Metal Upscaler 0.4.0 - THE NVIDIA UPDATE

Added

• NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution — Windows with an RTX card, and the default filter there. Where DLSS cannot run, the mod falls back to FSR 1 and records the reason in the log.
• NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation — up to 6x on RTX 50 series cards, 2x on the 40 series. Generated frames are presented in addition to rendered ones.
• AMD FSR 1 — available on any GPU, including AMD, Intel and Apple Silicon.
• Direct presentation — the finished frame is presented by the mod rather than handed back to Minecraft, removing a full-resolution copy each frame. This is also what allows generated frames to reach the display.

Two characteristics of frame generation are worth understanding before raising the multiplier:

• Above 4x the image degrades. Each generated frame is interpolated from the same pair of rendered frames, so the further apart that pair sits in time, the greater the proportion of each frame that is inferred rather than drawn.
• The display rate is the ceiling. Generated frames occupy vertical blanks. At 60 rendered frames on a 120 Hz display, 2x consumes the entire budget; requesting more lowers the rendered rate without raising the presented one.

Fixed

• Smearing under motion, present at every preset including Native AA. Four separate faults in the reconstruction of frame-to-frame motion: the matrix in use was the camera's rather than the one the world was actually drawn with; the direction of clip depth was taken from the graphics context instead of from that matrix; vertical motion carried an inverted sign; and under a shader pack the depth buffer was read through a projection that did not describe it.
• Input latency. The mod no longer stalls the processor waiting for the graphics card to complete each frame. The wait was a correctness measure taken while the smearing was unexplained and is no longer required.

Changed

• AMD and Intel graphics now default to AMD FSR 1 rather than Lanczos. FSR is edge-adaptive for roughly the same cost, so it reconstructs diagonals that Lanczos stair-steps. This also applies where DLSS was selected but cannot run: a non-NVIDIA card on Windows now falls back to FSR rather than Lanczos. Either remains selectable.
• Apple MetalFX frame generation is no longer experimental. The artifacts that kept it behind a confirmation prompt originated in a developer beta SDK rather than in the interpolator. On the Xcode 27.0 release the feature behaves correctly, and the warning has been removed.

Known limitations

• A shader pack together with Distant Horizons scales through a different route. Under a shader pack Iris supplies Distant Horizons with its own framebuffer and matrices, so Minecraft's render target is resized in place rather than swapped for a smaller one. The combination works; automatic quality does not apply to it, because changing the size makes Iris rebuild its pipeline.
• Distant Horizons on its own. The frame takes a longer route on that path, at a small performance cost, in exchange for frame generation remaining available. Setting d3d12_presentation_with_distant_horizons = false restores the shorter route and disables frame generation with it.
• Distant Horizons fixes the render scale for as long as its buffers live. It sizes them once and cannot be told to resize, so a preset change applies on the next world join on Windows. On macOS it applies on the next launch: DH's Mac path does not come back from the resize, so the scale is held for the whole process instead. The F3 line names which of the two it is waiting for, and on macOS the mod says so once in chat when it starts -- silence it with macos.distant_horizons_notice = false.

Requirements

Minecraft 26.2 with NeoForge. DLSS requires Windows and an RTX card; multi-frame generation requires an RTX 50 series card. MetalFX requires an Apple Silicon Mac. All other hardware is supported through AMD FSR, Lanczos and Bilinear.

Licensing

Metal Upscaler is published under the terms in LICENSE, included in the archive at META-INF/LICENSE. The source is available for inspection only.

Metal Upscaler may be included in CurseForge and Modrinth modpacks. No permission, no notification, public or commercial — both platforms reference mods by their listing and have their launchers fetch the file, which is exactly what is permitted. Packs that ship a copy of the jar, including server packs, are not covered, nor is re-hosting or repackaging it elsewhere.

Third-party components, with full notices at META-INF/NOTICE:

• NVIDIA DLSS — nvngx_dlss.dll and nvngx_dlssg.dll, redistributed from the NVIDIA DLSS SDK under the NVIDIA RTX SDKs LICENSE.
• AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1 — a GLSL port of AMD's EASU reference code, under the MIT License, © 2021 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
• Apple MetalFX — used through the system framework; nothing is redistributed.

NVIDIA, DLSS and RTX are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. Apple, Metal and MetalFX are trademarks of Apple Inc. This project is affiliated with neither.