Microsoft’s DLSS competitor is now available on the Xbox Ally X handheld

Microsoft is starting to test its Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature with the Xbox Ally X. Auto SR first debuted on some Copilot Plus PCs nearly two years ago, improving visual quality and frame rates in select games. Now, Microsoft is testing it for docked play on the Xbox Ally X, allowing the 7-inch handheld to improve resolution and graphical settings for bigger TV screens. “Docked play means larger screens and higher resolutions, where drops in image quality are more noticeable or where some games struggle to maintain smooth FPS,” says Microsoft in a detailed blog post on Auto SR. “That’s exactly the problem Auto SR was designed to solve, so we’re starting the preview with docked mode where we expect players will see the most value.” Auto SR works much like Nvidia’s DLSS, rendering a game at lower resolution to boost frame rates and then upscaling those frames to improve image quality. DLSS has become surprisingly popular in recent years, with more than 80 percent of RTX GPU owners activating DLSS upscaling. “It is often a core part of how many modern games render, and players expect it,” says Microsoft. Not every game ships with DLSS, AMD’s FSR, or Intel’s XeSS, but Microsoft’s Auto SR is built into Windows and can apply super resolution to existing games without game-integrated options. It’s not clear how well this will work across a variety of different games. …