First spotted by Reddit user TsukiEmil, I’ve also had a gander at Monster Hunter Rise’s DLSS support now it’s properly out, and yep, my palico cat pals, trusty palamute doggos and Rise’s slathering fluffy monster fiends all look like they’ve had a hasty buzzcut when DLSS is switched on, regardless of whether I opted for Quality, Performance or Balanced mode.
In the Reddit post’s replies, another user mentions that Rise’s fur rendering seems to come from the game’s TAA anti-aliasing setting and, with DLSS replacing TAA when it’s enabled, that unfortunately means it nixes all the hair effects in the process. Hopefully Capcom have a fix on the way, as it’s a shame to have to sacrifice Rise’s visual fidelity just to get that tasty frame rate bump. I mean, just look at poor Arzuros here. Like a brand-new teddy bear that’s been put through the washing machine, I say.
Of course, given that Monster Hunter Rise is a bit lighter on the old graphics requirements compared to its demanding predecessor Monster Hunter World, you may not actually need to enable DLSS at all to get a steady frame rate, allowing you to bypass this rather unfortunate side effect altogether. Indeed, hardware editor James found that even his “GTX 1050 Ti averaged 76fps when out in the field, with slightly better performance within the hub village” when running on High at 1080p, so unless you’ve got a high refresh rate monitor at your disposal and you’re really desperate to push into those top frame rates, you’re probably all right leaving DLSS switched off.
For what it’s worth, my PC (composed of an RTX 3080, Intel Core i9-11900K CPU and 16GB of RAM) runs Monster Hunter Rise at around 90-110fps on High at 4K, which is absolutely plenty, but sticking DLSS on did see a bump to the region of 180-190fps. A sizable boost, for sure, but considering my monitor’s refresh rate caps at 60Hz, it made no difference to my monster hunting whatsoever.
Either way, here’s hoping Capcom still manage to fix it up in the next patch, because it’s always nice to have the best of both worlds, isn’t it?
