LSFG-VK (Lossless Scaling) Gets Huge 2.0.0 Release With Massive Performance Improvements

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While I may not be the biggest fan, I’m also not going to deny how influential lossless scaling is in the Steam Deck community. In our quest to get the best performance possible on the portable device, a lot of people are trying out frame generation to create artificial frames to make it feel like a game is performing better than it is. The best way to do that right now, using Lossless Scaling, has been made possible by PancakeTAS, who has ported over the frame generation part of the Lossless Scaling program to Linux (LSFG-VK). It’s incredible work, and the work is only continuing with the 2.0.0 release, which came out yesterday.

The new 2.0.0 release has some pretty big changes in it, and they should improve how the frame generation performs. FP16 Acceleration has been added, which should improve performance by 2x to 3x depending on the game. We have tested this a bit ourselves as well, and it does appear to have actually improved. Memory will also now be reused, which reduces the amount of memory it needs by 70%. And we have a new layer that allows us to easily play 32-bit games with Lossless Scaling.

The Vulkan version has actually been downgraded to 1.2 to improve compatibility with more GPUs, while processes can now be identified in different ways to make it easier to set up specific game profiles. There’s also a new tool that allows us to benchmark, validate, and check the health of the Lossless Scaling files. And with the user interface now being Qt6-based, the file size has been brought down to just a few kilobytes instead of the old 70 MB.

Now, these are some incredible improvements, and while we can use them on the Steam Deck, we will have to install them manually. The Decky plugin (Decky LSFG-VK) has not been updated to the new version yet, but the developer is working on it right now. The only way to actually try this out with Decky is the MAKO plugin, but I don’t necessarily recommend using it due to its use of AI code and PancakeTAS speaking directly out against it.

Personally, it’s still not something I would recommend using. Even if it does improve performance, I still feel the input lag when I try to use it. On top of that, if the base framerate is too low, it will still result in drops and stutters. Still, even if I’m not a fan, I have to admit that it’s a fantastic update for an application that does have a use.

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