Star Citizen Alpha 3.23 update adds support for NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR upscaling

Star Citizen, the perpetually in-development grandiose everything sci-fi game, just got a new Alpha 3.23 'Adventure Beckons' update. There's a long list of updates and revisions, from a new character customization system to improved AI ship combat and a reworked Starmap to make planning your space travel more comfortable. There are also new hoverbikes, vehicles, and massive industrial facilities to explore.

Tech-wise, the update makes some fundamental changes thanks to the arrival of a new Vulkan Renderer, currently listed as in Beta. GPU performance with the new renderer should be on par with the default DirectX 11 Graphics Renderer. According to the team, "the aim [is] to make Vulkan the default and more performant implementation in a following release."

Regarding performance, GeForce RTX and Radeon GPU owners will be pleased to learn that Star Citizen now has NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR support for upscaling and a third "in-house TSR solution."

The DLSS implementation is the latest 3.7.0 version of NVIDIA's AI-powered tool for PC games, so expect a boost to in-game performance without sacrificing visual fidelity. The sprawling release notes do not mention which FSR version is being implemented.

Outside of rendering, the latest Star Citizen update improves the "volumetric cloud technology" and adds brand-new water simulation and rendering. There's nothing quite like some good video game water, and this sounds impressive.

We have completely reworked the wave simulation and rendering of all water in Star Citizen in addition to creating a new multi-scale region-based water surface simulation system. Oceans and Water Volumes are now affected by all physical objects as well as forces from thruster and ship wake. Caustics are fully reworked to be both faster and driven by the dynamic results of the new water simulation. Underwater fog has been reworked to resolve various rendering issues, and the appearance of water when intersecting the camera has been vastly improved.

Star Citizen has been in development for over a decade and shows no sign of slowing down. For those waiting for a 1.0 release or whatever that might look like, Roberts Space Industries boss Chris Roberts recently said that Star Citizen 1.0 'twinkles on the horizon.'

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