DLSS 3 Skyrim Mod Being Worked Right Now by PureDark

NVIDIA DLSS 3, or Frame Generation as it should be more correctly called, had its plugin released publically by NVIDIA at GDC 2023 as part of the latest Streamline SDK update.

This opened up a lot of interesting possibilities, chiefly easier access to DLSS 3 for game developers and even for modders. In a previous report on PureDark's work-in-progress DLSS 2 (Super Resolution) Elden Ring mod, I mentioned that the modder was working on adding Frame Generation, too, after I told him it had been made available to everyone.

The good news is that PureDark told me DLSS 3 bumped the performance of his GeForce RTX 4070Ti GPU by 68.5% (from 70 FPS to 118 FPS) when implemented into Elden Ring. That was without even activating DLSS Super Resolution. Needless to say, it would be more than enough headroom to allow GeForce RTX users to enable the new ray tracing option at max setting without worrying too much about the consequences for their frame rate.

The bad news is that, unfortunately, the image quality is far from ideal; the modder described it as if the generated frames were juxtaposed with regular interpolation. That's obviously not what DLSS 3 is supposed to look like. As a troubleshooting method, PureDark decided to fall back on what he knows best. If you've been following his work and our reports, you might recall that he successfully implemented DLSS 2 (Super Resolution) into Bethesda's Creation Engine for both The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.

PureDark has now modded DLSS 3 into Skyrim, he told me today, though he's still tweaking the image quality and details. If he can succeed at making everything look right in this game, then he could possibly understand what went wrong with the Elden Ring implementation.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a very old game nowadays, but DLSS Frame Generation could still be useful for those who attempt to mod the game to look like a recently released game. YouTuber Digital Dreams, for example, often uploads Skyrim videos featuring massive graphics mods and ReShade ray tracing presets that can push the visuals to amazing levels but also force even the mighty GeForce RTX 4090 GPU to run the game at lower than 100 frames per second.

Although PureDark hasn't shared any info on the DLSS 3 uplift in this game, there's good reason to expect it will meaningfully boost performance. However, the real benefit from this work would be greater insight for future implementations - starting with Elden Ring. Stay tuned and make sure to support PureDark on Patreon if you want him to keep working on these mods.

Written by Alessio Palumbo