Intended use for DXMT's MetalFX upscaling?

[HealsCodes]

This is more of a general question than an issue.

What is the current usage scenario for MetalFX upscaling?

As I understand it - and testing supports this so far - MetalFX works on the final render frame and upscales it by the given MetalFxSpatialFactor (currently enforced to 2.0 my XIV-on-mac via user defaults, please make it configurable again..).

For XIV that leads to a scenario that doesn't make sense to me so it would be great if someone could enlighten me:

• XIV-on-mac running at 1440x900 with "macOS scaling" active

• DXMT with MetalFX and spatial upscaling active

• XIV renders a 1440x900 frame

• MetalFX upscales it to 2880x1800

• the rendered, upscaled frame is downscaled to 1440x900 to be displayed in a "fullscreen" or borderless fullscreen window on an 2x retina screen

Wouldn't the intended use case for MetalFX be to have XIV be able to render at a lower resolution (e.g. 720x450) with MetalFX upscaling it to the final resolution vs doubling whatever the user already has as fullscreen?

[xazander]

would be interesting to see if upscaling from 720x450 to 1440x900 actually exists :)

[HealsCodes]

would be interesting to see if upscaling from 720x450 to 1440x900 actually exists :)

Currently, no - the lowest windowed resolution XIV supports is 1024x768 which MetalFX upscales to twice that

But as you can see it'n not really playable the way MetalFX works together with XIV.
What you'd want ideally would be MetalFX as a replacement for the DLSS / FSR so the game can render and upscale the 3D scene and then put the 2D UI on top in the final output resolution.