AMD’s FSR 3 is a universal frame generation technology expected to launch in September, and it has exciting implications for all PC gamers.
Every succeeding generation of graphics cards delivers its own set of supplemental advancements alongside the new GPU silicon. Sometimes based in hardware, sometimes in software, these features, now and then, do radically change the way we the game. Other, less impactful ones are destined to fade away.
With the current wave of cards, it’s all about “frame generation,” at the heart of the latest GPUs such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and its DLSS 3 technology. Frame generation is likely here for the foreseeable future, and given the highly competitive nature of the graphics card industry, it was only a matter of time before AMD would develop its own version to compete with Nvidia’s. It’s about to arrive in the form of FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3), the third iteration of the firm’s frame-rate-boosting technology.What Is Frame Generation, Exactly?
Before diving into FSR 3 specifically, let’s establish what frame generation is and how it works. First, to be clear, this is not an entirely new technology. Also, it’s a technology that reduces overall image quality, as it’s not possible for frame generation to result in higher overall image fidelity. Frame generation exists entirely to boost frame rates, though it may not always be able to do so.
Frame generation works, in essence, by creating artificial frames between two existing frames. Say, for example, we had a video clip of a man running down the road. In the first frame, the man might have his right foot firmly on the ground. In the next frame, the right foot could be up in the air, part of the way through taking a step.
What frame generation tech does is look at these two frames and composite an additional frame that’s halfway between the first and last frame. Though the exact methods for doing this can vary, the basic idea is to determine first what, if anything, has changed between the frames, and simply redraw any object in motion halfway between where it was in frame 1 and frame 2.
This is an effective method of creating additional frames, and it can have a positive impact on frame rates. Frame generation has been in use for more than a decade now on TVs. (It’s the cornerstone of models that advertise an ultra-fast video feature for sports content.)
You can use frame generation on most computers for video playback, too. The popular VLC Media Player has a simplistic version of frame generation built-in as a deinterlacing filter dubbed “Yadif 2x.” Another option is the SmoothVideo Project, a frame-interpolation technique that can produce generated frames with better quality than VLC.
