After being prematurely dug out of game files by modders late last week, Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech is making its official debut in a matter of days. Yes, it's the filter which was criticised on reveal earlier this year for giving a bunch of game characters weird genAI makeovers. Unsurprisingly, given where those modders pulled the aformentioned files from, the tech's arriving with NBA 2K27.
"While previous DLSS technologies focused on reconstructing existing scene data to deliver higher-resolution images, additional frames, or cleaner ray-traced lighting," Nvidia wrote in a post announcing DLSS 5's release on September 3rd. "DLSS 5 with 3D-Guided Neural Rendering takes the next step by using AI to generate the rich lighting and material details that real-time performance constraints once forced developers to strip away, allowing them to realise their original artistic vision.
"And instead of generating frames from text prompts, 3D-Guided Neural Rendering uses the game engine’s rendered frame, complete with its artist-designed geometry, textures, and lighting buffers, as an unyielding foundation. DLSS 5 becomes the final rendering stage of the graphics pipeline, infusing scenes with lifelike lighting and materials while ensuring the engine frame defines what must remain, and the artist directs what may change."
Yep, Nvidia continue to insist that the tech "preserves artistic intent" even as it morphs faces, by maintaining the "underlying facial proportions and geometry" devs have designed and only messing with the likes of "light responses and material detail". To be fair, none of the side-by-side examples of the tech in action provided the post look as horrific as the likes of Resi Requiem's Grace Redfield did back in March. This might be partially down to the fact neither hooper from NBA 2K27 shown is looking directly into the camera, lessening the uncanny valley potential of their subsurface scattered faces. The fact a game seeking to photorealistically recreate a real world sport has been picked to debut the tech seems a smart choice on Nvidia's part, since it'll likely help sidestep some of that artistic intent debate which has rightly come when DLSS 5 is applied to the likes of Resi and Starfield.
"Since the initial announcement of DLSS 5 in March, our progress has been rapid: from running on dual GeForce RTX 5090s to now a single graphics card, we’ve achieved a 5X performance gain in just six months, making DLSS 5 available for all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and Laptop GPUs," Nvidia wrote of how the tech's grown thus far and what they hope to accomplish with it further down the line. "This milestone stems from a combination of systematic pipeline optimizations, and neural model refinements that yield both faster execution and better image quality.
"Our optimisation curve isn’t flattening out, and we have further optimisations in active development. We expect upcoming model updates coming in the Fall to boost performance beyond today’s baseline. Backed by over a decade of DLSS expertise, we remain committed to continuously pushing the boundaries of performance and image quality, and this is only the beginning."
If you want to get DLSS 5 running in NBA 2K27, you'll need a GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics card in your desktop or laptop, with streaming via GeForce Now the only other option. From there, you can find instructions on how to grab a special new driver and get DLSS 5ed up in the post. Or, you know, you can just not bother and not have to live in fear of AI yassified faces in your games.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/nvidia-dlss-5-releases-this-week-with-nba-2k27-so-the-ai-yassification-filters-busy-beautifying-basketballers-early-doors
