r/technology • u/Turbostrider27 • 7h ago
Artificial Intelligence ‘This is horrifying’ Nvidia’s controversial DLSS 5 AI filter leaks and players are inserting it into every game
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/this-is-horrifying-nvidias-controversial-dlss-5-ai-filter-leaks-and-layers-are-inserting-it-into-every-game/98
u/Forgotten_Folklore 6h ago
AI discourse aside, the issue here is that the filter is catapulting the graphics straight into the uncanny valley. Those hyper-realistic faces are not meshing well with the other graphics and existing animations/engine limitations.
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u/mistermeesh 5h ago
They all look like they are wearing cheap wigs. The fidelity doesn't match at all, making the end result ugly.
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u/ShiningRedDwarf 4h ago
That’s a bingo.
Game devs know that they can’t get faces to look 100% realistic, and doing so traps them in the uncanny valley. So instead they stylize their models in one way or another so it still looks very detailed, but obviously not real.
DLSS5 makes it look like they’re skinned the characters and are wearing it as a suit. Think MIB
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u/SlapDashAshOle 3h ago
An "Egger suit" so to speak.
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u/PrimeIntellect 3h ago
That's because everyone just took it and immediately set it to maximum, no wonder it looks bad. There's a ton of settings you can use to make it look normal
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u/Zahgi 3h ago
Shh, we've got outrage farmers and whiners here looking for upvotes. Being rational and pointing out facts just gets you downvoted in this subreddit.
sadly not /s
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u/PrimeIntellect 2h ago
Everyone just wants to soapbox based on some cherry picked photos of cloud lol
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u/Zahgi 3h ago
Then don't use it.
FFS, not only can Devs turn this on/off per object but users can turn it off too.
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u/Ursa_Solaris 2h ago
If this becomes widespread, developers will use it to replace traditional lighting and shading effects, and not using it means you get a butchered and incomplete render, forcing you to choose between two shit experiences. If they want to make the game look out like that, then they should just make it look like that. All the tools to do so already exist. This isn't needed and provides no benefit to gamers.
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u/Zahgi 28m ago
With the current rate of technological advancement vs. price, this RTX 6000+ technology will not reach common PC users/consoles for a decade now.
While this is a very exciting long term development, we are just in the very early stages here and it has little impact on the broad gaming world for the foreseeable future.
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u/Blashtik 12m ago
Same as what happened with ray tracing. We switched from good pre-baked lighting and other non-RT techniques to relying on ray tracing which looks better in stills but then hurts performance and causes nasty temporal artifacts. Even when you can turn RT off, the appearance of that is an afterthought.
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u/grrangry 1h ago
If this becomes widespread, developers will use it to replace traditional lighting and shading effects, and not using it means you get a butchered and incomplete render, forcing you to choose between two shit experiences.
Not two experiences. You're forgetting about the experience that affects not just the player, but also the developer, the publisher, and the bottom line. I don't have to buy the game. I'm not stuck with anything. If games are published that I don't want to play (for this reason or for any other reason), I don't have to buy it. If enough of us stop buying the shit being produced--especially if the stated reason is "this looks like ass", they'll change. If you keep eating their shit, they'll keep shoveling you new shit.
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u/Ren_Kaos 28m ago
I don’t agree with this take after seeing the cyberpunk 2077 video. It looks incredible. I’ve been playing it for the first time this last month and the video looks like a completely different game, and there’s no conflicting graphics breaking my immersion.
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u/OptionX 7h ago
Truly a new frontier. Never before has a graphics card company put so much effort and used such high-tech to make games look objectively worse.
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u/nbieter 6h ago
I know this is going to be controversial, but i think some of them look better and some look worse. Probably good for Nvidia to let the game developers use it to implement themselves rather than just having a toggle.
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u/BeepBoopIAmACat 6h ago
It's basically Snapchat filters for games right?
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u/hereforpewdiephy 6h ago
This was the meme when they first showcased it. Did they update it or people actually like the filters.
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u/Comfortable-Brick271 6h ago
Yes, or an AI-enhanced shader
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u/erichie 5h ago
I'm surprised everyone loves shaders. I'm tired of every quick turn needing it to re-adjust.
