Digital Foundry Digs Into Switch 2's 4K Upscaling Potential As Patents Inspire More Speculation

"Sure, it would be fun for a little bit of Wii nostalgia, but who's really going to want to plonk another sensor on top of their TV? Not us."

Got it one for me when I read it could be Wii Like again. I am sure the tech is much better now, but I always found it patchy even up close, plus it was a pain to balance it in a decent spot for reception. Too low on the TV stand, but didn't balance with the top shape of the TV I had then. Still, at least it doesn't sound like this is central to it all, as that would defeat the handheld duality, surely?

Did they ever go back on their RTX 2050 laptop config when testing Death Stranding, and explained how their numbers for 4k60 not being possible for Switch 2 was based on them including the game's heavy post-processing effects AFTER the upscale to 4k?

I'm pretty sure that NERD patent pertains to the upscaling tech used in Super Mario 3D All-Stars (specifically for Sunshine and Galaxy, which were upscaled to 1080p).

There wouldn't have been any big surprises unless you had seen/read the leaks. The only things they definitively showed us are:

• the new console and Joy-Con are bigger
• the kickstand is different
• there is an additional USB-C port on top
• the Joy-Con no longer slide on, they snap on
• there is an additional button on the right Joy-Con
• we saw what appears to be a microphone
• we saw what appears to be an optical sensor (or two)
• design changes (no IR, matte finish, air vents, dock, etc.)
• it plays Switch 1 games

That's it. Unless I missed something.
Everything else was teased, at best. Sure, it appears they're teasing mouse functionality, but would you really have thought that without knowing about the leaks? We don't even know what sort of improvements it has, power-wise, over Switch 1. We saw a brief cinematic of a new Mario Kart experience. Perhaps one can gleam processing capabilities differences from that video. Otherwise, they showed us zilch. Imagine if you didn't know about the leaks. Would that have been a rather boring teaser? And now we wait 3 months with that extremely limited information. Though we can speculate further, because of the leaks. I think that is odd and a lame output for Nintendo. I'm looking forward to being more impressed by the actual reveal.

@westman98 Sunshine is fully emulated, and Galaxy only has the CPU code recompiled to be native on Switch with everything else emulated. I don't think there's a particular "upscale" being done with those games, just using emulation like any other that supports rendering natively at higher resolutions.

Implementing dynamic upscale models realtime like dynamic resolution scaling would be a gamechanger imo. Even Nvidia nor AMD hasn't implemented something like this. Like dynamically switching between DLSS 1.0 and 4.0 (or even switching between temporal upscaling algorithms and neural-based ones) on the fly depending on performance demands would be a pretty big deal.

As someone who's an absolute dummy when it comes to the technical side of...well, anything really, I have a question for the tech heads. I'm someone who's stuck in a very undeveloped rural area, and can barely muster download/upload speeds in the single MB range. With this talk about how upscaled image quality is sorted out in the cloud, and then streamed to the device, how dependent would that be on internet service? Again, my internet is the lowest of low quality. As an example, to download The Witcher 3: Complete Edition on my Switch, it would take me roughly 30 hours alone. I can barely stream a movie without the internet straight-up going down. My internet options are minimal where I live, but I'm hoping to find an alternative soon. (Wish me luck, I could use it.) How would someone in a position like me fare when it comes to this whole upscale, streaming, stuff. Would some of that depend on how it's implemented into the console natively? Again, I've got monkey brains when it comes to this stuff. It's all Greek to me, I'd appreciate a bit of an idea from someone who's more knowledgeable about this sort of thing.

Don't tell me even DF ran out of existing frixels to count.😅 But filed patents are at least somewhat tangible material to bait cli- er, speculate on, credit where due.

Still, if you seriously need 4K on a hybrid console, you may want to think twice whether to save up for it or for an ophthalmologist consultation first. Especially in the US where the receipts might be unnervingly comparable.

