On Monday afternoon, GPU manufacturer and leading graphics innovator NVIDIA officially announced DLSS 5 at the ongoing Game Developers Conference (GDC), and boy oh boy has it proven to be quite controversial. The latest version of the company's Super Resolution tech — exclusive to NVIDIA's RTX 50-series GPUs — uses AI to render photorealistic lighting and enhancements and then adds them to a scene, and is intended to make the games you play look more natural and high-fidelity.
The problem? In nearly all of the screenshots and footage we've seen from NVIDIA of DLSS 5 running in existing titles like Resident Evil Requiem and Hogwarts Legacy, the technology makes some aggressive changes to character skin and facial appearance in particular, to the point where comment sections across social media are flooded with comparisons to the generative AI beautification filters you'll find in smartphone apps.
DLSS 5 seems to effectively homogenize the way individual characters across games look, eliminating nuance from art direction and applying some universal standards (more pronounced laugh lines and fuller lips for young female characters, more and deeper wrinkles for older characters, etc.).
As a result, the overall reception to the technology thus far has been extremely negative, and many believe most developers won't even want to support it in their games. One big-name dev, though, was excited to see DLSS 5 running in their game: Todd Howard, game director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios.
Howard had this to say about how DLSS 5 looks in Bethesda's latest game, Xbox's Starfield: "When they showed us DLSS 5 and we got it running in Starfield, it was amazing how it brought [it] to life. We've played it; we can't wait for all of you to do so as well."
Now, while DLSS 5's character faces immediately trigger the feeling of uncanny valley in me, I will admit that the way it improves the quality of lighting and textures in the environment is pretty impressive. Starfield in particular — a game that's a bit notorious for having flat visuals in scenes without dramatic lighting effects — pops quite a bit more with DLSS 5. Check out Digital Foundry's comparisons in the above video for examples.
I imagine this is largely what Howard was impressed by, because the way DLSS 5 changes NPC faces is pretty jarring, and makes everyone look a little too perfect. Again, it's that same uncanny look you'd expect from an AI filter...and ultimately, that's kind of what DLSS 5 is.
Notably, according to Digital Foundry, NVIDIA says the system doesn't touch the game's actual assets like textures and models whatsoever, which I find pretty wild considering how different they look with it on. It goes to show just how much of a difference lighting can make — for better or for worse. So far, we're seeing both with DLSS 5.
The good news, though, is that DLSS 5 is still in its early stages, and that developers will be able to tweak the effect the technology has in their games how they see fit if they choose to support it. Hopefully with further development and per-game fine tuning, the system can get away from this AI slop look.
As for when DLSS 5 is coming out, NVIDIA says it's scheduled to launch this fall and is coming to its RTX 50-series graphics cards, so you'll have to wait until then if you're curious to try it out yourself.
🗨️ How do you feel about DLSS 5?
The initial reactions to NVIDIA's upcoming DLSS 5 tech are, overall, very negative. But I'm curious: do you feel the same way? Or do you think the comparisons to AI slop and beautification filters are overly dramatic?
I'd love to hear from you, so let me know in the comments, and vote in our poll, too:
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