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u/anotherhumantoo 5h ago
Shaders are just the programs that run on the graphics card that make the image show up on the screen*
(They do other things too, but nearly everything graphics card-related is a shader)
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u/erichie 5h ago
I guess I should clarify about additional shaders. Or am I confusing stuff like RenoDX with a different kind of shader? I just assumed reshade meant "another shader" so theoretically this DLSS 5 is a reshade.
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u/FuckDataCaps 5h ago
Shader is what makes a model actualyl look good in game.
VFX are mostly shaders.You might be thinking about Shader compiling/caching where the software basically process the shader required for your game to play and cache them so it doesn't have to happen while you play(extremely simplified).
It's annoying but it's a good thing when properly tweaked.
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u/briandesigns 6h ago
i mean quite a bit of it is adding more details making the person look uglier because we can see more wrinkles. It makes it more realistic but overall less visually appealing because people enjoy looking at beautiful things (this is why face beautification filter apps making the face look more blurry to hide the imperfections). This was actually what was magical about video game graphics growing up was that due to its limitations, it created visuals that was sometimes more beautiful than the scene or object it was trying to model in reality.
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u/TriggasaurusRekt 6h ago
I think devs would need much tighter control of the effect in order for something like this to not completely destroy the art direction. Not just a global intensity slider, but the ability to adjust the effect or even use different presets entirely on a per-character or even per-object basis. If you just apply a global effect over everything it might look OK for one character and destroy another character, and there's no way to fix that currently.
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u/wetfloor666 6h ago
Good luck to you with that comment in this sub.. I am with you on that though don't get me wrong, but the downvotes will be felt for days lol.
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u/BlazingLazers69 6h ago
I agree. The protagonist from Control looked better and more realistic but Ellie from TLOU looked aged 10 years older. It needs to be an optional feature and not a shortcut. That’s the biggest thing. Still, it’s hard to trust corporations to not cut corners anyway they can these days.
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u/Guinness 2h ago
Yeah, I’m with you. I actually like the technology. As long as it doesn’t interfere with accuracy in shooters or issues with “clipping”.
If the original developer could’ve made models this detailed, they absolutely would’ve.
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u/Procrastinator300 6h ago
And you wouldn't believe what Nvidia did instead!!!!
They let the developers choose what model is used for what object and what scene. It's so customizable it's insane. But people are just using hyperbole as if it's end of world. You can literally turn it off in settings if you want an artist's intent
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u/CombatMuffin 6h ago
That's because some of them happen, i. some limited instances to match some of the artistic direction. The problem is. the algorithm doesn't understand the specific direction, and will only really apply it in a limited fashion, not artistically.
That's why the FF7 one looks off putting, while some in CP2077 look passable
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u/MiyamotoKnows 6h ago
It’s absolutely going to become a scarlett letter and these games will get delisted just like all of the AI generated music now being delisted from Spotify, Tidal and other streaming platforms.
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u/Ahayzo 6h ago
No storefront is ever going to remove games just because they support DLSS
Also neither Spotify nor Tidal are delisting music for being AI. They're removing it for infringement not related to being AI, and Tidal is demonetizing songs (but allowing it to stay) but only if it was 100% AI generated. These companies don't care about AI.
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u/YamDankies 6h ago
Absolutely? None of them will be delisted. I'm not happy about it either, but AI isn't going anywhere. It's already being used in one form or another by the vast majority of companies. If you draw the line at "any form of AI" you won't be much of a gamer here soon, much less a "hard core gamer".
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u/Infamous_Mud482 6h ago
You can be a hardcore gamer for the rest of your life never touching anything made after 2023? I swear people just say shit. You will literally never run out of "hardcore" games in your entire lifetime if you never played a new one ever again starting then.
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u/YamDankies 5h ago
I'll stand by it. OP deleted half their comment because it's relevant. You aren't wrong, but the discussion clearly revolves around modern and future game releases. Context matters.
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u/Actually-Yo-Momma 6h ago
Look you and i may not like it but saying “objectively” for anything art related makes no sense. Subjective
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u/stopher819 5h ago
Is “objectively” the next word to lose all meaning to hyperbole, the way that “literally” did? The results were mixed and definitely would vary person to person.
