In-game overlay on Steam presents beneficial enhancements, with a notable feature unveiling a questionable AI practice, to which I express approval.
The Upgraded Steam Overlay: Your Personal Gaming Technical Support
Valve is stepping up its game with Steam's built-in frame rate counter, transforming it into a comprehensive in-game performance overlay. This new feature will offer a wealth of details on everything happening under the hood of any game you play, as well as the status of your CPU and GPU.
By exposing situations where frame generation might be secretly turned on, this update challenges the shadows and ensures transparency. Frame generation is a technology that boosts the frame rate by adding AI-generated frames, such as Nvidia's DLSS, AMD's FSR, and Intel's XeSS.
Recently, Valve rolled out a new beta version of the Steam app, featuring this improved in-game FPS counter. As with any beta version, don't expect to see it on your Steam client yet, unless you're a beta tester.
This revamped overlay goes beyond a simple real-time FPS readout; it thermoses the situation and provides extensive details on both CPU and GPU performance, including levels of utilization, clock speeds, temperatures, and temperatures. The overlay also shares the amount of video RAM being used by the currently running game and includes system RAM monitoring.
In addition to all this goodness, Valve has added the option to display whether DLSS or FSR is active and whether these technologies are currently using frame generation. As a cherry on top, at least for Windows PCs, the full feature set will be available initially. Further down the line, other platforms, like SteamOS, will receive most of these capabilities, with any leftovers added later.
The new Steam overlay is not just an informational toy for tech nerds; it provides practical value to all gamers. If you want to embrace this influx of info and customize it to your liking, you have the freedom to decide whether to show detailed stats or just a simple FPS counter. You can even adjust the overlay's transparency and placement to better fit your screen real estate and visual preferences.
Amid the recent controversy surrounding a game that surreptitiously enables frame generation without notifying the player, the new overlay could prove extremely beneficial. Games like ARK: Survival Ascended have frame generation activated by default, and while they allegedly did this a while ago, it wasn't announced in the patch. Worse yet, there's no option to disable it within the graphics settings, which leaves players in the dark about its functioning. Now, with the new Steam overlay, players can easily identify if frame generation is in play and make adjustments as needed for smoother gameplay.
Some purists might argue that the jerky sensation experienced when frame generation is used can dilute the gaming experience. However, it's essential to remember that this side-effect is specific to certain scenarios, such as boosting a lower frame rate, like 30 FPS. Frame generation can be incredibly useful for enhancing overall performance, and harnessing its power will hopefully lead to better gaming experiences for all Steamusers.
For those who already have third-party tools to monitor their performance, it's worth mentioning that Valve's new integrated solution inherently simplifies the process by eliminating the need for external tools and making everything accessible within the Steam client.
The improved Steam overlay, now featuring extensive details on in-game performance, includes a monitoring system for gaming technologies like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, enhancing the gaming experience for users. This new feature also allows gamers to easily identify if frame generation is active, addressing concerns about transparency in game performance.
