Nvidia 344.48 WHQL drivers

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/78873/en-us

 

Provide DSR support for Kepler and Fermi cards.

 

Vic

Ive tried this DSR for 2 weeks now and have found I can get better quality AA and performance by using standard AA settings.

If you didn't do a full, clean install and reset the shaders AND the default settings, you may not have seen the new driver at its best.

 

Steps to follow (and the first step is important if you ran the modded inf driver prior to this):

 

1: Uninstall the current driver. Do NOT install directly from Nvidia GeForce Experience as the auto-installer will bork a number of registry entries - or rather won't un-bork the previous installation which will have introduced a number of spurious entries.

Do it the old fashioned way with a clean download of the full driver set from Nvidia, uninstall the old, clean the registry and only then run the full installer.

 

2: Clean the P3D shaders folder - if you don't know what this means, the how or why then don't even attempt to install these drivers.

 

3: Open the Nvidia Control Panel and select default settings for Prepar3d - do this BEFORE introducing any new DSR settings.

 

4: Go to the Global settings in NCP and select the level(s) of DSR you want to experiment with - you can check all that you want to try at the same time as they simply become selectable from within the sim. TIP: Reduce the smoothing to about 20-25% from the default.

Save and close

 

5: Launch P3D - retain the existing resolutions for now, you simply want the shaders to rebuild not start messing about. Set the levels of AA, AF from within the sim ONLY at this stage. Fly around a bit and marvel at the new smooooothnessss, allowing of course for the shader rebuild.

 

You may find you're happy with that: Go Fly.

 

if not

 

6: Change the resolution in-sim to one of the new higher resolution settings that are now available. As P3D is a windowed application you MUST have black out desktop checked. After selecting the res you need to Alt+Enter the screen to true windowed mode and then back again to implement the new resolution (some rigs may need to further reduce to the Task Bar).

You know the new res has 'taken' when the menu gets smaller and the menu fonts seem a little blurry - that will not apply to the on-screen picture. Go Fly.

 

The experimentation on a per-user basis is to balance the DSR res against pre- and post-filtering tools such as FXAA, MSAA, SGSSAA. If your card can take it, you can go high enough that you don't need any anti-aliasing from within the sim, but that's a quick switch-and-see on the fly.

 

7: Reducing the AA within the sim might give you good results, but introduce shimmering. If so, open P3D.cfg and choose a setting for SSAA - 2 or 4 seems to do the trick. This also eliminates any remaining jaggies on certain aircraft - carenado models for example.

 

Finally, do not miss the step of trying the new drivers wit all current settings intact - that alone may make you decide it's a keeper. There's no need to use DSR unless you want to, and if you have multiple monitors it probably wont work anyway.

Thanks very much for such a helpful post.

 

Much appreciated.

Multiple monitors is an issue with DSR. You must have "black out desktop" checked which essentially blackens your second monitor making it useless if you use it for moving map, asn, etc.

 

Also any time you increase resolution you decrease the size of text etc making the menu items etc very difficult to read even if you have great eyesight!

 

They are still very good drivers but for me the DSR in a no go.

 

Vic

Over in the other place it's described a sledge hammer to crack a nut and I tend to agree. The basic premise of most anti-aliasing methods (whether pre- or post-filter methods) is to correct only those areas that need smoothing, while DSR applies the "kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out" approach.

 

Now if the system overheads and setup permits, I'm sure it's a solution for some folks, but where I see the actual practical application for tech such as this is for the natively low-resolution 3d displays (Occulus Rift springs to mind) which could potentially be downsampled to present a higher quality image to the eye without the need for improved and more costly hardware. Or with older games designed for lower-resolution display which could be enhanced. I must admit I'm toying with putting Silent Hunter back on my system just to see what DSR does with a subsim.

 

But if nothing else, it's a fun new tool to play with!