Vitaliy Alexeyev

synshell · Compatibility · syn-dlss

DLSS 5 neural rendering

DLSS 5 for the synshell desktop — NVIDIA's neural rendering for Linux games, Wine games and the video player: one window to switch it on, tune the picture and run the NGX helper.

README

syn-dlss is the window of the syn-wine-dlss5 package — a fork of DLSS5VKLayer that lives in crates/syn-wine/dlss5. The Vulkan layer VK_LAYER_NV_dlssnr (64 and 32 bit) hands the frames of a game to the dlssnr_helper.exe helper, which runs under syn-wine and loads NVIDIA NGX and the DLSS 5 model; the edited frame goes back to the game. syn-dlss replaces the Qt window of the fork.

Features

  • Main page — neural rendering on or off, style (Default, Natural — gentler with faces, Cinematic — with a film tone), motion quality (Fast, Balanced, Maximum), effect strength and sharpness (applied at once), a before/after wipe in the frame.
  • Where it works — “syn-wine games”: the layer in every program of syn-wine without any variable, from its next start; Steam games: a launch-options line VKLayer_DLSS5=1 %command% to copy; the video player: the “Filters” button in its header, with its own video profile.
  • Per-game settings — the layer reports the running game; “Save for this game” keeps its own settings, “Forget” returns it to the shared ones. Named profiles in ~/.config/dlssnr/profiles.
  • All settings — tabs for fine tuning: Rendering (preset, intensity, local structure and tone, skin, passes, model resolution up to supersampling), Quality (motion vectors estimated by the GPU optical flow, HDR input, 16-bit intermediates), Composition (detail and colour strength, colour bound, highlight guard, how the answer is applied, white point), Inspect (side-by-side and wipe comparison, hold frame, debug views, toggle key, before/after frame captures), Helper (runner, rebuild spacing, log, reset).
  • Helper status — start, stop and restart the helper; the model time per frame, upload and readback, video memory and NGX features. When the synaptixd neural networks keep the video memory busy, “Free” asks synaptixd to unload them.
  • Model import — the model nvngx_dlssnr.dll is NVIDIA's proprietary file and is not shipped: “Import…” takes a folder or file (with nvngx.dll, nvapi64.dll, sl.*.dll and licenses if present), “Find on disk” looks for it in Steam games and downloads.
  • Computer window — its own title bar, the desktop theme follows live; 14 languages.

Install

syn-wine-dlss5 is not published to AUR; it is built from the synshell repository (x86_64, NVIDIA):

cd crates/syn-wine/dlss5/packaging
makepkg -si

Depends on syn-wine, nvidia-utils, vulkan-icd-loader, pciutils; optional lib32-vulkan-icd-loader for 32-bit Vulkan games. DXVK comes from syn-wine (/usr/share/dxvk), DXVK-NVAPI is in the package, the NGX core comes from the NVIDIA driver. The window alone, from source: cargo build --release -p syn-dlss.

Usage

A game needs Vulkan frames: for Direct3D 8–11 — DXVK (Proton has it; in syn-wine — setup-dxvk install).

syn-dlss                          # the window
dlssnr-helper start               # start the helper (the layer also starts it itself; DLSSNR_AUTOSTART=0 — off)
dlssnr-helper status | stop | doctor
dlssnr-helper import-binaries DIR # import nvngx_dlssnr.dll and companions
VKLayer_DLSS5=1 game              # the layer in a Linux game; in Steam: VKLayer_DLSS5=1 %command%
syn-dlss --screenshot shot.png --size 760x860 --tab quality
                                  # window snapshot (tabs: rendering, quality, composition, inspect, helper)

Part of synshell

syn-dlss is one of the applications of synshell — a Wayland desktop environment in Rust for computers and phones, built on the syngui UI framework.

License

syn-dlss — GPL-3.0-only; the syn-wine-dlss5 package (layer and helper of the DLSS5VKLayer fork) — AGPL-3.0-only, with DXVK (Zlib) and DXVK-NVAPI (MIT).