PCG Article Discussion for March 2026

[Pifanjr]

DLSS 5 clearly overwrites game characters with AI beauty standards, but Nvidia says devs have 'artistic control'

The first demo for Nvidia's new AI rendering technique doesn't do much to combat the perception that generative AI homogenizes artwork.

www.pcgamer.com

I guess a filter for your games that recreates that uncanny AI generated feeling is a thing. Luckily this is just a fun curiosity that will fade away, right?

 

[Pifanjr]

In a wild turn for the Subnautica 2 lawsuit, a judge orders Krafton to restore fired Unknown Worlds CEO and gives them 9 more months to earn $250 million bonus

Litigation is ongoing, but this ruling represents a major loss for Krafton.

www.pcgamer.com

I guess Krafton was indeed trying to weasel its way out of paying the $250 million bonus. I have my doubts they're done weaseling.

 

[neogunhero]

DLSS 5 clearly overwrites game characters with AI beauty standards, but Nvidia says devs have 'artistic control'

The first demo for Nvidia's new AI rendering technique doesn't do much to combat the perception that generative AI homogenizes artwork.

www.pcgamer.com

I guess a filter for your games that recreates that uncanny AI generated feeling is a thing. Luckily this is just a fun curiosity that will fade away, right?

At the very least, this should not be called DLSS 5. Its intent and purposes are completely different from previous DLSS versions. It’s an AI filter meant to “beautify” your games, not upscaling your image with machine learning to improve performance.

At worst, it hurts artists and artistic intention. Artists spend years getting the aesthetic of the game down, handcrafting the world and its characters to fit a uniform vision, then comes along Nvidia saying “we can do better with AI”. Kind of a slap to the face.

I don’t think this sort of tech shouldn’t exist, but it should be just a fun silly little thing you try out once or twice. Not the next iteration of Nvidia’s premier upscaler technology. The uncanny feeling is too strong to make me want to use it regularly. As if I even could, they said this was running on TWO RTX 5090s, absolutely insane.

 

[Johnway]

A native port of the GameCube Animal Crossing has made its way to PC, which means all other cozy games are cancelled as nothing else matters

Let's revisit the game where all your villagers bully you.

www.pcgamer.com

Count down till Nintendo sends a C&D begins now.

 

[Zed Clampet]

DLSS 5 clearly overwrites game characters with AI beauty standards, but Nvidia says devs have 'artistic control'

The first demo for Nvidia's new AI rendering technique doesn't do much to combat the perception that generative AI homogenizes artwork.

www.pcgamer.com

I guess a filter for your games that recreates that uncanny AI generated feeling is a thing. Luckily this is just a fun curiosity that will fade away, right?

and @neogunhero someone posted a video about this, so I put this answer there, as well...

I don't know if this applies to this tech, but everything that changes images with AI that I'm aware of has something called "denoising strength" that determines how close the AI has to adhere to the original. If you had an old image you wanted to clean up, but still wanted everyone in the image to be recognizable (or in art terms, keep the same art style), you would set this very low, like 0.1 to 0.3. To take a drawing, like I do, and make it photorealistic, you set that much higher. I usually go 0.6 to 0.8. After 0.8, AI just does whatever it wants, and you are just as like to get a picture of a zebra (this happened to me) as you are to get the original image.

My guess is that even if this doesn't have denoising strength (which would mean it isn't using diffusion) that there probably is an equivalent setting. They may have wanted to push it to photorealism believing people would be more impressed with this.

 

[neogunhero]

and @neogunhero someone posted a video about this, so I put this answer there, as well...

I don't know if this applies to this tech, but everything that changes images with AI that I'm aware of has something called "denoising strength" that determines how close the AI has to adhere to the original. If you had an old image you wanted to clean up, but still wanted everyone in the image to be recognizable (or in art terms, keep the same art style), you would set this very low, like 0.1 to 0.3. To take a drawing, like I do, and make it photorealistic, you set that much higher. I usually go 0.6 to 0.8. After 0.8, AI just does whatever it wants, and you are just as like to get a picture of a zebra (this happened to me) as you are to get the original image.

My guess is that even if this doesn't have denoising strength (which would mean it isn't using diffusion) that there probably is an equivalent setting. They may have wanted to push it to photorealism believing people would be more impressed with this.

I also understand that the artists and developers using this will have full control on what the final output looks like. As many have pointed out, the showcase they've put out makes a lot of characters look like they have Instagram filters on it. There is a general AI "beauty standard" that seems apparent in those videos but is not necessarily how games will look like when actually using it.

Again, my main issue is that it's being presented as the next step of DLSS. This is much more akin to RTX Remix than DLSS.

I feel like I've done nothing but complain about upscalers for the past week, now this BS is going on. I do think it could be used in much better ways than they've shown so far, but when the only videos we have are of RE and Starfield characters becoming "yassified", then I lose all interest.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I also understand that the artists and developers using this will have full control on what the final output looks like. As many have pointed out, the showcase they've put out makes a lot of characters look like they have Instagram filters on it. There is a general AI "beauty standard" that seems apparent in those videos but is not necessarily how games will look like when actually using it.

Again, my main issue is that it's being presented as the next step of DLSS. This is much more akin to RTX Remix than DLSS.

I feel like I've done nothing but complain about upscalers for the past week, now this BS is going on. I do think it could be used in much better ways than they've shown so far, but when the only videos we have are of RE and Starfield characters becoming "yassified", then I lose all interest.

I haven't kept up with it. Have been having a bit of a nightmare week. My assumption was that this was fixing some of the visual stuff that people have been complaining about with DLSS, but if that isn't right and it's just making things look realistic, then that's problematic. I would benefit from it when I play these cheap indie games that have generic, not good looking, character models (pretty much anything would be an improvement), but these types of devs don't add dlss to their games. They are just using asset store models and the art style isn't really a thing unless "crap" is an art style.