From Digital Foundrys Switch 2 video the past week, their impression from the Mario Kart footage on display was there was no upscaling in use there. Knowing Nintendo, it might be worth tempering expectations for now on this

All of these things are speculation, not fact.
WE NEED ANSWERS NINTENDO!!! GIVE US THE SPECS!!!!!
Not just a load of ugly pictures of it

@Ooyah Appreciate the reply, but I don't think it applies to me either. The equipment I use is supposedly the best my ISP can offer, but even I can tell that's either not true, and if it is it's pathetic. We're way too outdated with our box to even consider going wireless. 4G isn't that reliable either from what I can tell, but again, I have a very smooth brain with this stuff. XD I apologize if I'm not exactly eloquent with my descriptors. Again though, thank you for the reply.

I like Digital foundry, I really do, however, Sending Alex (who admittedly doesn't even own a Nintendo game console) makes little to no sence at all
Granted, you don't have like or have a product to offer insight about a subject you're supposed to be an expert but you can see him struggle, that was painful to watch.

Just wait for April, people. Is it really that hard?

I get how hard it must be if you're someone who finds graphics important to accept the reality of the Switch 2, but it's been over a year at this point. From the point we knew it was going to be an 8nm system, 4k was all but out of the question. Yet every time a new bit of information comes out, it renews the hopium, and we start talking about how the impossible is now possible.

The bottom line, as we understand things today, is that Switch 2 is not going to be powerful enough to render a native image much higher then 720/60 or 1080/30, and with full modern rendering including things like AO or Ray Tracing, it's going to struggle to do even that.

Upscaling and frame generation are not magic. As Alex always says ... garbage in equals garbage out. The upscaling we are going to see in the Switch will take native 560p or 760p renders and upscale them to 1080p, because lower resolutions like that are the only way the Switch 2 is going to generate a decent image.

You can't take resolution that low and upscale it to 4k, and the Switch 2 isn't going to natively render in 1080p for almost all games.

I think Nintendo first party will be the only games to target native 1080, and they will do that the same way they always do ... removing all modern rendering techniques in favor of "stylized" graphics. We also might see 4k upscaling on last generation Switch games. But I think it's time we just move from the dream of 3rd party, 4k games on the Switch 2. It's not happening.

In the immoral words of Chrisjen Avasarala, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

@StewdaMegaManNerd

While I'll be the first to argue that Nintendolife has maybe gone a bit overboard with fluff articles, this is a serious breakdown of a new technology and important for a gaming site to cover.

Besides, people like to speculate. Why yuk on their yum? I don't think you would tell people talking about who's going to win premier league to just shut up and wait until the season is over. It's fun to make predictions!

A Wii like sensor would explain why the Switch 2 has a USB on top. The sensor is mounted to the console not the TV

@abe_hikura

While that's not a bad thought, the Joycons don't seem to support IR anymore. So an IR scanner bar don't make a lot of sense.

@HeadPirate Unless it works like VR controllers and the sensor bar is tracking some hidden IR LEDs inside the Joycon

@abe_hikura

VR uses active scan from the base stations, which interact with photosensitive receptors on the controllers. It requires 2 base stations to triangulate with the controller (or a single unit can triangulate using a second controller of the headset, but with greatly reduced precision). The base stations don't need to interface with your computer ... they are sending out info that is read by the controllers, they are not receiving information from them ... which is why you don't have to connect them. So even if Nintendo was going to use a system like that, it wouldn't require the USB port because the "sensors" don't need to be plugged into the console.

@HeadPirate Thats a different kind of VR tracking and now not how inside-out tracking works on devices like the Quest. It uses multiple cameras to track IR LED hidden in the controllers and combines that with data from the accelerometers.

The base stations method is more accurate but expensive and requires extra hardware, inside out tacking just needs IR capable cameras and IR LEDs.

I also think that a sensor could be plugged on top of the switch while in dock mode. Just dance with Kinect was a huge success in our home until the xbox 360 died.

@HeadPirate At most I expect 1080p resolution without DLSS turned on. Most of the time I can’t even tell the difference between 720p/1080p and 4K.