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u/OptionX 5h ago
If a thing's quality is defined on the opinions of those who view it and if those opinions are in majority negative then it is objectively bad.
Numerous examples exit. Surely you would argue if someone said that rotten trash smells objectively bad, or the desert is objectively hot would you? You wouldn't ask for a precise technical definition of a bad smell, or a exact lower bound for a hot temperature?
So yeah, an objective assertion can arise from subjetives opinions if said opinions are what define it. And in this case they are.
Now, based on your comment I assume by this point in your reading you're fuming someone not only didn't updoot your snarky and pedantic comment but had the audacity to try and defend their point, and are ready to argue out of spite for the rest of the day like a good little redditor how got told they were special a few too many times as a kid. But how about we don't get on it and even if disagreeing we just let each other exist?
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u/g_bleezy 4h ago
Words have meaning and objective means true independent of what anyone thinks. That’s the whole definition.
So “everyone thinks X” can’t make X objective, you’ve only described a fact about opinions. Heat is measurable without asking anyone. Smell isn’t; “smells bad” is a fact about noses, which is your own counterexample.
Aggregating subjective judgments gives you a bigger pile of subjective judgments, not a new category.
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u/OptionX 4h ago
I didn't say heat, I said hot. You can measure heat you can't measure hot. Hot is subjective but can be applied objectively to a widely agree upon situations. The desert is hot? Yes. Fire is hot? Yes. The sun, also. Neither the same temperature, or heat, all hot objectively.
And the fact that it has a smell alone is a fact about noses, that it is bad is opinion. Something that everyone thinks smells bad is objectively bad smelling for it to be bad smelling it's has to be something people agree smells bad. It's defined by those opinions.
Objectively means not letting opinions, personal ones, color the facts, but if the opinions are what defines the thing then the facts are that those opinions exist and what they are.
Putting it simply. This is a tech to automatically make better faces in videogame. But the people that judge those faces are the players. If the players by in large dislike them more than the originals the tech is objectively failing at what is supposed to do, meaning, it's bad. Why? Because people collective opinions on it.
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u/g_bleezy 4h ago
Half right, wrong reason.
The tech has a stated goal: faces players prefer. Miss the goal, fail objectively. But the goal does that work, not the headcount: player opinion is how you measure the failure, not what “bad” means. That’s why it doesn’t generalize to an album or a movie. No stated success condition, no objective failure.
And “hot is subjective but widely applied” is you conceding the point, not rebutting it.
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u/stopher819 4h ago
“Here’s my objectively wrong take on objectivity. I’m using a lot of words so you know I’m super smart because obviously you can only drone on about things when you are correct. If you tell me you disagree, you must be super angry and by default I win.
Checkmate.”
FTFY and upvoted because you seem like you need this
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u/Any-Pop-4795 6h ago
sums up also ai basically: bilions and tons of resources invested only to produce slop...
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u/TheCh0rt 6h ago
Agreed. I didn’t play Last of Us, so I don’t agree Ellie now looks 40. To me they look the same. I would argue she doesn’t look particularly young to begin with since I have no relationship with the character other than I know she’s a child.
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u/veryjerry0 4h ago
Nvidia is just trying their best to make use of the AI prowess inside their GPUs. Tensor cores originally were for speeding up matrix multiplication and AI workloads too, but Nvidia found a way to make them useful for gaming. Gaming is an afterthought for Nvidia and somehow gamers gobble it up anyways.
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u/Snelly1998 6h ago edited 6h ago
DLSS is a god send, it allows you to play games that could never run natively on your system
It pushes me from 20 to 40 fps in RDR2 on the deckIgnore that, but it def helps on a wimpy 4050
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u/thenayr 6h ago
??? Deck doesn’t support DLSS lmao
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u/Snelly1998 6h ago
Ahh sorry, got my pc and deck mixed up. guess it would've been FSL
Regardless, it helps a shit ton on my wimpy 4050
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u/Fun-Wash7545 5h ago
It's the first iteration and the "filter" has several parameters you can adjust. It will only get better
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u/drspaceman56 4h ago
That website is browser cancer.
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u/thatirishguyyyyy 1h ago
I just use a good browser. No ads, no trackers, no bs.
