Streamline (SL) - Version 2.2.0

Streamline is an open-sourced cross-IHV solution that simplifies integration of the latest NVIDIA and other independent hardware vendors’ super resolution technologies into applications and games. This framework allows developers to easily implement one single integration and enable multiple super-resolution technologies and other graphics effects supported by the hardware vendor.

This repo contains the SDK for integrating Streamline into your application.

For a high level overview, see the NVIDIA Developer Streamline page

IMPORTANT: For important changes and bug fixes included in the current release, please see the Release Notes

As of SL 2.0.0, it is now possible to recompile all of SL from source, with the exception of the DLSS-G plugin. The DLSS-G plugin is provided as prebuilt DLLs only. We also provide prebuilt DLLs (signed) for all other plugins that have source. Most application developers will never need to rebuild SL themselves, especially for shipping; all of the pieces needed to develop, debug and ship an application that integrates SL and its features are provided in the pre-existing directories bin/, include/, and lib/. Compiling from source is purely optional and likely of interest to a subset of SL application developers. For developers wishing to build SL from source, see the following sections.

Prerequisites

Hardware

• GPU supporting DirectX 11 and Vulkan 1.2 or higher

Windows

• Win10 20H1 (version 2004 - 10.0.19041) or newer
• Install latest graphics driver (if using NVIDIA GPU it MUST be 512.15 or newer)
• Install VS Code or VS2017/VS2019 with SDK 10.0.19041+
• Install "git".
• Clone your fork to a local hard drive, make sure to use a NTFS drive on Windows (SL uses symbolic links)

BUILDING SL FROM SOURCE

As mentioned in the lead section of this document, SL now ships with most of its source code available, which allows developers who wish to build most of SL from source to do so locally. The sole exception is the DLSS-G plugin, which is only available procompiled.

IMPORTANT: Only use production builds when releasing your software. Also, use either the original NVIDIA-signed SL DLLs or implement your own signing system (and check for that signature in SL), otherwise SL plugins could be replaced with potentially malicious modules.

Configuring and Building a Tree

All of SL's projects and build information (and those of all SL based apps) are controlled through a single platform independent build script called premake5.lua. This is located in the root of the SL tree and uses the premake project creation toolchain. Any new projects or changes to existing projects must be listed in this file. For most projects, all source and header files found within a project's directory will be automatically added to that project.

To configure a new SL tree to build, there is a script called setup.bat. Note that on Windows this must be run from either a Windows command prompt window or a PowerShell window.

Running the setup.bat script will cause two things to be done:

1. Use the NVIDIA tool packman to pull all build dependencies to the local machine and cache them in a shared directory. Links are created from external in the SL tree to this shared cache for external build dependencies.
2. Run premake to generate the project build files in _project\vs2017 (for Windows)

To build the project, simply open _project\vs2017\streamline.sln in Visual Studio, select the desired build configuration and build, or else use the provided build script:

./build.bat with -{debug|release|production} (debug is default) or use VS IDE and load solution from the _project directory

The default setting is to target x86_64 CPU architecture.

NOTE: To build the project minimal configuration is needed. Any version of Windows 10 will do. Then run the setup and build scripts as described here above. That's it. The specific version of Windows, NVIDIA driver, or Vulkan are all runtime dependencies, not compile/link time dependencies. This allows SL to build on stock virtual machines that require zero configuration. This is a beautiful thing, help us keep it that way.

Changing an Existing Project

Do not edit the MSVC project files (or Makefiles on other platforms) directly! Always modify the premake5.lua described above.

When changing an existing project's settings or contents (ie: adding a new source file, changing a compiler setting, linking to a new library, etc), it is necessary to run setup.bat again for those changes to take effect and MSVC project files and or solution will need to be reloaded in the IDE.

NVIDIA does not recommend making changes to the headers in include, as these can affect the API itself and can make developer-built components incompatible with NVIDIA-supplied components.

Using the results of local builds

Once the project is built for a configuration, the built, unsigned DLLs may be found in _artifacts\sl.*\<Config>\. These DLLs can be copied as desired into the bin\x64 directory, or packaged for use in the application itself.

Obviously, sl.dlss_g.dll cannot be built from source and thus the prebuilt copy must be used.

(Optional) Compiling Shaders

If you would like to recompile the shaders for the NIS plugin, you will need to have Python 3 installed and in the path.

SDK Packaging

• Execute ./package.bat with -{debug|release|production} (production is default)

The packaged SDK can be found in the generated _sdk folder.

Debugging

Please read Debugging.md to learn how to debug and troubleshoot issues.

General Programming Guide

Please read ProgrammingGuide.md to learn about the integration in games.

Advanced Programming Guide - Manual Hooking With Lowest Overhead

Please read ProgrammingGuideManualHooking.md to learn about advanced SL integration in games.

Programming Guides Per Feature:

• DLSS Super Resolution
• DLSS Frame Generation
• NRD
• Reflex
• NIS

Sample Plugin Source Code

A sample Streamline plugin source code is located here

Sample App and Source

A sample application using Streamline may be found in this git repo