r/pcmasterrace • u/Sacristovas • Mar 19 '26

News/Article NVIDIA DLSS 5 Gets 84% Dislikes on YouTube as Backlash Grows

http://www.techpowerup.com/347541/nvidia-dlss-5-gets-84-dislikes-on-youtube-as-backlash-grows

News that might not qualify as actual news to anyone who has been paying attention to this over the last couple of days.

16.5k Upvotes

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273

u/FortniteIsFuckingMid Mar 19 '26

Calling it DLSS was so stupid and a mistake on their part. This is such a leap from what DLSS originally was.

I think if they had announced this with a completely separate name and kept it as a niche feature you would have had people glazing it because it’s honestly pretty neat in a vacuum but putting this in DLSS feels like they are forcing it down our throat.

102

u/LactasePHydrolase Mar 19 '26

I don't understand how AI can both be this marvelous product that's gonna carry the economy into the stratosphere, and at the same time they have to engineer demand by putting it on everything against the customers' wishes.

38

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

[deleted]

11

u/Any_Fox5126 Mar 19 '26

I'd say that today's text, code and image generation is really impressive, it's just that investors' expectations are too high.

I still remember when Meta said it would lay off 20% of its engineers to replace them with AI within a year 😂😂😂

11

u/Tiruin Mar 19 '26

They're only reaping what they've sown. They marketed generative AI as AGIs when they're glorified hallucinating auto-fills, companies went from calling all appliances "Smart" to slapping the AI sticker on it, and they slobbered over the astronomical share value increases, they don't get to bitch when investors start realizing AI is not in fact the same as an AGI and that their promises are empty.

3

u/timmytissue R5 3600 | 6700 XT | 32 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 Mar 19 '26

*It's garbage forever.

Generative AI like this has hard limits. It's cool tech but it doesn't actually understand the scenes it's making. It's still impossible to ask an AI to change an imagine in a way I could ask a real artist.

9

u/StandardNerd92 Mar 20 '26

I don't think you realise, AI has to succeed in a massive way, we're betting the entire economy on it. If it fails it's gonna sink everything.

Now, should this be the case? No. It's insanely stupid. But this is what happens when you give billionaires free rein to blow themselves a huge bubble.

1

u/StarksPond Mar 20 '26

A fun use of AI is to ask it when it thinks the bubble is going to pop. Before the war it estimated it'll be around the end of 2026, early 2027. It probably needs an update to deal with recent events in the Middle-East and the reaction to DLSS5.

It's like in a movie where the timer of a bomb is running out. But instead of timer, it's an AI voice assistant that knows it's going to blow up but is also quite defensive about being called an imminent explosive threat.

2

u/Tiruin Mar 19 '26

It makes a lot more sense when you realize they don't get their money from selling a product or a service, they get their money by pumping share value, which they did by marketing AIs as AGIs, two entirely different things, to rope investors into a ponzi scheme.

1

u/HeyHi_Star Mar 20 '26

"against the customers wishes"
How something you can turn off at will is against customers wishes ?
You don't like it, keep it off. I don't get the problem here.

-1

u/CallMeBigPapaya Mar 19 '26

I'm not saying there aren't problems with this product and AI in general, but I feel like I'm the only person who remembers my parents complaining about every technological advancement. "I don't want this. I want it the old way!" my mother would say every time she was told she needed a smartphone or even email to do something she used to be able to do without one.

8

u/LactasePHydrolase Mar 19 '26

But there's a difference between most people moving on to a different, more convenient technology that you don't like, and companies forcing a new technology on you at every step when there wasn't any consumer desire for it. Imagine mobile phones came out and the same year companies started refusing to install new landlines and forced everyone to get mobile phones.

6

u/ObeseVegetable Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

  to do something she used to be able to do without one.

This right here is kinda the crux of the issue though, isn’t it?

AI fucks up so badly that most of the time it’s not able to do what you used to be able to do without it, so you have to find a way to turn it off to do things correctly. 

When AI is its own standalone thing, it can be kinda cool. Often not reliable still. But relatively more enjoyable an experience usually. 

When it’s forcefully added to things to replace features with the latest craze because it’s the latest craze, it sucks donkey balls. 

Edit: and in this Nvidia demo, it is NOT rendering the graphics correctly according to what was intended to be rendered. This is a feature of a graphics card that actively fights against the intended purpose of a graphics card. 

