The release of NVIDIA DLSS version 2.5.1 is the latest patch released last week. After the festivities, it was discovered that this latest version of the software has no added sharpening filter. Experienced users have used alternative methods such as hex editing or DLSS SDK.dll, which, however added a watermark, to fix sharpness issues in some games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or God of War. The problem was most noticeable when driving.

It was confirmed by NVIDIA Unreal Engine Evangelist Richard Cowgill (fatheadlifter on Reddit) by the following posts. In the future, NVIDIA would recommend that games developers use NVIDIA Image Scaling in a long time.

Yes, the DLSS sharpening is now deprecated in the DLSS 2.5.1. Instead, we recommend that developers use NIS (Nvidia image scaler) sharpening. NIS has a great sharpening technique, and can also provide crossplatform hardware fallback without RTX for scaling. The latest version of DLSS just doesn’t use the old sharpening method anymore. We recommend that a developer use NIS sharpening when implementing DLSS. This should make the image look better.

NVIDIA Image Scaling was released in November 2021 as a current version of the previous image scaling technique. The new algorithm uses six-tap filter, four-way scaling and adaptive sharpening filter. Scaling and sharpening are performed as well as in one pass, thus improving performance.

NVIDIA Image Scaling works with all iPhones of all manufacturers (including AMD and Intel). Game developers interested in adding NIS to their games can download the latest SDK from GitHub.

If you wish to test the scaling results available in NVIDIA DLSS 2.5.1, you either can download the latest.dll from TechPowerUp and put the file manually into the game you want, or use the handy tool “Dapper” from Australian programmer Brad Moore.