3 ms·

Nvidia's DLSS 5 uses generative AI to boost photorealism in video games

21 points by ianrahman 7mo ago

BoredPositron 7mo ago
What's just a sidenote in the slides is that they used two 5090s in the demo video. One for the conventional rendering and one for the AI pass. That's too much overhead for what's achieved. If they both run at 100% it's 1200W mindboggling.
- jplusequalt 7mo ago
  Don't you know that to game in 2026 you need 40000+ shader cores?
- riotnrrd 7mo ago
  It's a tech demo.
  - jplusequalt 7mo ago
    Does that make it above criticism? It looks uncanny.
  - bigstrat2003 7mo ago
    Ok, so it's a tech demo. That doesn't change that it looks bad and uses an unreasonable amount of resources to do its thing. Their tech demo has shown that the tech sucks.
  - bravetraveler 7mo ago
    For a (Snapchat?) filter!
nateb2022 7mo ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47403044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47403044 (1 day ago, 24 comments)
nerdjon 7mo ago
I am still quite shocked that anyone looked at the side by side images within Nvidia and actually thought this was good and no one would have an issue with this. Now I will admit that if you don't compare them, the final image looks ok. Like if I did not know what was happening I likely wouldn't give it a second thought. It looks off but so many video games already look off that I don't think I would have really thought anything other than "well it's a video game". But when compared to the original image it is so obvious that the artistry and the original intent is just completely lost. They claim that the developers and artists have more control over this, well maybe if that is actually true (because we all know guardrails on AI have been perfect so far...) they should have been involved in using that control for the video showing this off. Otherwise I honestly hope this never ships. But even if it does, the power requirements for this make it kinda DOA anyways.
- wtallis 7mo ago
  As demoed, it's obviously very bad. But before giving up on it completely, I'd like to see a version that can remain faithful to the original color grading and tone mapping. Those changes affecting the overall look of the whole frame really distract from comparing the more subtle lighting differences where they might be onto something good. But I'm also skeptical about whether they can pull this off in a way that doesn't exacerbate the already-severe issues DLSS has with latency and temporal stability. Enhancements that make for great screenshots often don't translate to great realtime gameplay.
  - hbn 7mo ago
    An issue I haven’t seen anyone bring up: how are they going to keep the randomly generated sexy new AI face for the characters consistent between shots? A frame of the character shown 20 hours into the game doesn’t remember the random generated sexy face it gave that character 1 hour into the game. Everything about this is so stupid.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
zardo 7mo ago
That first image looks great, but will it always deepfake Aubrey Plaza's face onto that character, or will she morph between different actresses?
kanemcgrath 7mo ago
I don't like the Netflix CGI slop movie style filter look it gives everything. But that is a more general trend in tv and movies that I just can't stand. I do think this will eventually be a major part of the graphics pipeline, but I hope it will be limited and masked to things like hair, which is almost impossible to get right in real-time rendering.
nyxtom 7mo ago
She’s not even wearing the same clothes. This is dumb
IronWolve 7mo ago
Might be nice on older games that dont have 4k HD texture packs, or even games like Skyrim or replaying older Witcher 1&2. Its upto the user right? Let people play older games with some better looking gfx. Seems like an easy win, use it or dont use it.
sensanaty 7mo ago
She's not even wearing the same clothes lmao. It literally looks like those gooner AI generated fan edits, what the fuck are we doing here guys?
misswaterfairy 7mo ago
Controversial opinion. I am really not a fan of this. Artificially changing graphics to make them 'look better' is similar to my feelings around the (awful) Halo Anniversary remaster. Summed up nicely by Noodle - https://youtu.be/MyeCb99cb2Q https://youtu.be/MyeCb99cb2Q (starts from 2:28)
- bigstrat2003 7mo ago
  I thought Halo Anniversary was excellent, but it was a remake and not a remaster. They didn't just upscale the textures or run the game at a higher resolution, they made entirely new graphics assets for it (and music, but the new music didn't have a patch on the original soundtrack).
- hbn 7mo ago
  “Controversial opinion” same take as every other comment
- Narishma 7mo ago
  > Controversial opinion. That is not controversial at all. Everybody is mocking it.
- NoPicklez 7mo ago
  A controversial opinion would be being a fan of this
computerdork 7mo ago
Am not 100% what's going on and why everyone is ragging on it, but to me, DLSS 5 clearly improves the graphics most of the time. Yeah, almost all the faces look more real, with more realistic skin and shadows instead looking like those CGI faces with poor detail from 12 years ago. Personally, think it's just people freaked out that it's being improved on by AI, and therefore apart of the "AI slop" trend. Think if they had done this all with no AI and just polygons, it'd be hailed as a large step forward in graphics. ... and btw, am just as freaked out about AI taking over the creative fields as a lot of others (am a musician myself), but have to try to objective, and in my opinion, DLSS 5 is impressive.
- Fizz43 7mo ago
  They dont look real the lighting is terrible. There is lighting that would suggest two light sources on one part and lighting that would suggest one light source on other parts. Its jarring.
  - computerdork 7mo ago
    Took another look. You're entitled to your opinion, but, yeah, am not seeing the two light source problem you mentioned, not at least in screenshots I looked at. And for me at least, they look more realistic than with dlss 5 turned off. But may be I'm not seeing something you're seeing.
    - enragedcacti 7mo ago
      The specular highlights on faces definitely look wrong to me though I struggle to describe why. Shadows and diffuse lighting is a totally different story, though. Look at how it completely deletes the shadow of the steeple on the right hand side[1], or how it completely eliminates the shadows on this guy's face and jacket. Overcast lighting is an easy cheat for hyper-realism[3] and almost every single scene shown has softened or absent shadows and more diffuse light. As an aside, I'm starting to wonder if they are modifying engine settings when switching it on and off. There's clearly some amount of accumulation it has to do and its impossible to frame-by-frame a video of a monitor, but in [1] the first frame snaps from a dynamic shadow of the steeple to a generic small blob shadow, then gets entirely eliminated on the next frame. [1] https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=435 https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=435, [2] https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=326 https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=326, [3] Cyberpunk hyper-realism mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_toA8lErAHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_toA8lErAHg

