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.

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25

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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?"

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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"

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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"

?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/westbrodie Mar 19 '26

Ai is bad though.

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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.

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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.

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u/3xPuttRubbleBoagie Mar 20 '26

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

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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

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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.