Sony devs waiting for FSR 3.1 before adding AMD's Frame Gen to Horizon Forbidden West on PC

The PC version of Horizon Forbidden West has been well received, not only as an expansive sequel to a great open-world action-adventure but also as one of those rare PC ports that does justice to the source material while leveraging all of the additional goodies that come with the platform, from improved visual fidelity to uncapped frame rates to ultrawide monitor support to upscaling and even Frame Generation.

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Horizon Forbidden West's impressive PC port was developed by sony studio Nixxes, image credit: PlayStation Studios.

For its upscaler support, Horizon Forbidden West includes support for AMD's FSR, Intel's XeSS, and NVIDIA's DLSS. However, when it comes to frame generation, this is limited to NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5 version of Frame Generation, which works great. Still, it is limited to the GeForce RTX 40 Series because it requires specialized AI hardware - so there's room for AMD's frame gen.

AMD's FSR 3 with Frame Generation launched in September 2023, so there was time to add it to Horizon Forbidden West. In a recent interview, PC Gamer asked first-party Sony studio Nixxes - the development studio behind many high-profile PlayStation ports - why it opted not to provide support for FSR 3 Frame Generation at launch.

The answer was straightforward, with Nixxes's Michiel Roza stating, "We're sort of waiting for FSR 3.1," adding, "We wanted the latest and greatest before integrating it." FSR 3 adoption has been slow, probably due to the technology not being quite ready to compete with NVIDIA's DLSS 3. After its so-so debut in a handful of titles, it wasn't until it was updated in December 2023 for Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora that it began to show true promise.

In 2024, adoption has increased dramatically, but there are still issues with the general quality of both FSR upscaling and frame generation. AMD announced FSR 3.1 at the Games Developer Conference last month, which is set to bring significant changes and improvements to FSR's upscaling. It could potentially be a major milestone for FSR in the battle between the upscalers, as Intel's XeSS currently delivers better image quality and stability than FSR.

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FSR 3.1 will also decouple the upscaler from the Frame Generation component, which means that GeForce RTX 30 and 30 Series owners can pair it with DLSS upscaling - a very cool move on behalf of Team Red.

Studio Head at Nixxes Jurjen Katsman also responded to PC Gamer's question, adding, "We definitely see frame generation algorithms need more game-specific tweaking, especially when it comes to UI, than some of the upscaler ones. So I think that's also a factor in there."

This is in reference to UI elements that sit on top of upscaling and frame generation, which AMD highlights as a potential issue requiring developer attention. With FSR 3.1 set to be released to developers this quarter, it could be a few months before Horizon Forbidden West on PC gets updated to the latest version with Frame Generation.