
Once Human has retained its position among the top fifteen games of Steam since its global launch on 9th July. Based on the NeoX engine, the game scales from Android and iOS mobile devices to Windows PCs. Initially launched with DirectX11 support on the latter, the developers have since added a WIP DirectX12 port with DLSS upscaling and frame generation technologies. The DX11 variant is limited to FSR 2 upscaling with no frame generation.

Being a beta release, the DirectX12 version of “Once Human” is 22% faster than the DX11 variant at 4K, using the “Very High” quality preset. However, the 1% lows are 21% higher on the DX12 port, indicating a smoother experience overall. This is due to the lower CPU overhead which we’ll discuss in a bit. Fortunately, the framerates stay over 60 FPS with both APIs so it shouldn’t be an issue for most players.
Once Human: AMD FSR 2 vs NVIDIA DLSS
We recorded similar numbers with DLSS (DX12) and FSR 2 (DX11/DX12) upscaling. FSR with DX11 is 5-10% faster than DLSS and FSR running on the DX12 API. However, as noted earlier, the lows are as much as 30% and 45% higher using the latter, producing vastly superior frametimes.

The “quality” preset is an outlier, performing the best with DLSS (DX12) with an average framerate 5% higher than FSR 2 (DX11) and 55% higher lows. Interestingly, FSR 2 is 10-15% slower (on average) with lows much closer to DLSS (DX12).
Once Human: DLSS 3 Frame Generation
DLSS 3-enabled frame generation is available only to GeForce RTX 40 series users, with FSR yet to get its implementation. The GeForce RTX 4090 averages close to 200 FPS using the “Performance” preset, up from 178 FPS and 166 FPS using “Balanced” and “Quality,” respectively. FSR (DX11) is 15-30% slower, depending on which preset you use.

DLSS vs FSR: Image Quality Comparisons





The upscalers offer similar visual quality, with DLSS better at processing fine geometry like grass and branch ends. Performance-wise, it’s again the same result, so stick with what works on your hardware. DLSS frame generation produces nearly identical stills, but there’s a bit of ghosting around the edges in fast-paced scenes. Luckily, most people won’t notice it.








Once Human: CPU Bottlenecks
As observed in the above results, Once Human performs comparatively better using DX11 on average. However, it frequently runs into CPU-related stalls or bottlenecks that lead to infinitesimal FPS drops, lowering the 1% lows. This behavior is completely absent from the game’s DX12 port.


DLSS frame generation produces an interesting frametime chart. While the render time is much shorter than upscaling, it has relatively messy frame pacing that gets masked by the high framerates.
