Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition will not support AMD FidelityFX, 4A Games clarifies on FidelityFX Super Resolution support

4A Games will be releasing the Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition with a redesigned ray tracing pipeline and implementation of NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 2.1. In an earlier version of the FAQs published on the site (now removed), the developer indicated that support for AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) will not added. The original FAQ read,

Will you be adding in AMD Super Resolution later?

We will not be adding specific support for this, as it is not compatible with our rendering techniques. However we have our own Temporal based reconstruction tech implemented that natively provides the same or better image quality benefits for all hardware."

This led people to speculate that 4A Games had a whiff of the kind of super sampling that AMD plans to add to its Radeon lineup, and that FSR may have limited developer acceptance compared to NVIDIA's now established DLSS.

However, 4A Games soon issued a clarification stating that it was actually referring to the AMD FidelityFX toolkit and not FSR itself. The official statement reads,

4A Games has not evaluated the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution feature for Metro Exodus at this time. In our FAQ, we were referring to the AMD FidelityFX open source image quality toolkit which targets traditional rendering techniques that our new RT only render does not use, and noting that we have our own Temporal Reconstruction tech implemented natively which provides great quality benefits for all hardware, so do not currently plan to utilize any other toolkits.

4A Games is always motivated to innovate, evaluate, and use the newest technologies that will benefit our fans across all platforms and hardware."

Metro Exodus's support for FSR apart, there has not been much information from AMD's side as to how they plan on offering a viable DLSS alternative. AMD's Scott Herkelman previously indicated that AMD is looking to offer an open, cross-platform solution that can be implemented by developers irrespective of hardware. With the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 primarily being AMD platforms, it does make sense to have a solution that scales well across console and PC.

Herkelman said earlier that the work on a super resolution technique is "progressing very well internally". The AMD Graphics VP and GM was also confident that the results can be achieved even without machine learning. Since 4A Games is confirming it hasn't evaluated any form of FSR yet, it is implied that AMD is still quite some time away before it can offer a viable DLSS alternative.

Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition requires a ray tracing capable GPU to even run, which means NVIDIA's RTX lineup is currently the best option if you are interested in this reboot. An analysis by Digital Foundry clearly showcased the benefits of the new rendering pipeline and NVIDIA's DLSS 2.1 upscaling.

AMD would do best to accelerate development of their own upscaling technique to be able to compete with NVIDIA. However, unlike NVIDIA's Turing and Ampere cards, AMD Radeon RX 6000 cards do not have dedicated AI cores to do the upscaling math, so it remains to be seen how well the FSR would eventually turn out to be.

Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition will be available on May 6 as a separate, free download for all owners of the original Metro Exodus game on Steam, Epic, GOG, Microsoft Store, and GeForce NOW.

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