"The underlying geometry is unchanged" - turns out DLSS 5 really is just a filter over 2D images, as Nvidia employee reveals: "Materials are inferred from the rendered frame"

Grace from Resident Evil 5 with DLSS 5 on.

The DLSS 5 drama continues, as one employee from Nvidia has shared more insight into the technicalities of how the new iteration of the upscaler will work while you're playing games. As many have suspected since the initial reveal video, DLSS 5 isn't actually using your gaming PC's graphical power to enhance, upscale, or render frames differently. In fact, DLSS 5 only uses 2D imagery and motion vectors as an input... so pretty much exactly how an Instagram filter works.

This news comes by way of YouTuber Daniel Owen, who released a video titled "Nvidia answers my DLSS 5 questions" in which he details an email exchange he's had this week with Jacob Freeman, a DLSS Evangelist at Nvidia.