DLSS 5 will be the worst thing to EVER happen to video games

trappedslider · 2026-03-19T19:15:02+0000

Gradine said:
Are those mods made by humans?

for now

Gradine · 2026-03-19T19:15:57+0000

trappedslider said:
for now

I hope that you enjoy artistic intent while you still can

trappedslider · 2026-03-19T19:16:46+0000

Gradine said:
I hope that you enjoy artistic intent while you still can

which artist? The ones who made the faces and textures that the mods are replacing or the mod authors?

Gradine · 2026-03-19T19:23:44+0000

trappedslider said:
which artist? The ones who made the faces and textures that the mods are replacing or the mod authors?

Well, I suppose if one does not care at all about artistic intent, it doesn't really matter either way, does it?

Tea Cozy · 2026-03-19T19:29:13+0000

Gladius Legis said:
Yeaaaaaaahhh ... I'm gonna trust actual developer quotes over that one other editorial (not article) you quoted, all of which is one guy (the author of that article) and his opinions.

Op/eds are still technically articles without being news articles, besides I posted allegedly factual information.

“When developers previewed the technology, their technical artists were apparently co-advocating for it internally, because it gets them closer to what they actually intended their characters and environments to look like”

Do you believe this is fabricated? The writer of the piece was actually in the room for a hands-on demo.

Some games will use the tech. Others won’t. Some devs want it. Others don’t. Some consumers want it. Again, others don’t.

Topics like the future of gaming careers, or human vs. AI made art, are outside the scope of my arguments. I personally don’t want to get into those subjects today.

Deset Gled · 2026-03-19T20:11:27+0000

Gradine said:
I hope that you enjoy artistic intent while you still can

By that standard, artistic intent in video games has been dead since the first time we plugged a 16-bit (or previous gen) system into an LCD instead of a CRT. They don't look the same. They don't look like the artist intended.

10 Pictures That Show Why CRT TVs Are Better for Gaming - Wackoid

Some retro gamers swear by playing video games on an old-school TV. See these 10 pictures to find out why CRT TVs are better for gaming.

wackoid.com

Artistic intent also died when we upscaled videos from SD to HD:

And it died again when we got 60fps TV:

Why Does My New TV Make Movies Look Like Soap Operas?

Yeah, your fancy flat-screen with ultra-retina-blasting HD is super-sweet, but it also insists on making everything you watch look like 'The Bold and the Beautiful.' Resident GQ techie Jon Wilde has a simple two-part solution...

www.gq.com

Of course, before artist intent died in digitally streaming TV, it died when we upscaled videos to Blu-ray. And it died before that when we transferred analog masters to digital DVD. And it died before that we chose VHS over the technically superior Betamax. And it died before that when we transferred from the theater to home TVs. And it died in the cinema when when we used filmed movies instead of live stage productions.

Anyone who works in a modern medium needs to understand that their work is a product of it's time, and will not look exactly the same to future audiences. That's the nature of technology. That's the nature of life. Anyone who says that an upgrade in a video card killed their artistic intent might as well be crying that the mural they painted on a wall looks different when it's cloudy instead of sunny.

roger semerad · 2026-03-19T20:50:14+0000

Alright, we now have some official answers to what dlss5 is actually doing and tldr - it's doing exactly what the critics say it's doing. All the claims that it's taking in data from the renderer is just a lie. They're still trying to tapdance around the issue the best they can, but the questions asked here don't give them the wriggle room that their marketing speech has. By all means watch the video and read the officail responses yourself if you think I'm over reacting. If you like dlss5 fine, but don't try to gaslight others into believing it has anything to do with artistic intent, or that developers have control over the output.

bsss · 2026-03-19T21:24:05+0000

So, in terms of the outrage in the OP, let me ask something: if a developer says "utilizing this feature in DLSS 5 is my artistic intent", is this still the worst thing to have ever happened to video games? If you retort, "no developer worth any money would turn on this feature in DLSS 5", is it the worst that this unused tool exists? In other words, what is there to actually be angry about?

trappedslider · 2026-03-19T21:33:03+0000

bsss said:
in other words, what is there to actually be angry about?

it's using AI

Gradine · 2026-03-19T21:54:42+0000

trappedslider said:
it's using AI

Specifically, it is using generative AI (which has its own caveats separate to this, from climate footprint to memory shortages to plagiarism) to erase and replace the work of real human artists (which is the specific issue with DLSS 5).

This is, by the way, not what DLSS was ever supposed to be for. DLSS was trained on the high-res imagery of the game itself in order to, in real-time, run the game engine in a lower resolution but then blow it up to larger resolution without taxing the hardware. It's basically tricking your computer into running the game at a low resolution but displaying it at a high resolution by filling in with pixels from the game's own files. That's super awesome, actually! That's a really cool thing that AI is capable of doing to actually benefit the consumer! Not all AI is bad!

DLSS 5 is not that. It is explicitly generative AI that replaces actual human craftsmanship and artistry with, well... Gen AI slop*. It is not just throwing lighting willy-nilly in a way that no human with intentionality would, it is full-on replacing textures with whatever its algorithm thinks things should look like, the game's actual art design and art direction be damned. And yeah, that's is what's objectionable here. I'd rather have human-crafted artistic output than anything a Generative AI can or ever will be able to produce. And that is a stance shared by many.

*Yes, art is ultimately subjective and there are people who like the aesthetic style of Gen AI and thus object when people call it slop. Your objections are thus noted.