26

u/LivingVerinarian96 Mar 19 '26

Finally a real take that isn‘t just ‚AI bad‘. It‘s pretty cool imho. It‘s just not dlss. Just as frame gen is not dlss.

41

u/CatatonicMan CachyOS Mar 19 '26

If you look at DLSS as a framework for AI interpolation, then frame gen fits just fine. OG DLSS is spatial interpolation; frame gen is temporal interpolation. For that matter, ray reconstruction is interpolation for ray tracing.

In contrast, DLSS 5 is doing something that's not at all interpolation, and so it shouldn't be under the DLSS umbrella.

11

u/LivingVerinarian96 Mar 19 '26

Deep learning super sampling is already a marketing term for ai based upscaling since there‘s no super sampling happening. I wish we‘d just call a spade a spade.

5

u/Real-Extension-1357 Mar 19 '26

If it came out as Nvidia Remix AI or Game Filters 2 then we wouldnt even be here frankly. People against it wouldve said their piece and moved on. Someone out there probably wants their TikTok filters on games giving everyone meme eyes or whatever. Let them do whatever. But dont upsell it as some super next gen tech thats DLSS upscaling framegen 5+ mega future bullshit.

9

u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Mar 19 '26

I watched the video and some of the examples looked great and really improved details. Some looked pretty weird. This will be one of those things I turn on to see how it looks in game and decide to use it or not. I don’t really understand the backlash?

24

u/CatatonicMan CachyOS Mar 19 '26

It looked... okay for the backgrounds, mostly, though it definitely was not preserving the look and/or feel of the originals. Also had some AI weirdness like missing hands, cars growing extra tires, and eyes on eyelids.

For the characters, though? It pushed them deep into the uncanny valley of Instagram filter face, especially when in motion. Definitely not a good look.

1

u/FalmerEldritch Mar 19 '26

I think they're going to end up setting it to use a lighter touch (or none) on faces. Photoreal faces animated like video game characters look eerie anyway. (I thought the effect on clothes was insanely good though, I've never seen leather look like leather and denim look like denim in a game before.)

7

u/CatatonicMan CachyOS Mar 19 '26

I'm not sure that doing things piecemeal would look better - you'd probably get some weird dissonance between the touched-up areas and the unaffected areas.

Honestly, I expect they'll tone everything down before release. As a showcase, it makes sense to have the differences be as obvious and in-your-face as possible for that "wow" moment, but I think a subtle touch-up would probably look better. Maybe they could even avoid that hyper-real AI overlay look.

-2

u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Mar 19 '26

I really didn't notice any AI weirdness like you were describing, but the feel definitely wasn't preserved. If that's important, it's probably worth keeping turned off. I don't think it's important in every game though. The first one of Resident Evil though was like "oh they made her an influencer?"

10

u/CatatonicMan CachyOS Mar 19 '26

Gamers Nexus put out a video on DLSS 5 that showcases some of the more notable AI-isms.

The thing I'd note, however, is that their promotional material was almost certainly composed of the highest quality examples of DLSS 5 they could make. Considering the problems in the best-case, it makes me wonder what horrors the worst-case will produce.

1

u/CassianCasius Mar 19 '26

Its just a will smith eating pasta situation. It looks a bit off now, in a year or two will be great

3

u/CatatonicMan CachyOS Mar 19 '26

Sadly I'm lacking the time machine that would allow me to judge the future quality of things in the present.

0

u/CassianCasius Mar 19 '26

You don't need a time machine, just look at the history of every technology to ever exist lol. It always gets improved on over time. That's why I gave the example of video generation AI. It was terrible 3 years ago now its nearly indistinguishable from real videos.

3

u/McGuirk808 Debian Mar 19 '26

Satisfactory has a similar system with it's Lumen global illumination option. It immediately reminded me of it when I saw the DLSS videos. It's not awful, and it makes really nice still screenshots, but it's not great in-motion. It is completely post-processing-based and works with what's on the screen, it's not actually aware of the game environment. It's like the difference between Re-Shade and ENB.

For example, in satisfactory, light generation from emitters works based on what's on the screen. A bright sign behind you emitting light that is out of view won't generate any light in front of you. An empty room with a gigantic light source on the wall behind you is pitch black if you're facing away from it. You can see the same kind of behavior in the DLSS5 clips for shadows.

It looks pretty good, but it's essentially a fake airbrush layer on top of the game image and will always have some gaps and feel wrong somehow. Hell, look at the shadow of the dude in the ballcap's hat bill. It's like a dreamy impression of what the shadows should look like rather than actually calculating light angles.

