Gamers React With Overwhelming Disgust To DLSS 5's Generative AI Glow-Ups (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0181025690
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/17/2058245/gamers-react-with-overwhelming-disgust-to-dlss-5s-generative-ai-glow-ups
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/03/gamers-react-with-overwhelming-disgust-to-dlss-5s-generative-ai-glow-ups/
> Since deep-learning super-sampling (DLSS) launched on [1]2018's RTX 2080 cards , gamers have been generally bullish on the technology as a way to effectively use machine-learning upscaling techniques to increase resolutions or juice frame rates in games. With [2]yesterday's tease of the upcoming DLSS 5, though, Nvidia has crossed a line from mere upscaling into complete lighting and texture overhauls influenced by "generative AI." The result is a bland, uncanny gloss that has [3]received an instant and overwhelmingly negative reaction from large swaths of gamers and the industry at large .
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> While previous DLSS releases rendered upscaled frames or created entirely new ones to smooth out gaps, Nvidia calls DLSS 5 -- which it plans to launch in Autumn -- "a real-time neural rendering model" that can "deliver a new level of photoreal computer graphics previously only achieved in Hollywood visual effects." Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said explicitly that the technology melds "generative AI" with "handcrafted rendering" for "a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression."
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> Unlike existing generative video models, which Nvidia notes are "difficult to precisely control and often lack predictability," DLSS 5 uses a game's internal color and motion vectors "to infuse the scene with photoreal lighting and materials that are anchored to source 3D content and consistent from frame to frame." That underlying game data helps the system "understand complex scene semantics such as characters, hair, fabric and translucent skin, along with environmental lighting conditions like front-lit, back-lit or overcast," the company says.
Nvidia's [4]announcement video and [5]detailed Digital Foundry breakdown can be found at their respective links.
"Reactions have compared the effect to [6]air-brushed pornography , ' [7]yassified, looks-maxed freaks ,' or those [8]uncanny, unavoidable Evony ads ," writes Orland. "Others have noted how DLSS 5 seems to [9]mangle the intended art direction by [10]dampening shadows in favor of a [11]homogenized look ."
Thomas Was Alone developer Mike Bithell [12]said the technology seems designed "for when you absolutely, positively, don't want any art direction in your gaming experience."
Gunfire Games Senior Concept Artist Jeff Talbot [13]added that "in every shot the art direction was taken away for the senseless addition of 'details.' Each DLSS 5 shot looked worse and had less character than the original. This is just a garbage AI Filter."
DLSS 5's "AI dogshit is actually depressing," [14]said New Blood Interactive founder and CEO Dave Oshry, adding that future generations "won't even know this looks 'bad' or 'wrong' because to them it'll be normal."
[1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/08/20/2112209/nvidia-unveils-powerful-new-rtx-2070-and-2080-graphics-cards
[2] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-dlss-5-delivers-ai-powered-breakthrough-in-visual-fidelity-for-games
[3] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/03/gamers-react-with-overwhelming-disgust-to-dlss-5s-generative-ai-glow-ups/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJACkKbN-Eo
[5] https://www.digitalfoundry.net/features/nvidias-new-dlss-5-brings-photo-realistic-lighting-to-rtx-50-series
[6] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:da4qrww7zq3flsr2zialldef/post/3mh7e4ihc622n
[7] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2f5ax33ftgkf7merjvpr32rm/post/3mh7bl7ntd222
[8] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/nvidia-dlss-5s-ai-filter-turns-all-your-favourite-resident-evil-requiem-characters-into-yassified-instagram-models
[9] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bjxm4tosszsrtc3kxqdkregd/post/3mh77twxop22t
[10] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uo2g6reoqnrudyoeotwveuc2/post/3mh7b7ibxgs2z%20
[11] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:523ewzaljcp6neupiepifw76/post/3mh7binlp6s2s
[12] https://bsky.app/profile/mikebithell.bsky.social/post/3mh7erjxpvk2s
[13] https://bsky.app/profile/jefftalbot.bsky.social/post/3mh75no5llk2z
[14] https://x.com/DaveOshry/status/2033636005526573437
Uncanny Valley like problem? (Score:3)
The Uncanny Valley is when computer art is too close to human but not good enough. It results in slightly off looking people that give people the heebie jeevies.
This could very well be a similar effect but applied to non-human pictures as well as representations of humans.
