots of different combinations. Just because you have DLSS 3.5 in your game, doesn't mean you are using every feature.

Just to add to the complications Every version of DLSS as brought improvements to all of these features, not just adding new ones. So in general, you want the latest version, even if you don't use any of the new features.

TL;DR: Just because the New Switch has the latest DLSS version, doesn't mean every feature is on in every game, or that they will all work on the new hardware.

DLSS upscaling and DLAA will definitely work on the New Switch.

DLSS-G will probably not though there are some smart people who think otherwise, but even those folks would recognize there are serious caveats.

DLSS-RR probably will but the tech is very early, so there isn't the kind of data out there to be super sure. Yet.
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oldpuck said:
I mean, most of the time it's just folks talking about work. Last night I heard about Secret Project From Indie Darling, but the context was "I hope I get this job, the commute for the current gig is killing me."

No matter how much you love your work, if you're excited about it all the time, you'll blow out your limbic system.
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Remind me, are you a software engineer? I don't remember from your post when everyone was sharing backgrounds. You had a roundabout way into this world, beginning with theater aspirations, IIRC...unless I'm mixing stories up lol
 
Btw, I finally caught up on the last 30-40 pages or so, since last week Eurogamer and VGC's article drop. I saw people mention Nintendo filed a "scrolling shoulder button" patent a few times. Can anyone catch me up?
 
oldpuck said:
Six months ago it was "I've heard it's a second Switch" or "it sounds pretty powerful." Now it's "it has six hydrocoptic marzlevanes to prevent side fumbling."
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jalen-hurts-fumble-jalen-hurts.gif

Fumbling, you say? pain

Was unsure whether or not to do an American football joke or an engineering/science joke. Guess the thread gets the not-real-football joke today.
 
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