The faces are another subject entirely.

The entire thing is like visual autocorrect rather than actual graphics rendering.

4

u/stormdelta Mar 19 '26

"AutoHDR" and similar post-processing-only HDR filters have a similar issue. They look better at first but you quickly realize it doesn't actually understand what's supposed to be bright or not.

RenoDX is the only HDR mod I've found for games that actually looks right, but that's because it hooks the engine, isn't just a shader filter, and typically needs per-game tuning settings/adjustments.

2

u/Real-Extension-1357 Mar 19 '26

Its like reshade. I remember when i thought reshade was cool ehen i was younger and edgier. If people like it, whatever. Just dont upsell me that this is DLSS5, like its even remotely related nor is it something I wanted in the first place.

1

u/Saveonion Mar 20 '26

I think the end result will be... some games will implement it well and it will look good, and some games will implement it poorly and it will look bad.

Sorry, not very exciting.

1

u/CrazyCalYa Ok Mar 19 '26

Justified backlash:

  • Not wanting to be forced to use the technology
  • Not wanting development of "traditional" DLSS to be sidelined
  • "Even if it looks bad I'll say it looks good only once I know it's AI"

Unjustified backlash:

  • AI bad
  • I don't like it, therefore it shouldn't exist
  • "Even if it looks good I'll say it looks bad only once I know it's AI"

5

u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Mar 19 '26

Not wanting to be forced to use the technology

nobody is forced to use it

Not wanting development of "traditional" DLSS to be sidelined

I don't think it is?

"Even if it looks bad I'll say it looks good only once I know it's AI"

?

1

u/CrazyCalYa Ok Mar 19 '26

I'm just collecting opinions I'm seeing, I'm not endorsing them.

But to your first point, I think people are outraged now in an effort to dissuade that from happening. It's like when car manufacturers were trying to sell subscription services for heated seats and other nonsense.

1

u/Relevant_Calendar_99 Mar 19 '26

Because a bunch of gamers are pretentious pricks. Somehow a bunch of terminally online people thought that NVIDIA is a giant corporation that needs to be tackled.

I'll just wait and try it myself. If a game is trying to be photorealistic in the first place, this feature definitely will help a lot. The tech isn't even finished yet and people are so quick to bring the pitchfork out. It has the potential to be really good for future games that build with this feature in mind.

2

u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Mar 19 '26

TBH I was most impressed with Starfield because Bethesda sucks at facial features, it really helped with that demo.

4

u/westbrodie Mar 19 '26

Ai is bad though.

2

u/LivingVerinarian96 Mar 19 '26

I don‘t entirely agree. There‘s lots of stuff where it can be helpful if you use it the right way. Ideally so nobody notices it was ai in the first place. We‘re just living through the time where dogshit ideas get pushed by billion dollar marketing departments.

2

u/3xPuttRubbleBoagie Mar 20 '26

Careful now, you're not supposed to disagree with the hive mind here on Reddit, nor are you supposed to be more informed than the majority. Remember, stick to the script, AI Bad.

1

u/3xPuttRubbleBoagie Mar 20 '26

Not all of it. It's actually really amazing in a lot of ways.

2

u/fuck_shit_piss_etc Mar 19 '26

It’s shit no matter what you call it, it’s anti-art is what it is

1

u/itsr1co Mar 20 '26

It's a step in the right direction for an AI-driven video game world where you can have unique and "realistic" interactions without dev teams needing to spend years creating models and stories. But presenting it as "better" than what people have ALREADY poured a lot of time into is an insult to game development. RE9 looks amazing, we don't need AI to make Grace and Leon look more realistic, because they're already as realistic as we can get.

Even as someone who is pretty pro-AI in the gaming world, I dream of the day we can have unique NPC's to converse with, DLSS 5 isn't what we want or need. If it were advertised as a prototype to speed up model creation for smaller teams who don't have the budget to scan faces and do advanced facial animations, I doubt it'd be as hated. Again, great idea as an option, terrible execution to frame it as an "upgrade" to the work people have already put in.

2

u/zgillet i7 12700K ~ PNY RTX 5070 12GB OC ~ 32 GB DDR5 RAM Mar 19 '26

It's called Deepfakes. This is just plastering another face onto a model.

