After announcing support for Unreal Engine in March, Intel has finally integrated XeSS into Unreal Engine 4 and 5, making it easier for developers to integrate XeSS into Unreal Engine projects without having to manually add the XeSS SDK.
In addition, XeSS integration enables full compatibility with all four of Unreal Engine’s upgrade models from Nvidia, AMD and Intel, including DLSS, NIS, FSR and XeSS, and it also supports Unreal Engine’s proprietary upgrade solutions.
Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) is Intel’s time-domain resolution upgrade product, which is similar to AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology. From a technical perspective, XeSS is a bit more similar to DLSS in that it also uses AI to implement image upgrades, but unlike DLSS, XeSS has different modes of operation on different GPU types.
In short, Intel uses a “high level” mode on its own GPU platform, based on the Intel XMX AI core, which is only present in the Arc Alchemist GPU; there is a “low level” mode to cover the DP4a instruction set, mainly for other types of GPUs, including those from Nvidia and AMD.
The XeSS plugin is currently available for versions 4.26, 4.27 and 5.0. This plugin is currently only available on Github, but we expect it to hit the Unreal Engine market soon, just like AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS.
Intel’s plug-in will replace Unreal Engine’s temporary anti-aliasing (TAA) with XeSS, integrated at the beginning of the post-processing phase, according to the presentation. In this way, XeSS will be used to upgrade only the necessary parts of the rendering pipeline while retaining other parts of the game — such as the HUD — rendered at native resolution for better image quality.