21 points by ianrahman 7mo ago

What's just a sidenote in the slides is that they used two 5090s in the demo video. One for the conventional rendering and one for the AI pass. That's too much overhead for what's achieved. If they both run at 100% it's 1200W mindboggling.

jplusequalt 7mo ago
Don't you know that to game in 2026 you need 40000+ shader cores?
riotnrrd 7mo ago
It's a tech demo.
- jplusequalt 7mo ago
  Does that make it above criticism? It looks uncanny.
- bigstrat2003 7mo ago
  Ok, so it's a tech demo. That doesn't change that it looks bad and uses an unreasonable amount of resources to do its thing. Their tech demo has shown that the tech sucks.
- bravetraveler 7mo ago
  For a (Snapchat?) filter!

nateb2022 7mo ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47403044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47403044 (1 day ago, 24 comments)

nerdjon 7mo ago

I am still quite shocked that anyone looked at the side by side images within Nvidia and actually thought this was good and no one would have an issue with this. Now I will admit that if you don't compare them, the final image looks ok. Like if I did not know what was happening I likely wouldn't give it a second thought. It looks off but so many video games already look off that I don't think I would have really thought anything other than "well it's a video game". But when compared to the original image it is so obvious that the artistry and the original intent is just completely lost. They claim that the developers and artists have more control over this, well maybe if that is actually true (because we all know guardrails on AI have been perfect so far...) they should have been involved in using that control for the video showing this off. Otherwise I honestly hope this never ships. But even if it does, the power requirements for this make it kinda DOA anyways.