@MrCarlos46

Ironically, it's worse for people who have invested in really good monitors / TV. If you have a really high end 4k or even 8k display, 1080p input can look really bad, which is why I think people being upset by Nintendo's lack of support for that format is at least somewhat valid.

But I think the vast majority of people share your experience, and would argue the difference between 4k and 1080p is overstated.

I mean, on a form like this you only get the opinions of people so into gaming that they seek out gaming sites, so there is a lot of selection bias. When you look at the general public though, it's telling that the most powerful system this generation, the Xbox Series X, sold like garbage, the second most powerful, the PS5, sold ... fine, but the one with graphically power on par with a T51 graphing calculator is the best selling console of all time.

I think the message Nintendo took from that is that most people don't actually care about graphics. And I think that was the right takeaway.

@Novamii from what I’ve read online no, you don’t need an internet connection to stream data. It appears that the ai training model/machine learning is online (cloud based?) and is trained constantly. It seems periodically you get updates over the internet with these dlss models, for a better experience in game. In a nutshell, no internet needed but you would probably benefits from the dlss updates

I'm not hugely fussed about resolution on this thing to be honest. As long as we aren't stuck with random games resolving as low as 240p we should be golden.

540p up to 1080p sounds great but what I really hope is Nintendo manage to make this a 60fps console.

I never thought I'd get snobby about it but it is just better. When Doom the Dark ages drops on Switch 2 I want it to be the whole deal. The other 2 doom games are so much harder to play on Switch than PS or Xbox.

@ozwally Oh, well if it's just the occasional update, that seems much more manageable for someone like me. Doubly so if things work out with an alternative ISP!

Looks like Nvidia suddenly need those Switch 2 sales to kick in....

Just had 500bn wiped off their value by a Chinese AI app!

I sincerely hope not. AI anything is more or less an instant no purchase for me.

@AussieMcBucket I totally get what you are saying but remember this didn’t happen in a vacuum; they know that we all know about the leaks. The announcement reeked of them making a single cutdown video to get something out as a simple, quick way of closing the lid on the basic news they have a new console and “owning it” (or attempting to) knowing full well how accurate the leaks were. I don’t think we would have seen an announcement until the end of q1 otherwise. It’s painful I know as its a long wait til April but it’s clear they are holding so much back and only got that very basic info out when they did as a knee jerk reaction to their hand being forced. They know we will speculate (likely correctly) cos they know how accurate the leaks were.

Also everyone is complaining about them taking too long (again which I get) but there is the argument they are struggling to get the parts they need at the right price so that they can release the console at a fair Nintendo-y price rather than a higher price and launch it sooner (which they are in no rush to do as the switch is absolutely killing it this gen for them).

Roll on April! It’s going to be great. Promise.

@HeadPirate Depending on how they plan to use DLSS if they bring it to Switch 2, hopefully it doesn’t bring disappointing results, welp, if I can notice it easily.

Maybe if they do native 1080p and probably upscale to 4K, because I’m not sure if that’s more likely than native 4K.

@LavaTwilight considering that Switch 2 Direct showcasing doesn't end until June. We're probably looking at a July/August actual release date

@MrCarlos46

We know the hardware has tensor cores, so DLSS will be supported.

Native 1080p scales to 4k without much issue, but based on the hardware we've seen, the Switch 2 will struggle to render native 1080p with modern rendering features enabled. It's much more likely that games are going to target either 540p or 720p and upscale that to 1080p. Native 1080p with any type of ray tracing or AO looks basically impossible, so as more 3rd party games embrace these techniques, they will either need to target lower resolution on Switch 2 or turn them off ... which might not be an option for games that forgo backed lighting altogether, like Indiana Jones of the new DOOM.

The patent that is the subject of the video is all about LOW end super sampling, and includes techniques to balance frame time and native resolution in real time, so it looks like (unsurprisingly) Nintendo's focus is going to be on a consistent gameplay experience over graphical power in first party games.

I understand news is slow but why do we need multiple multiple repetitive articles saying the same ol crap over and over again... speculation and just rumours... like why even post when you're just mumbling over the same information again and again ...like this has to be the 3rd to 5th article in like 2 years talking about switch 2 upscaling since it leaked i dont know a year or two ago about what Nintendo was planning...