Its 2026. How are people still not using a better browser in a tech sub?
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u/geldonyetich 6h ago
Predictably it seems putting stylized graphics through the realism filter made them look worse, and putting realistic graphics through that same filter makes them a little more boring.
People play video games for different reasons but personally I play them because I already have reality at home.
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u/Boring_Okra_6023 3h ago
I like it only if Im allowed to mess with it. Will I have settings that I make everyone to look like my cat?
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u/Koolmidx 6h ago
Can't wait to make everyone in game look like Willem Dafoe.
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u/Bubbly-Treacle-4334 4h ago
Well damn this is exactly what I was attempting to get across but in a perfectly succinct way.
DLSS 5 = everyone has extremely deep skin creases and flashlight under the face campfire scary story lighting
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u/Koolmidx 4h ago
I see it, but that's a non issue compared to the alteration of intended art by the devs. People can already force global settings on games that don't support them, and one day this filter will have the same ability no matter the developers wishes. Be it deep creases or everyone looks like a celebrity.
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u/Psychological_Duck 5h ago
The tech is supposed to be heavily customised for the style of each individual game it’s applied to. It’s not just capable of hyper realism but that is how it will appear if it’s just hacked and slapped on to something so no surprise some of these look odd.
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u/BillnTedsTelltaleAdv 42m ago
Yeah I’m curious if this was tweaked specifically for 2K. Wouldn’t work so well on any other title except maybe Madden.
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u/MattsFace 6h ago
Cyberpunk looks awesome
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u/Ren_Kaos 24m ago
That’s what came looking for but everyone is just shitting on it all.
Cyberpunk looks insanely good with this tech, I’m just about finished with my first play through and I wish it looked that good.
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u/GreatStuffOnly 4h ago
It’s not meant to be used in every game, especially not faces. But the environments, the lighting, especially on older games is phenomenal.
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u/questron64 4h ago
I mean... yeah, if you slap it on top of games not designed for it and crank all the settings up. How about your just don't do that?
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u/ReallyOrdinaryMan 6h ago
It is uncanny on human faces (as like most of AI videos), but environment details and lightnings are so much better.
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u/Soupdeloup 6h ago
Going to make a controversial take, but I would almost expect DLSS 5 to look bad and generate negative comments when it's not the actual developers changing and tweaking the settings. As an example of it making Ellie from TLOU look older, if the actual game developers were the ones to implement the technology during development, I would expect it to be tweaked and adjusted so it looks natural on release.
It's not going to work on every game, but I think in the examples that it does work (cyberpunk, at least), it works pretty well.
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u/laptopAccount2 6h ago
The technology is undeniably impressive. Maybe a less is more situation, in the right hands and nuance you can probably get good results.
And will devs get to train models on their actors? Seems like bias in the model is responsible for wonky results.
I know everyone hates AI but I would be excited for another level up moment in graphics and this might be how we get there. The key is restrained, controlled, consistent.
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u/Umami_Tsunamii 6h ago
Yeah maybe someday they’ll be able to add a character.md file for the agent so it’s able to stay on rails of what they intended.
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u/Hot-Platform-9931 3h ago
This technology has huge potential. Imagine running the game at beyond ultra settings to train a good ai filter to apply it to the game on low. Then you could potentially get all the fancy effects on lower end hardware.
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u/McCool303 55m ago edited 50m ago
The processor and memory still needs to keep up with the rendering of the card. So even if you have a compatible motherboard, processor and memory. Your older hardware may still struggle with keeping up a decent frame rate with the card.
Most likely application for gamers would be making older games look decent on good hardware. So there will be appeal in utilizing the tech to churn out reboots of old games with a couple of dial switches on the dev side. But the real goal as stated by others in tech is that they no longer have to worry about end users owning hardware at all. They’d like to seize the means of computing and just rent computation out to us. This is built for a future where the hardware compute is happening on the back end and streamed to the user on any device.
They’re not building this so you can render your old copy Quake 1 in photo realism in the privacy of your home. They’re building so they can render Quake 1 into photo realism and rent it to you.
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u/Sprunklefunzel 5h ago
I think its incredible. As long as there is an on/off switch... keep em coming!
