Metro Exodus’ DLSS Receives A Massive Quality Boost – Graphical Quality Tested

Conclusion – The Potential of DLSS

When Metro Exodus released on PC, there was a number of gamers who were more than willing to write DLSS off as a marketing stunt, a feature which was dead on arrival and unable to live up to the hype that Nvidia built for it. To many, the hype train for DLSS ended on Exodus’ Aurora. 

It will be hard for Nvidia and 4A Games to walk back the initial disappointment in Metro Exodus’ DLSS implementation, but now we can see the true potential of DLSS, with Metro Exodus’ latest patch offering a substantial upgrade to the visuals provided by the feature. Images are sharper, the downgrade from native resolution rendering is less noticeable, and at 4K we’d imagine that most gamers would fail to spot the difference between DLSS on and DLSS off. This change makes DLSS a no brainer at 4K, given the performance increase that it provides. 

The case of Metro Exodus does prove one thing though, that DLSS isn’t a magic bullet that guarantees a boost in image quality. Nvidia’s driver updates and 4A Games’ Metro Exodus Patches proves that the maturing of Nvidia’s DLSS algorithm and each game developer’s implementation of the feature matters. We now know what a poorly executed version of DLSS looks like, and both Nvidia and the dev that plan on using will need to take note of this event and do whatever they can to avoid it.  

4A Games and Nvidia should be praised for turning things around so quickly with DLSS. Metro Exodus is little more than a week old, and 4A Games has already addressed our biggest concern about the title’s feature set, making it seem likely that we will see further improvements to the game in the coming weeks and months. It’s a shame that these fixes were not available before launch, as if Metro Exodus launched like this, the whole DLSS quality controversy could have been avoided. 

As things stand right now, we recommend using DLSS in Metro Exodus at 4K. At such a high resolution the difference is extremely difficult to spot. At 1440p the change is more apparent but again, it is hard to detect these differences while the game is in motion, especially on smaller screens. Remember that our testing was conducted on a 43-inch screen, making these quality differences a lot easier to spot than on smaller screen sizes.   

At lower resolutions like 1080p the difference between DLSS on and DLSS off is much easier to see, but again Metro’s current implementation of the feature is worlds better than it was before. Before now playing the game at 1080p with DLSS was borderline intolerable, but now it is something that I’d happily endure if it allowed stable 60FPS framerates to be achieved. 

Congratulations to 4A Games and Nvidia for addressing many of the issues that faced Metro Exodus’ implementation of DLSS so quickly. Remember that Metro’s latest patch arrived around one week after launch, which is an insane turnaround for such a new and complicated graphical feature. Perhaps this will be enough to reignite some of the excitement that DLSS previously generated, though it will be difficult for Nvidia to wipe our memory of DLSS’ previously poor execution in Metro Exodus. 

You can join the discussion on Metro Exodus’ DLSS seeing a major boost in quality on the OC3D Forums.