Uhhh (Score:2)
Maybe I'm missing something, but from Nvidia's announcement video every single example looks significantly better in a number of ways. A lot of modern games suffer from shitty and incorrect lighting - especially those using UE5. Now, does that mean that every scene in every game that can use DLSS5 looks better? No, probably not. Is it perfect? No. But neither were the originals. Does it probably need more training for a bigger variety of games? Yeah, probably. But "air-brushed pornography"? No. "Yassified,
Re: (Score:3)
The cherry picked some super bad examples for the non-DLSS views. It's ludicrously gamed. [1]This was published 19 years ago [nvidia.com] (it's a technique from [2]Gpu Gems 3 [nvidia.com]) and it was real-time then. I'm sure I can find a better/more recent method but I hope you get the point.
[1] https://developer.download.nvidia.com/books/gpugems3/14fig29.jpg
[2] https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems3/part-iii-rendering/chapter-14-advanced-techniques-realistic-real-time-skin
Re: (Score:2)
> Maybe I'm missing something, but from Nvidia's announcement video every single example looks significantly better in a number of ways.
The thing you're missing is that they demonstrated multiple different games with multiple different artistic directions and yet ... they all look the same when DLSS is on. That's the big problem here. You're no longer getting a game made by developers, you're getting a game interpreted by NVIDIA's training set.
Take a closer look before you declare better. Here's what I see:
1. Resident Evil the character looks amazing. But the environment looks amazing as well, which is a problem since there was a clear desi
Quick look (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't care about this much, but I took a quick look.
The DLSS 5 face looks about a decade better than the non-DLSS face. The latter is how faces have appeared for decades in games: not quite there. The former is far better: the eyes look real. Skin tone is convincing. Nice.
The alley/street/whatever is dramatically different. Not necessarily better or worse, but very different. So that's a thing that will bother people that are all wrapped around the axle about "atmosphere."
Overall I prefer the DLSS 5 version pretty strongly. It looks better.
There. A former gamer that likes it. Hate on, you spoiled brats.
Re: (Score:2)
> So that's a thing that will bother people that are all wrapped around the axle about "atmosphere."
The sad part about you putting the word "atmosphere" in quotes is that you fail to realise that the resident evil games have all fundamentally been about atmosphere. It's what drew you in back in the days of the original Playstation where a character's face was modelled with polygons you could count on your fingers.
Yeah-nah I don't want all my games looking the same thanks to an AI interpretation. The problem is, we now have another tool that will make developers not give a damn. Not good enough that DLSS h
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the characters end up looking like an AI generated version of themselves. There's a distinct look to AI generated humans, especially the kind that end up in crappy ads, facebook posts and general online slop. So you're taking these characters and making them look stylistically similar to humans in AI generated slop content. For people who regularly see these, and find them annoying/worthless, now seeing their favorite characters transformed into a similar style is off putting and aesthet
So then... (Score:2)
... this is what we're hating today?
"Gamers Hate" (Score:1)
Yeah, dude. Its the fucking internet. "Gamers Hate" literally every type of change in the past decade. That's just how the vocal minority goes. Same shit happened with hardware ray tracing, because early demos were not the best. No diff today w/ this tech. It was an early tech preview, not a final product. It will be tweeked and refined, and then we'll forget all about all of this bullshit nonsense, and the tech will be common place... ya'know, just like DLSS (original). Yeah, that had massive hate too. Now
Re: "Gamers Hate" (Score:2)
Who the hell wants to buy a new $$$ graphics card to get a yassification feature? This is an absolute flop in terms of business and technology direction, not simply gamer hate.
Re: (Score:3)
> Yeah, dude. Its the fucking internet. "Gamers Hate" literally every type of change in the past decade.
It's easy to pretend this is some meme, but trying to defend this shows you haven't seen this. Even in the demos one thing is obvious: All the games end up looking the same. This is rubbish. This destroys creativity. Even if you think one example looks great, that doesn't change the fact that all games ultimately will look like that.
> Now DLSS just gets a shrug for the most part from the general community because its decent now.
It is anything but. A significant portion of gamers still leave it off. It still can't deal with many effects rendered with shaders, it still screws up in reflections, even with
Re: (Score:2)
DLSS (in its original AA/upscaling definition) is amazing. It looks infinitely better than whatever internal scaling your monitor can do. It gave us back something we lost in the transition away from CRTs, which is the ability to play games at something other than your monitor's native resolution.
Frame gen is more of a mixed bag, I tend to think of it as a motion smoothing effect rather than "free performance". It's only useful in a narrow range of scenarios. The marketing of "Turn 20 fps into 120 fps with