 

[neogunhero]

EGS lead producer thinks you 'would be going nuts' for DLSS 5 if it wasn't AI

"The lighting and shading improvements are bonkers."

www.pcgamer.com

This still does a very poor job on why people should care about this technology.

"The gloominess you became accustomed to is actually a feature of lighting tradeoffs that DLSS 5 is 'fixing'", Kellams states.

The "gloominess" is a mainstay in the artistic style of the RE series. It is not something that needs to be "fixed". If it were a bug that needed to be fixed, the developers could have done it without the help of AI and made the lighting better.

The problem is that people don't want their games to be more realistic. Nvidia keeps pushing life-like graphics because it benefits them as a company. Extrude more and more compute power out of their hardware, sell more hardware that can handle it better, rinse, repeat, profit.

Realistic graphics are always interesting, but it is not the reason why the majority of people play games. It's technically impressive to see life-like lighting, shadows and reflections, but at the end of the day that is not what makes a gamer want to boot up a specific game. The graphics do not help make a game more fun and enjoyable to play. Does Nvidia not know what Minecraft is? Oh yeah, they tried to put realistic lighting and reflections in that game too, and that fell flat on its face as it's not the default graphics setting, and doesn't work beyond a few premade maps AFAIK.

"I get that some very vocal people don’t like AI. But guess what. Technology doesn’t care if you like it. It is a tool. AI isn’t coming. It is here. "

This is true, we can complain about technology that we hate all day long and it's not going to go anywhere. The fact of the matter is down to personal taste. Technology COULD do this to your games, but do you really want it to? It seems the general majority is saying no to that based on online discourse surrounding the topic. It comes down to Nvidia positioning this tech as a major win for all gamers. At least that is what DLSS is meant to be. A performance enhancer that tons of people could use and typically gain a few FPS than without it. It was a boon for the community. Now this is splitting that same community on a matter of personal taste and preference.

I genuinely believe this level of discourse would not have been reached if only Nvidia didn't call it DLSS.

 

[neogunhero]

I haven't kept up with it. Have been having a bit of a nightmare week. My assumption was that this was fixing some of the visual stuff that people have been complaining about with DLSS, but if that isn't right and it's just making things look realistic, then that's problematic. I would benefit from it when I play these cheap indie games that have generic, not good looking, character models (pretty much anything would be an improvement), but these types of devs don't add dlss to their games. They are just using asset store models and the art style isn't really a thing unless "crap" is an art style.

It's hard to say exactly what is going on with it. There does seem to be actual improvements to lighting and shadows, but it is also using some form of generative AI to improve the looks as well. This is where my argument for the detriment of artistic value comes from. It's one thing to improve lighting and shadows in a pre-existing game, but then to go a step further with gen AI to improve the overall look is where I take issue.

I can see that being useful in the types of games you describe. I'd love to do something like that for older games too, though that already exists under RTX Remix. I'm just disappointed that Nvidia and supporting devs are treating it like the next breakthrough in graphics technology. Gen AI is a highly contested topic that brings big emotions and opinions with it, so adding it to games should just be a little tool you can play around with for fun, not the next iteration of your groundbreaking upscaling technology. Couldn't this just have been an update to RTX Remix?

 

[Colif]

I can't use DLSS 5 so my opinion is meaningless, but I wouldn't care if its AI doing it or not, its a filter that currently changes what the player sees and if its controlled by the devs, I don't have an issue.

How its implemented is the key. Does it work on older games not designed for it? That could be seen as an attack on creative vision of the old devs, but if it only works in games designed for it, no problems.

The fact you need two 5090 to make it look that good might be something many overlooked. Will this be like when they introduced RTX originally and it takes a few generations of cards before it is achievable for most people? Its a tech demo, when you get it is another question.

 

[Zloth]

DLSS 5 clearly overwrites game characters with AI beauty standards, but Nvidia says devs have 'artistic control'

The first demo for Nvidia's new AI rendering technique doesn't do much to combat the perception that generative AI homogenizes artwork.

www.pcgamer.com

I guess a filter for your games that recreates that uncanny AI generated feeling is a thing. Luckily this is just a fun curiosity that will fade away, right?

Hmmmm.... random things as I think of them....

• I agree with @neogunhero - calling this DLSS is misleading.
• It's changing women to have more/redder lipstick and bigger eyes. I wonder what the chances are that the game will mess up and think a male is a female? Or is that passed into DLSS 5 so it knows object #51240 is a female?
• Brighter counts as better. I've been seeing that trick for decades now, can we please give it a rest?
• Added texture looks really good.
• No, wait, the eyes are NOT bigger! The irises are bigger? They're messing with my head!
• Oh, Digital Foundry says there are no geometry changes and not even any texture changes. It's all lighting. Wrinkled faces look more wrinkly because the lighting makes the shadows work better! The lipstick was put on by the devs, it just doesn't show up well until the lighting goes through the AI.

DF also reports that this can be applied to many existing games - Minecraft was mentioned and the possibility of people doing mods that add this lighting to existing games.

Initial impression: might be cool in a lot of games, but I suspect it won't run on a 3080. Hey! Maybe I'll finally have a reason to get a new PC! Errr... in order to take advantage of some AI which has driven up prices so high that I won't be able to take advantage of it?

 

[Colif]

its a reason to buy a 6000 series card as the 6090 and 6080 should be able to do some of this. I don't know about rest of the range.

I don't know when the cards are released, maybe next year.... maybe.
ram shortage may last until 2030 due to wafer availability.