Introducing Resolution Scaling

Over the last month, we've been quietly working away at some valuable new features for Ryujinx. Today, we're proud to announce resolution scaling support is now merged into Ryujinx master!

Introducing Resolution Scaling

Over the last month, we've been quietly working away at some valuable new features for Ryujinx. Today, we're proud to announce resolution scaling support is now merged into Ryujinx master!

Astral Chain at 4X Resolution. Full size image

Console emulators are often disregarded by skeptics asking a single question: why? Today Ryujinx provides a compelling answer to that question; resolution scaling provides a graphical experience superior to that of original hardware, sharpening textures and revealing fine detail not seen on the Nintendo Switch itself.

Work was done on this feature by rip in peri peri, from the core Ryujinx Team, and represents the pinnacle of resolution scaling. A highly accurate resolution scaling technique that gracefully falls back to native resolution when it encounters situations it doesn't support, rather than breaking rendering on that game, allows this to be a "set and forget" setting for any game you play! Not only that, but it applies instantly in real-time. Give it a shot, change the resolution settings whilst you're in-game and see the differences with your own eyes.

In our internal testing, we found very few games to have issues, and all your favourite titles like Super Mario Odyssey, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Supers Smash Bros. Ultimate and Astral Chain work flawlessly when upscaled to 2x, 3x or even 4x resolutions.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing at 4X Resolution. Full size image

This new feature adds an option in settings to upscale games from their native console resolutions, to higher resolutions more commonly found in PC games. There are options to upscale to QHD, 4K or even 8K if you so dare!

If you're feeling experimental, or perhaps your computer is a little under-equipped in the GPU department, there is also support for custom resolution scaling factors, even allowing you to down scale the game to extract just that little bit extra performance from your machine.

Super Mario Odessy
Super Mario Odyssey at 4X Resolution. Full size image

But a picture speaks a thousand words...

So take a look below at what you can expect using the new resolution scaling feature!

Most of these are taken at 4x (8K) down-sampled to 4K, which results in a super-sampling effect.

Note that you should not run at more than double your output resolution if you want a super-sampling effect, so use 2x on a 1080p monitor.

The Xenoblade Chronicles screenshots are taken using a mod that removes the games FXAA. Mod support currently isn't available in the master build, but will be available very soon. Mod support is now available in the latest master build! The mod to remove FXAA from Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition can be found attached to the bottom of this Pull Request here.

Luigi's Mansion 3 @ 4X
Luigi's Mansion 3 at 4X Resolution. Full size image

Luigi's Mansion 3 is an absolute masterpiece, and is already visually stunning out of the box on the Switch. Bumping the resolution to 4x takes it that extra step further, with the intricate details and background characters standing out like never before.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Full size image

Whilst BotW still has some performance issues in the latest master build, it's hard to look away from its gorgeous graphics which have become the standard on the Switch. Upscaling this game isn't anything new (thanks to CEMU), however it's always impressive to see this game in 4K.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition at 4x Resolution. Full size image

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is a game that desperately needs resolution upscaling, and benefits from it beautifully. Hamstrung by resolution issues due to performance constraints on physical hardware, this game can really stretch its legs at 3x and 4x resolutions under Ryujinx. Look how beautifully detailed that environment is!

Luigi's Mansion 3. Full size image

Luigi's Mansion 3 is always stunning, here we see significant improvement in general sharpness, but also in background details like the little plants lining the wall underneath the photograph. The canvas photo on the wall actually looks like a canvas!

Super Bomberman R
Super Bomberman R. Full size image

For such an unsuspecting game, this one gets ?? from me! Scaling this one up to 2x resolution helps bring out the sharpness in the games textures and models. Here the image is down-sampled back to 1080p, which helps reduce the aliasing present in the game at native resolutions.

Luigi's Mansion 3. Full size image

This represents the first meaningful enhancement over playing games on the original console, and we're excited to bring you this feature foremost in Ryujinx!

We're always after new contributors, so if you have some experience with C#, or would like to contribute to the project in other ways, feel free to get in contact with the development team on our Discord.

We'd just like to say a huge thanks to all our existing Patreon, whom via their continued support of the project allow us to bring you features like this. If you like what you see here, and would like to help the Ryujinx Team develop new features like this more often, consider supporting the project on Patreon.

A quick start guide for using this feature is available on our project Wiki here.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition at 4x Resolution. Full size image