I understand that the image quality can be subjective.
For people really interested in doing a deep comparison, here is what I suggest: take a screenshot of the VR view with and without NIS to compare the quality. Then use a tool like Image Comparison Analysis Tool (ICAT) | NVIDIA Technologies, which gives you a slider to compare 2 images.
Note: Please only attempt this if you are tech savvy. I will not answer questions like “how to load a file”, “how to convert an image”, etc. (sorry but I am busy!).
Now you would say, how do I “take a screenshot of the VR view”?
In the new Beta1 of the software, you can enable the screenshot mode from the configuration tool. You can then use Ctrl+F12 in-game to save the left eye view to a file, placed under %LocalAppData%.
You can tell with the filename whether NIS was enabled based on the file name (contains “NIS” + scaling + sharpness when enabled, or “upscaled” when not).
You can use this to take screenshots both with and without NIS.
You will then want to convert the screenshots from DDS format to BMP (lossless) in order to use them in ICAT. I do that with GIMP.
Taking a screenshot with NIS enabled
- Change your OpenXR render scale, in-game render scale and NIS scaling accordingly for your test;
- Set NIS to enabled;
- Enter VR;
- Take your screenshot with Ctrl+F12.
Example file created: FS2020_20211221_102322_NIS_0.800_0.200.dds
Taking a screenshot without NIS enabled
Note: the idea here is that when NIS is disabled with Ctrl+F1 and NIS scaling is set to 100%, this is equivalent to “pass-through”, but you preserve the ability to use Ctrl+F12 to take screenshots (ie: without NIS).
- Change your OpenXR render scale or in-game render scale accordingly (for your test);
- Set NIS scaling to 100%, effectively preserving the resolution requested by OpenXR;
- Set NIS to enabled;
- Enter VR;
- Disable NIS in-game with Ctrl+F1;
- Take your screenshot with Ctrl+F12.
Example file created: FS2020_20211221_102540_upscaled_1.000.dds
upscaled_1.000 in the filename basically means “pass-through”, ie the NIS software is doing nothing.
End-to-end example
Here is an example comparison I have created with and without NIS with the same target resolution of 2540x2492, achieved on one hand with using the OpenXR render scale (65% gave me that resolution) and on the other hand the NIS scaling (80% gave me that resolution - the percentages are calculated differently between OpenXR and my software it looks like).
Open ICAT, load both files, and use the slider. You might want to do an adjust position Up/Down -0.15% to align the 2 images better.
Framerate was 42 FPS with NIS enabled and 45 FPS without it. I personally find the quality with NIS superior (sharper and more details), but I will let everyone be the judge.