I hope this message finds you well. I am an avid fan of classic DOS games, particularly those that make use of prerendered graphics. One such game is Wing Commander: Privateer, released by Origin Systems in 1993.
Privateer is a game with rich pre-rendered graphics. However, the graphics appear quite pixelated on modern high-resolution displays.
I am writing to inquire if it would be possible for NVIDIA to develop an AI-based upscaler specifically for DOSBox, aimed at enhancing the visual quality of these classic games. An AI upscaler could significantly improve the appearance of prerendered graphics, making them more appealing on current hardware.
Given NVIDIA’s advancements in AI and machine learning, I believe such a feature would be highly beneficial for the retro gaming community. It would allow us to enjoy these beloved games with improved visual fidelity while preserving their original charm.
Thank you for considering this request. I look forward to any insights or updates you may have on this possibility.
How should that work? 3D upscaler can be trained with rendering the content in high-res. For DOS games, there is no high-res version to train an AI model.
I’m not sure who has the IP to the original game and its files, but there must surely be full resolution renders of all the image faces that the developers captured?
But to your point, this does not solve the general problem of AI scaling any DOS game without proper training material.
I managed to get a form of “AI” scaling working in DOSBox-X. It utilizes the Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) driver-level scaler. I also used ReShade to run the FSR shader. Combined, the output looks pretty decent.
To get it working, you’ll need:
DgVoodoo to convert DOSBox-X draw calls to DirectX 12
RSR enabled in the AMD Radeon panel
DOSBox-X set to a fullscreen resolution of 320x200 (typical DOS game resolution)
ReShade to run the FSR shader
Unfortunately, this setup only works on AMD Radeon hardware. Does NVIDIA offer an equivalent solution?
Due to the way the render pipeline works, I couldn’t capture proper screenshots—but I did take some phone photos of the screen. I’ll reply with the photos, I can only do one image per post.