wtallis 7mo ago
As demoed, it's obviously very bad. But before giving up on it completely, I'd like to see a version that can remain faithful to the original color grading and tone mapping. Those changes affecting the overall look of the whole frame really distract from comparing the more subtle lighting differences where they might be onto something good. But I'm also skeptical about whether they can pull this off in a way that doesn't exacerbate the already-severe issues DLSS has with latency and temporal stability. Enhancements that make for great screenshots often don't translate to great realtime gameplay.
- hbn 7mo ago
  An issue I haven’t seen anyone bring up: how are they going to keep the randomly generated sexy new AI face for the characters consistent between shots? A frame of the character shown 20 hours into the game doesn’t remember the random generated sexy face it gave that character 1 hour into the game. Everything about this is so stupid.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]

zardo 7mo ago

That first image looks great, but will it always deepfake Aubrey Plaza's face onto that character, or will she morph between different actresses?

kanemcgrath 7mo ago

I don't like the Netflix CGI slop movie style filter look it gives everything. But that is a more general trend in tv and movies that I just can't stand. I do think this will eventually be a major part of the graphics pipeline, but I hope it will be limited and masked to things like hair, which is almost impossible to get right in real-time rendering.

nyxtom 7mo ago

She’s not even wearing the same clothes. This is dumb

IronWolve 7mo ago

Might be nice on older games that dont have 4k HD texture packs, or even games like Skyrim or replaying older Witcher 1&2. Its upto the user right? Let people play older games with some better looking gfx. Seems like an easy win, use it or dont use it.

sensanaty 7mo ago

She's not even wearing the same clothes lmao. It literally looks like those gooner AI generated fan edits, what the fuck are we doing here guys?

misswaterfairy 7mo ago

Controversial opinion. I am really not a fan of this. Artificially changing graphics to make them 'look better' is similar to my feelings around the (awful) Halo Anniversary remaster. Summed up nicely by Noodle - https://youtu.be/MyeCb99cb2Q https://youtu.be/MyeCb99cb2Q (starts from 2:28)

bigstrat2003 7mo ago
I thought Halo Anniversary was excellent, but it was a remake and not a remaster. They didn't just upscale the textures or run the game at a higher resolution, they made entirely new graphics assets for it (and music, but the new music didn't have a patch on the original soundtrack).
hbn 7mo ago
“Controversial opinion” same take as every other comment
Narishma 7mo ago
> Controversial opinion. That is not controversial at all. Everybody is mocking it.
NoPicklez 7mo ago
A controversial opinion would be being a fan of this

computerdork 7mo ago

Am not 100% what's going on and why everyone is ragging on it, but to me, DLSS 5 clearly improves the graphics most of the time. Yeah, almost all the faces look more real, with more realistic skin and shadows instead looking like those CGI faces with poor detail from 12 years ago. Personally, think it's just people freaked out that it's being improved on by AI, and therefore apart of the "AI slop" trend. Think if they had done this all with no AI and just polygons, it'd be hailed as a large step forward in graphics. ... and btw, am just as freaked out about AI taking over the creative fields as a lot of others (am a musician myself), but have to try to objective, and in my opinion, DLSS 5 is impressive.

Fizz43 7mo ago
They dont look real the lighting is terrible. There is lighting that would suggest two light sources on one part and lighting that would suggest one light source on other parts. Its jarring.
- computerdork 7mo ago
  Took another look. You're entitled to your opinion, but, yeah, am not seeing the two light source problem you mentioned, not at least in screenshots I looked at. And for me at least, they look more realistic than with dlss 5 turned off. But may be I'm not seeing something you're seeing.
  - enragedcacti 7mo ago
    The specular highlights on faces definitely look wrong to me though I struggle to describe why. Shadows and diffuse lighting is a totally different story, though. Look at how it completely deletes the shadow of the steeple on the right hand side[1], or how it completely eliminates the shadows on this guy's face and jacket. Overcast lighting is an easy cheat for hyper-realism[3] and almost every single scene shown has softened or absent shadows and more diffuse light. As an aside, I'm starting to wonder if they are modifying engine settings when switching it on and off. There's clearly some amount of accumulation it has to do and its impossible to frame-by-frame a video of a monitor, but in [1] the first frame snaps from a dynamic shadow of the steeple to a generic small blob shadow, then gets entirely eliminated on the next frame. [1] https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=435 https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=435, [2] https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=326 https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA?t=326, [3] Cyberpunk hyper-realism mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_toA8lErAHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_toA8lErAHg