Intel has been engaging with the community quite extensively in the run up to the Gen 11 graphics launch, and this marks a change in the last few months as the firm has got serious about graphics. A few hours ago Intel's Lisa Pearce @gfxlisa took to Twitter to share an update on Intel's efforts to respond to user feature requests going forward. I've embedded the video below for your convenience.
A recent Reddit AMA hosted by Intel Graphics resulted in a top-voted comment regarding GPU Integer Upscaling. A user asked Intel to implement this feature, suggesting it could differentiate itself from the competition. The scaling method, also sometimes called 'nearest-neighbour' and/or 'pixel doubling/quadrupling' would be especially welcome to gamers who play titles that play pixel-art style games or use emulators to play classic games based upon pixels and sprites rather than 3D rendering etc.
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Redditor Whatever070 pointed out that gamers had asked Nvidia and AMD to implement such a feature many times over the years, to no avail. The star attraction of the feature would be that "By enabling integer scaling, you can play your games without upscale filter artefacts at the resolution you want. You can have your cake and eat it too."
In her video response to the request, Pearce says that the Intel team took a hard look at the request and support it later this year (in an update around the end of August). However, the feature is only going to be available to buyers of the newest Intel processors that feature Gen 11 graphics. End users will toggle this scaling option in the Intel Graphics Command Centre.
Pearce explained that Gen 9 hardware doesn't have support for nearest neighbour algorithms, and developers didn't want to 'hack' in a software solution, with possible user experience impacts.
Source: Lisa Pearce Twitter account, via TechPowerUp.