SerpApi.Org
Nvidia this week offered more details on DLSS 5, which uses AI to add photorealistic graphics to games. At the SIGGRAPH event in Los Angeles, Nvidia demonstrated DLSS 5's three models and how each uses a multi-step process to preserve the integrity of the game's visuals while allowing deep customization, VideoCardz reports.
DLSS 5 got off to a rough start at GTC earlier this year. Although we found it had potential in some settings, the wider gaming community didn't like how it seemed to strip games of artistic intent and prioritized an Instagram-filter-like look for characters, particularly female ones.
At SIGGRAPH, Nvidia made artistic intent a key part of its DLSS 5 showcase. It highlighted how its new generative rendering tool uses a combination of the originally rendered frame and internal engine buffers to keep the generated result grounded in the original scene.
It's also introduced a trio of model options for developers to choose from, each offering a slightly different feel and end result. Alongside this, Nvidia offers developers a number of sliders and toggles to adjust the intensity of the AI's output for each object and scene.
Developers can also enable or disable DLSS 5 for specific elements within a scene. That means if a developer wanted to use DLSS 5 to improve certain assets but not others, they have that option. Nvidia says this works across traditionally rasterized and ray-traced games, too.
Another big part of Nvidia's SIGGRAPH presentation was about making DLSS 5 more efficient to run. In Nvidia's original showcase, it needed the power of a second RTX 5090 just to demonstrate what many gamers ultimately considered AI slop. Nvidia now claims that DLSS 5's one-step diffusion model can run on a single GPU, thanks to it being restricted to improving the look of elements within a scene, rather than re-rendering the entire thing.
It's possible the more advanced models will need more powerful hardware, but clearly, efficient operation is something Nvidia is working to improve. Regardless of what DLSS 5 can do, if it requires a second GPU, or even just one high-end GPU to run, its adoption will be vanishingly small for many years to come. The average gamer is still playing on RTX 3060 and 4060-equivalent cards. With current prices, most gamers aren't buying flagship GPUs.
Nvidia has slated DLSS 5 for a fall debut. We'll have to see if its reception is any better the third time around.