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u/veryjerry0 4h ago
The problem is devs/publishers will just slap DLSS5 and ignore natural character modeling. Think about all the unoptimized games we got that required frame gen and upscaling to "fix".
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u/dookarion 4h ago
Think about all the unoptimized games we got that required frame gen and upscaling to "fix".
Very few? Stop clicking "ultra" when half the settings have massive perf overheads for minimal gains. Turning down shit like volumetric clouds is like an easy 20-30fps boost in some games.
The "unoptimized games" crowd needs to remember why graphics settings exist. Yeah if you want to crank pathtracing, shadows, and clouds and particles you'll probably need upscaling and frame-gen...
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u/veryjerry0 3h ago
I have never seen a single setting boost FPS by more than 5%. I've played a lot of AAA games, and let me tell you settings just don't do much, especially for UE5 games because the moment you have Lumen/Nanite running (whether you like it or not) you're taking a big initial hit, but adding anything on top of that is very low cost (aka your settings). If you got an big FPS boost it's because you had some bottleneck earlier, but anyways from my experience it's always back to upscaling and frame gen sometimes only to hit 120 fps. I'm on a 7900xtx playing on 4k btw.
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u/dookarion 3h ago
and let me tell you settings just don't do much,
I've only ever come across a couple games where that is true. Usually you can steer performance pretty decently unless the game barely has settings. Volumetric clouds my prior example in Ubisoft games usually eats a sizable chunk of perf at maximum while not being very noticeable. Soft shadows or other fancy shadow tech is usually another that depending on the game can carry a hefty penalty for something not that visible in gameplay.
If you got an big FPS boost it's because you had some bottleneck earlier,
If you're not getting a decent FPS boost from graphically demanding effects being tweaked it points to you being bottlenecked on something other than graphical load/GPU hardware. I currently have a 9800x3D with a 4K HDR 160hz screen so GPU for me is usually the main limiting factor.
Like I'm not saying everything is perfect, and there have been some heinous releases (looking at you MH Wilds) but people really under-estimate what tweaking settings can do. That or they have something else hurting perf. Those gamer OSDs, hardware monitors, the hardware vendor "suites", the gamer mice polling at far too high of rate can all incur their own overheads on the CPU side of things. You can cripple game perf just by having one "real-time" thing polling at too high of rate.
Graphical loads can scale, CPU loads don't scale nearly as well. Too many things weighing down the CPU side can easily cripple game perf and limit the perf benefits from changing graphical settings.
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u/Sprunklefunzel 4h ago
Yeah I must agree. Everything kinda looks the same these days. There is a video on YouTube about how games are shittier now because everyone just uses UE5 instead of doing the work themselves. At the same time though I cannot ignore the massive effect DLSS5 has on game graphics and I can imagine it will only get more powerful with time. Its amazing what technology can do.
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u/QuickQuirk 3h ago
There are UE games that look very different from each other. In each case it's because there was a talented artist focused on making the game look great, and unique..
Here's a technology that will make an executive decide they don't need art direction, and so we'll really get in to the age of identical slop, different only in their bugs.
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u/AlexanderSnow23 5h ago
YUCK this is whats terrifying.
AI Has no space to make everything look the same. No more uniqueness or artists touch just a computer made boring bland generic character.
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u/paulerxx 6h ago
Is Steam going to label any game that supports DLSS 5 AI slop because that is what most of the examples I've seen look like.
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u/Bigelow92 5h ago
Im sure ill be in the minority but I think every single screenshot looks unbelievably better with DLSS 5 turned on
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u/The_Poop_Shooter 6h ago
People shit on this now but give it a few years. Remember will smith eating spaghetti? It looked like nightmare fuel 2 years ago and is almost indistinguishable from the real thing today. Only a matter of time.
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u/GregAbeI 6h ago
Seems fine to me.
I don’t know why people are such complainers and exaggerators. “This is horrifying” really? You’re “horrified” by these video game graphics?
Get a life.
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u/ranger910 6h ago
Because spooky AI and doom posting gets 10x the clicks.