@HeadPirate Not sure about 760p, I’d say 720p would be more likely, but I’d be fine with a 720p/760p to 1080p upscale as there wouldn’t be much difference between both resolutions.

Although it’s still unknown if they’ll use DLSS 2, DLSS 3 or DLSS 3.5.

@kid_keo I don't buy that this was a quickly cut video as a response to the leaks. For one thing, how would that video put a lid on anything? And why not release it much sooner? It makes sense that they waited until after the holidays and put out something to keep us interested while everything was quiet. They didn't even mention most of the things from the leaks. Why not just say everything if you want to take back control?

Also, the timing lines up almost exactly the same as the first Switch reveal and subsequent Direct. Other than the months.

Plus, all the scheduled in-person events. I think this is Nintendo, stubbornly insisting on doing things their way, leaks be dawned. They told us we would have an announcement before the end of the fiscal year. If the leaks forced their hand, then we wouldn't have found out anything official until April, which would belie that. I think this was by design, which makes it even odder to me.

Anyway, I agree that we will be pleasantly satisfied come April. I think they're going to wow us with other things. I'm excited, just annoyed that this is all we have for 3 months.

@MrCarlos46

Haha, clearly I mistyped 760. I also mistyped 540 as 560! Not my best work.

We don't "know", but every hardware leak points to Ampere architecture, which would mean DLSS 2.0.

540p to 1080p looks fine. It's "performance" mode for 1080p output, and is a common recommend setting. The other option would be "balanced", which would render at 1114×627. It actually looks ... worse most of the time, because it's a wonky scaler.

@HeadPirate It’s because in a Switch 2 hardware demo at Gamescon 2023, DLSS 3.5 was used.

@MrCarlos46

That's just a rumor. I mean, anything is possible, but there is no 8nm chipset that runs Ada Lovelace, and Ada Lovelace only became available in Oct 2022, which is about the same time reports of dev kits in the wild started popping up. So the only way it runs 3.5 is if:

1) Someone else bought 10m+ Tegra T239s and isn't using them for anything.

2) The Switch 2 is running a custom dye, and to keep it 8nm, it would be more advanced then the 40-- series line of video cards

3) NVidia somehow mass produced a custom Ada Lovelace chip in the millions of units without anyone noticing.

4) They didn't finalized the design until 2023.

So ... my money is on no.

Can’t wait to turn it off as soon I can!

1400p or 4K upscale either way it's fine I don't care for visuals. AI/Upscaling isn't perfect. I can take native lower resolution instead. They can improve it but eh.

I don't care how many grass objects so less grass texture shows, whatever particles or details and resolution/saturation and moee, I just want games to have level design and character movesets be fun not boring. Something many games seem to fail to do these days. I can play a puzzle game or anything without characters and still have fun. I don't care.

Substance not visuals. I wanna. Bridge to be stable and fun to travel on not a pretty looking bridge.

Artstyle and gameplay/movesets/level design is my priority.

As eh as the laser pointer is to me of 'could be good but would have preferred something else', the magnets are a fair idea and will see compared to the rails and bending/snapping and the attachment/connector part.

Or SL/SR differences among other things.

As someone that wanted BETTER PLACEMENT of the IR on Switch 2! Self entitled people and their values. I want a sensor bar for sure. People can not use one but I'd have wanted dual screens but it's too niche and expensive to support of TV casting or split screens or a base station. Most people want generic experiences they can have that, but I don't.

Better reference points, not its own calibration on the spot of reference. Idiots.

You bet I"d put a sensor on my TV then gyro just having to calibrate all the time or features being underused. I still have my Wii sensor bar there (even if unplugged and to not lose it) for attaching to my Wii/Wii U whenever ready so they can look like fools to me as an anomaly I am of still keeping a sensor bar around. XD As if VR inside outside tracking is the best either? Or other devices with other hardware factors.

These tech enthusiasts don't care or think they just want pretty visual results and whatever APIs/number go up. They know what they are talking about still doesn't make things as simple of people to read and boring people because of it.

