Gamers and developers have expressed disappointment with Nvidia’s new DLSS 5 technology, which uses artificial intelligence to add photorealistic lighting and other elements to games, tied to the original 3D scene.
Announcing NVIDIA DLSS 5, an AI-powered breakthrough in visual fidelity for games, coming this fall.
DLSS 5 infuses pixels with photorealistic lighting and materials, bridging the gap between rendering and reality.
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— NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) March 16, 2026
The new feature is intended to be an enhanced version of the deep learning-based image scaling technology that Nvidia has been developing since 2018. The company described it as “the most significant breakthrough in computer graphics since the advent of real-time ray tracing.”
The solution supports resolutions up to 4K.
The AI model is trained to understand complex scene elements from a single frame: characters, hair, fabric, translucent skin, as well as lighting conditions such as frontal or backlighting and cloudy weather.
DLSS 5 will be featured in several games, including AION 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Delta Force, Hogwarts Legacy, NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Where Winds Meet, and others.
Players and developers have labeled the innovation as “garbage” and even “a betrayal of the artistic intent of games.” Memes mocking the visual style of the technology have spread online, comparing original characters with their DLSS 5 versions, where their appearance becomes almost unrecognizable.
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— Among Us (@AmongUsGame) March 16, 2026
Some coined the sarcastic term sloptracing for the technology—a play on the term ray tracing.
Critics noted that instead of enhancing image clarity, the technology resembles a complex Snapchat filter that imposes excessive “generative” processing on the game’s style. The effect is particularly noticeable on faces.
Nvidia stated that DLSS 5 “introduces a real-time neural rendering model that infuses pixels with photorealistic lighting and textures.” It “uses color and motion vectors from the game for each frame as input and employs a neural network to fill the scene with photorealistic lighting and textures tied to the original 3D content.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang enthusiastically spoke about the technology’s prospects, calling it a “GPT moment” in the gaming industry.
In March, Nvidia announced the creation of a computing platform for orbital data centers.