from the progress-is-progress dept

Earlier this year, NVIDIA released a demo video of it’s new DLSS 5 AI neural rendering technology and it caused an uproar. The complaints about the video were varied. There is a never-AI crowd in the gaming industry that doesn’t seem to understand that DLSS 2 and 3 already made use of machine learning for pixel reconstruction and frame generation. They were late to the party. There are those with environmental concerns that are on much stronger footing. But what it takes to run this technology today versus what it will take in the future can be widely varied as the tech progresses. And then there were the two loudest groups: those that suggested this broke the intent of the original artists and those that claimed all of this was stupid because of the expensive hardware required to run DLSS 5 smoothly at all.

And on those two specific issues, the latest game to get DLSS 5 incorporated into it offers us some answers. The tech has gotten leaner, faster, and Nvidia is working directly with the developer of Hogwarts Legacy to ensure that no artistic intent is infringed upon.

The progression into leaner requirements for the technology are the easiest to tackle.

Remember when Nvidia needed two monstrous RTX 5090 graphics cards to demonstrate DLSS 5 back in March? Now it runs on a single supported GPU.

Nvidia claims a tenfold performance improvement since that original showcase. Its latest neural rendering model runs twice as fast as September’s version while using 20 percent less VRAM at 4K. DLSS 5 supports GeForce RTX 50-series desktop and laptop GPUs, RTX Spark systems, and GeForce Now Ultimate.

This, of course, also has implications on the environmental concerns, as the hardware needed becomes leaner. I know full well that the environmentalists out there won’t be satisfied with this, nor am I sure they should be. But we have to allow for progress in this area and admit when progress has indeed been achieved. I see no reason to think the tech requirements for DLSS 5 won’t continue to get leaner and leaner, especially since Nvidia is expected to bring this to the 40 series cards as well. GPUs are still expensive, so even one 50 series card requires a hefty investment, but the trend is going the right way here. Saying so should be easy.

But when you dig into how Nvidia and the developers behind Hogwarts Legacy are collaborating to make sure the tool can do what the developer wants and not break artistic intent, well, that’s sort of the ballgame on most of the backlash we heard initially.

Nvidia’s official before-and-after comparisons show richer lighting and deeper shadows throughout Hogsmeade. Moss stands out against weathered rooftops, foliage casts more convincing shadows, and the stonework gains an almost tangible depth. Character changes are subtler, without the dramatic facial transformations that kicked off the original uproar — at least in the promotional images.

Avalanche Software worked with Nvidia to dial things back. DLSS 5 lets developers adjust lighting and structural detail independently, choose different neural models for different scenes, and use masking tools to keep the AI from mucking with specific objects or characters. Avalanche says it fine-tuned Hogwarts Legacy’s environments, lighting, and skin details to preserve the game’s original artistic vision.

Good! Because making a game look more realistic doesn’t necessarily make it look better.

Indeed and the artists ought to retain control of their art. What Nvidia is doing here is taking a blanket tool it created and putting control over how the tool is used, and to what extent, directly in the hands of the developers of the game. The control over what the ultimate output of this art resides with the developer, which employs or contracts the artists.

And that’s precisely where it should reside. The tech demo, which was rolled out in a fashion that left it wide open to exactly the type of criticism it received, made it look like Nvidia was planning to stomp all over the Mona Lisa without permission and turn Mona into an Instagram influencer. That’s just not what is actually happening. DLSS 5 is being refined to be what it always should have been: one more tool in the artist’s tool belt.

Perhaps this is a one-off and Nvidia will do some horrible thing next that will revive all of the complaints. Perhaps the majority of those lashing out at this technology don’t care about this sort of progress and are simply going to remain never-AI-ers in gaming. There’s a small chance the tech can’t get even more lean and environmentally friendly.

But progress is progress, no matter how much some don’t like it. And the DLSS 5 of today is simply not the same as the DLSS 5 that was railed against in March.

Filed Under: ai, dlss 5, video games
Companies: avalanche software, nvidia