Introduction

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, developed by Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment on an improved in-house Snowdrop engine with DirectX 12 exclusively and using the following cutting edge technologies: ray traced global illumination, ray traced shadows and ray traced reflections, providing more realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections. This release on PC also has support for NVIDIA’s DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 3.5) and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3). FSR 3 means that you can enable AMD’s Frame Generation technology—on all cards, including NVIDIA and Intel. You also get AMD’s FSR Super Resolution upscaling technology from day one. In order to run this game at maximum graphics settings and reasonable framerates at native resolution, quite a powerful GPU is required, which is why upscaling solutions are so important. But depending on the game, there can be differences in the implementations of NVIDIA’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR, so we are keen to have a look at these temporal upscalers in this game.

Below, you will find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p, 1080p, and in different FSR and DLSS quality modes; the TAA and FSR 3 Frame Generation screenshots are also available in the dropdown menu. For those who want to see how these technologies perform in motion, watch our side-by-side comparison video. The video can help uncover issues like shimmering or temporal instability, which are not visible in the screenshots.

All tests were made using a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU at Ultra graphics settings with ray tracing enabled; motion blur, depth of field and film grain were disabled for better image viewing. DLSS Super Resolution in this game shipped with version 3.5.10, there is no support for NVIDIA Frame Generation or Ray Reconstruction.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is another game with heavy use of upscaling technologies in mind and the inclusion of an “Ultra Quality” mode for each upscaling solution is a confirmation of this. It is very unusual to have an “Ultra Quality” mode for upscaling, especially for DLSS, and in this game, the “Ultra Quality” mode is designed to produce a native-like image quality, but with a nice performance boost compared to native TAA. Please note that “Ultra Quality” is not “DLAA”, this means that even in the highest mode that will be a little bit of upscaling.

In general, both upscaling solutions are doing their job pretty well on producing a native-like image when “Ultra Quality” mode is selected, but the differences in image quality become more visible when “Quality” or lower modes are applied. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has a very dense and detailed game world, surrounded by different varieties of trees and vegetation, which are always in motion due to dynamic winds and other weather effects. Both DLSS and FSR are able to retain these unique details at close and medium distance—without shimmering or flickering issues in motion, which is an impressive result. Especially for FSR upscaling as it often struggles to retain details in moving vegetation, which results in shimmering. Only at far distance the difference in image details may become visible, but you have to zoom into the still image to be able to see it.

However, both DLSS and FSR have in common two specific instability issues, which we usually don’t see in other games: in some specific weather conditions, the clouds in the sky have an extremely jittery look across all resolutions and quality modes when upscaling is enabled. The second-most-noticeable issue is a breakup or pixelation in water rendering in the distance when the game is running at internal resolutions of 720p or lower, which means that 1080p DLSS/FSR Quality modes will be affected by this issue.

While the FSR 3 upscaling solution does a good job at maintaining the details in vegetation, there are notable differences in other aspects when FSR 3 is enabled. Specifically, the quality of waterfalls significantly loses detail across various resolutions and quality modes compared to TAA and DLSS, as clearly observed in our screenshots. Additionally, at lower resolutions such as 1080p, the smoke and fire effects suffer from reduced clarity, resulting in a more blurred appearance. There’s also noticeable shimmering artifacts when the smoke is overlapping with the trees or vegetation.

In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an updated version of AMD’s FSR 3 Frame Generation is used, which successfully fixes various issues that we encountered when testing Forspoken (the first FSR 3 game). Notably, the problem of frame pacing, especially with V-Sync disabled, has been successfully addressed. The current implementation of FSR 3 Frame Generation eliminates the need for additional steps to apply AMD’s technology; just toggle the feature on and you are ready to go. V-Sync is still a recommended option for those who want to have the most optimal gaming experience. Also, the FSR 3 Frame Generation implementation in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora now has proper support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) monitors (G-Sync and FreeSync).

While FSR 3 Frame Generation generally works quite well in Avatar, we’ve encountered a few image quality instabilities that are directly related to the Frame Generation implementation and not the Super Resolution upscaling component of FSR 3. The Frame Generation component struggles to retain the detail of fast moving objects in the distance, such as flying birds, creating a pixelated and fuzzy look. The second-most-noticeable issue is jittering on the in-game on-screen UI, such as the health bar or the description of currently selected quests, which can be distracting for some people. These issues become less apparent the higher your base framerate is. It is important to note that in order to use AMD’s Frame Generation solution in Avatar, the Super Resolution upscaling component is required, so for those who have been wondering if it’s possible to combine DLSS Super Resolution with AMD’s FSR 3 Frame Generation technology, the answer is simple—you can’t enable NVIDIA DLSS and AMD’s Frame Generation at the same time in this game.

Speaking of performance, the implementation of FSR 3 upscaling component is 4% slower at 4K in comparison to DLSS and practically identical to DLSS at 1440p and 1080p in terms of performance gain over native TAA solution. Overall, the DLSS and FSR 3 performance uplift at 4K and 1440p is a great improvement to the game, offering up to 40% more performance in “Quality” mode and up to 15% more performance in “Ultra Quality” mode. With FSR 3 upscaling in “Quality” mode and Frame Generation enabled, you can expect doubled performance across all resolutions, and during our testing, overall gameplay felt smooth and responsive, we haven’t spotted any issues with input latency with the base framerate of around 75 FPS.