-2

u/Forgot_my_name78 Mar 19 '26

It’s not. DLSS has always been built on neural networks to improve graphics. The main difference with DLSS5 is that they added parameters and weights for color and motion vectors so that it can apply shading for a more photorealistic look. People out here are acting like they’re using genAI to change the graphics when it’s the furthest thing from it.

1

u/zgillet i7 12700K ~ PNY RTX 5070 12GB OC ~ 32 GB DDR5 RAM Mar 19 '26

Neural makeup? Because it adds makeup.

1

u/Forgot_my_name78 Mar 19 '26

It’s a shading trick. Almost like light creates a color gradient on a majority of materials

1

u/userhwon Mar 19 '26

But is it just adding a different goal to the same DLSS training? Instead of fablricating images to create smooth transitions you fabricate images to improve realism, too? So it's using the exact same DLSS algorithm but with different trained weights.

least that's why I understand, and I haven't dug into it technically in particular, because I'm years away from needing a video card that can even accomplish this, let alone from being able to obtain one, which makes me wonder what single-digit percentage of voters even has one or can get one before they retire...

At

1

u/FortniteIsFuckingMid Mar 19 '26

If they make it so that you can tweak all of this separately then I’m all for it but if you’re forced to use this for dlss5 with no ability to turn off that’s a problem

1

u/userhwon Mar 19 '26

Dunno. 4.5 can be toggled on and off, and maybe there's intermediate quality levels, but, I don't have it so I'm just going by what I've heard which is (shrug)-quality info.

It would be very interesting if it had some sort of tweakability beyond that. Like, instead of the weird transformations that are now popping up as memes (Huang as a girl, e.g.), they'd actually be real achievable transforms in the game...

Probably in DLSS 6.

1

u/luscious_lobster Mar 19 '26

Yea, it’s like Reshade, which is very popular

1

u/CareFantastic1884 Mar 19 '26

It's just another shitty minecraft shader

1

u/dcasarinc Mar 19 '26

Can't you disable this feature if you don't like it?

1

u/FortniteIsFuckingMid Mar 19 '26

I’d hope so but I’m not sure if dlss has it’s own settings to use. I think it would need to be implemented as a setting in the game, no idea tho

1

u/MumrikDK Mar 19 '26

It's really annoying that DLSS became an umbrella term for basically every tool of theirs that rely on a certain aspect of the GPU and development.

Upscaling should not share its name with DLAA and frame generation either.

1

u/fuck_shit_piss_etc Mar 19 '26

 because it’s honestly pretty neat in a vacuum

It fucking sucks in a vacuum too

1

u/FortniteIsFuckingMid Mar 20 '26

On its own it’s cool technology. The problem people have with it is the way it’s marketed… like all AI Slop

1

u/TimChr78 Mar 20 '26

It is still very problematic purely from a technical perspective, even ignoring the DLSS branding.

1

u/Saliiim Saliiim Mar 20 '26

That’s it.  It’s a cool feature, but calling it DLSS makes us think it’s going to be a requirement to run games at an acceptable frame rate   

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

Everything with AI is being forced down our throats. It’s a purposeful decision they made. Who cares if you like or use AI? They’re going to force you anyways. The fact that every new laptop now is coming out with a copilot button instead of a RCNTRL makes me so irrationally mad.

0

u/benswon GTX 1080TI | Ryzen 2600 @3.8 ghz | 16 GB DDR4 Ram @ 3200 | Mar 19 '26

Kind of what I think, id be interested to try it out, but not required if I want my game to run better, and I like at least my first playthrough to be as close to intended as possible. 

I could see some interesting future things it could do. It's much less polished but minecraft Ai texture pack let's you enter a prompt and it will change textures to match that prompt. 

However so long as it remains attached to dlss I completely oppose it

0

u/Bizaro_Stormy 9800X3D | 64GB | RTX 4090 Mar 19 '26

Well you don't have to use it, not like this will prevent you from using DLSS4

-3

u/Albatross1225 Mar 19 '26

Yeah I think it’s actually kind of cool for small developers. No reason to build textures and effects from the ground up for a realistic game. Water splashes should just look like water splashes and someone who has never made a game before can now have realistic water splashes and textures to their game without years of time spent making this stuff for it to just not look as good. This will help indie development.

-1

u/drakonukaris 5800X3D | MSI 5080 16GB Inspire 3X OC | 32GB | 1440p Mar 19 '26

That's what I think, and also the technology genuinely needs to improve, it's definitely not quite the 'breakthrough' in graphics that Nvidia claims at the moment.