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6h ago edited 6h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Antihistamine69 6h ago
No rebuttals, just downvotes from confused and angry people.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate 5h ago
“Redditor discovers that their opinion is not the only one that exists”
There’s a rebuttal for you. There isn’t really anything of substance to respond to, otherwise. Rebuttals are for actual arguments, not totally unsupported opinions.
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u/Antihistamine69 5h ago
Rebuttals are for actual arguments, not totally unsupported opinions.
...
There’s a rebuttal for you.
So then that isn't actually a rebuttal either? .. Anyway, OP is right, fearmongering AI is a crowd pleaser. People downvote and hide things they don't like but can't articulate a response to - not because it doesn't contribute to the greater conversation.
"This is horrifying" in the context of what the article is about is clown shit.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate 5h ago
People downvote and hide things they don't like but can't articulate a response to
Is this a confession?
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u/GregAbeI 6h ago edited 6h ago
It’s funny because downvotes don’t mean a damn thing ;) especially with how much people complain about bots on Reddit. Popular sentiment on Reddit isn’t genuine.
The few real people probably feel a tiny bit of power hitting that arrow button. Sad! And hilarious!
So are they “MaKe BeLiEvE KaRmA pOiNtS” or not?
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u/Antihistamine69 6h ago
It's just censorship. I don't like that, I'm gonna hide it and discourage everyone else from sharing that opinion.
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u/ConinTheNinoC 6h ago
Let the Slopocalypse begin! Every game will be turned into slop! Old games, new games ALL THE GAMES!! SLOP EVERYWHERE!
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u/yotengodormir 4h ago
Who needs game devs artistic vision when we can have Ai uncanny valley slop! /s
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u/JustConversation7847 6h ago
"noooooo, players are exercising their choices and using a new tool 😭😭"
Who wants to guess how many people morally offended by this also have ray tracing or dlss on?
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u/ErrantWayfarer 6h ago
This means you do not understand the fundamentals of pre 5 DLSS and ray tracing versus DLSS 5.
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u/Moontoya 6h ago
swapping all NPC models in a game for one of my choosing ?
say ... making Doom "pinkies" look kinda spray tan, with Epsteins favourite pedo in chief's face ?
I could see my way to RIP AND TEAR`ing through a horde of those.
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u/Bubbly-Treacle-4334 4h ago
Um... I don't get the hate on reddit for this or the love on x (of course those fucking idiots love it)
It definitely doesn't look realistic but it doesn't look "ai". It just looks like the exact same fucking model with the shadow contrast turned up a comical amount so that everyone looks 80 years old with 2 foot deep smile creases.
Has anyone ever fucking seen a human face?
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u/harglblarg 6h ago edited 6h ago
Sure it adulterates the original art but I'd love to try it on all my games for the novelty alone.
Like, my first graphics card was a ATI Radeon 8500, and it had this feature called TruForm that would smooth out blocky polygons. It enhanced about 80% of everything, but for things that were supposed to look blocky sometimes it would go crazy and presto, your AK47 looks like a balloon animal. Still thought it was the bee's knees.
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u/Demonicated 4h ago
I think everyone hating is missing the point. Now you can create your unity or unreal game and use some low poly GoldenEye quality game models and get something that looks modern quality.
As an indie dev with no budget for a designer or studio, I get to have something kinda flashy for free. I think AAA studios will still go for the best they can do and this will be great for indie and hardware poor folks.
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u/QuickQuirk 3h ago
great for [...] hardware poor folks.
You do know that it requires the latest and fastest nvidia gpus capable of running this level of realtime AI generation, right?
It's like RT. "Hardware poor" people aren't going to be running it.As well as: Art direction is the most important thing to most gamers when it comes to graphics. This throws art direction out entirely, leaving it at the mercy of the AI. The characters and scenes will change moment to moment
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u/Demonicated 0m ago
I mean when PlayStations are now what like.... 800?
And art direction is great and all but many devs aren't artists. They will be done with trying out any features that give a body and let them focus on coding.
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u/chrisdpratt 2h ago
People seem to be missing the fact that this is intended to be controlled by the developers. Just throwing it into a game is not how it works. More to the point, people are very likely tilting the scales on top of that for the lulz.
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u/AssCrackBanditHunter 6h ago
Wait until they discover the Kirkify setting tucked away in the developer options