With Nvidia’s recent unveiling of the capabilities of DLSS 5, which revolves around making use of AI technology to generate more realistic lighting on each frame of a game, the company has started facing quite a bit of criticism for how this feature is making the games look. The company showcased DLSS 5’s capabilities of generating “photoreal lighting and materials” through a video, which you can check out below, featuring games like Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
While technically quite impressive, since DLSS 5 is seemingly capable of generating just about every frame for a game on the fly based on the output of the GPU, the aesthetic choices being made by the technology has been the subject of plenty of criticism.
“DLSS 5 takes a game’s color and motion vectors for each frame as input, and uses an AI model to infuse the scene with photoreal lighting and materials that are anchored to source 3D content and consistent from frame to frame,” explained Nvidia as part of its announcement.
“Bridging the divide between rendering and reality, DLSS 5 empowers game developers to deliver a new level of photoreal computer graphics previously only achieved in Hollywood visual effects.”
Among the critics of DLSS 5 has been Noclip’s Danny O’Dwyer, who took to social media platform BlueSky to describe the technology as randomly turning “everyone into yassified, looks-maxed freaks.” One of the key examples used by Nvidia to showcase the feature was Resident Evil Requiem protagonist Grace Ashcroft, whose look has been radically altered to also include a heavy use of make-up, as well as subtle changes to her overall face structure.
RPGSite’s Alex Donaldson similarly criticised the DLSS 5 effect as being “uncanny & weird,” and noted that the technology poses a risk of squeezing out artistic expression during the development process of a game. “I wonder how much devs can get in and tweak the model to their artistic intent,” he wrote.
Game developers also seem to not be happy with the showcase. Respawn Entertainment’s rendering engineer Steve Karolewics noted that DLSS 5 seems to change how the characters from the games look a bit too much.
“DLSS 5 looks like an overbearing contrast, sharpness, and airbrush filter,” he wrote, according to VideoGamesChronicle. “Remarkably different frames with the rationale of photo-real lighting? Nah, I think I’ll stick with the original artistic intent.”
Concept artist Jeff Talbot went as far as to say that, “This is NOT the direction games should be going in. 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. Lets not do this s***.”
Interestingly, Bethesda has offered its own statement on the matter, saying that its art teams will be adjusting the lighting and final effect to ensure that Starfield looks good. The company also noted that any changes made by DLSS 5 would be “under our artists’ control, and totally optional for players.”
“Appreciate your excitement and analysis of the new DLSS 5 lighting here,” wrote the company on X. “This is a very early look, and our art teams will be further adjusting the lighting and final effect to look the way we think works best for each game. This will all be under our artists’ control, and totally optional for players.”
DLSS 5 is slated to be available on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards later this year.