People seem to not understand niche audience hardware fans do they the typical audience or boring tech enthusiasts after whatever boring visuals and RAM/CPU/GPU upgrades. I"m not drooling to know they are.

Bunch of laziness, this is why innovation doesn't happen is oh the RAM/CPU/GPU upgrades, oh same controller inputs.

I'd take new controllers with none of the old controller designs and still have a Pro controller but that would never happen because of people in general. Too much effort for people to get their heads around or companies to make happen. It's hilarious. I don't take comfort. Sometimes but not always.

To me those are yawn inducing. Expected, don't care what games look like I care about the HARDWARE. So I'd gladly put a sensor bar on my TV/TV stand.

@HeadPirate And even there were people worrying about what could happen because of the Switch 2 using 8nm, like less battery life unless Nintendo underclocks speeds in handheld mode, except we’re not sure what 8nm will actually do.

I loved my Wii, and I love motion controls, so an updated sensor would be great. As someone else said, I'm sure the tech has gotten way better since in almost 20 years.

As far as upscaling, wasn't that the rumor for the Switch PRO, that it would have a base that could upscale. Now the difference is AI instead of another chip in the base. I would LOVE to be able to buy a "Pro" base with an added processor that I could plug the switch into, and see an immediate power boost. Instead of replacing consoles, we could replace bases. (I know that doesn't help the portability, but I don't need the BEST graphics on a small handheld, but nicer on my TV would be great. (80% of my playing is handheld anyway)

Given it's 8 years since the Switch, I can't imagine anything not 1080p at 60 fps on the Switch 2. 4k would be offered for less taxing games. For all the jargon mentioned, it's probably best to wait until April for Nintendo to tell us directly the level of output.

Edit:
@SoIDecidedTo The Switch Pro itself was a wild rumour. Anything it might do was complete speculation.

While the Sega 32X would like to say Hi, fat chance of a separate power boost.

“… via cloud streaming…”
shudders

@HeadPirate By the way did you ever see the comment I left you in this article?

I want them to implant a modern SFX chip developed my Argonaut straight into my brain to enhance the visuals beyond our imaginations. Anything less and I’m not interested! Oh wait - sorry I forgot I don’t really care too much about specs. Give me fun games, stylised or not, don’t care just pump them this way please!!

540p to 1080p sounds like the ideal output for handheld mode, while 1080p to 4K sounds like the one for docked.
I hope the upscaling technology can still be called DLSS, or at least a custom variant of it with a different name if the patent can be considered different, but really, AI upscaling from the cloud sounds truly fascinating.

@dew12333 I mean that’s literally what she does and what her YouTube channel is about. Don’t get your jimmies rustled over it. What does that part of your comment even have to do with the article?

Again, the potential is there for extremely impressive, never-before-seen levels of bespoke, closed-hardware upscaling innovations. However, I too am concerned by the initial glimpse at the new Mario Kart. Making me ponder possible likelihoods:

• Mario Kart is in fact cross gen. This would explain the Mario Kart 8-level visuals as well as the lack of apparent upscaling technology being utilized.
• Mario Kart is playing it safe with visuals, while going the extra mile with scope. A big open world, Forza Horizons style, could excuse the developers focusing instead on gameplay over graphics.
• The third and most concerning possibility, that Switch 2 games will take a lot longer to appear impressively distinct from Switch 1 games than we may have assumed. Surely Nintendo has been leveraging these extra years to make their launch games as impressive as possible, right? Perhaps not. Perhaps it really will take a few years after 2025 for Switch 2 first-party games to finally look as impressive as we assume they can be.

@kalosn We may also see 720p to 1080p upscaling in handheld mode which both resolutions look pretty close.

@tobsesta99 She is someone who has on many occasions tried to spoil surprises for people. Sorry to NL and you that I do not respect her for that.

@MrCarlos46 Yeah that too, and that'll also depend on the game in question. I expect some current-gen games will need that native resolution to not lose graphical quality while using DLSS to increase that image quality.