Officially, Nvidia's controversial DLSS 5 AI rendering was supposed to launch this evening with only a single game, only on Nvidia's latest RTX 50 GPUs, and with developers in full control of their artistic vision.
But unofficially, modders have already ported a leaked version of DLSS 5 to run on just about anything while cranking sliders to the max. Now, Nvidia is changing its plans. DLSS 5 is still launching first on RTX 50 GPUs, but it's officially coming to older RTX 40-series GPUs as well, Nvidia spokesperson Rajal Maharaj confirms to The Verge.
“Our current focus is on optimizing performance for the GeForce RTX 50 Series with model updates expected later this fall. Once RTX 50 Series performance is more fully tuned, we plan to work on expanding official support to the GeForce RTX 40 Series,†reads part of Nvidia's statement.
What about earlier RTX 30 and RTX 20-series GPUs, which modders successfully targeted as well, assuming you count “not exactly playable framerate and plenty of crashes†as successful? “Right now the focus is of course on 50-series,†Maharaj tells me. “Once we feel like the 50-series is in a good place, we're going to look at the 40-series.â€
Now that the cat's out of the bag, will gamers get full control over DLSS 5's sliders the way modders already do? Nvidia says no: “For gamers, DLSS 5 is a simple on-or-off toggle,†the company confirms. “The more granular artistic controls are for developers, including model selection, Structure Intensity, Tone Intensity, automatic masking and custom per-pixel masking.â€
That said, the company tells me that developers could pass along certain controls in their own settings menus, like they've done with other graphics tech. (Early DLSS Super Resolution was also just an on/off toggle, but today's games let you pick between varying levels of quality or even an exact percentage, depending on the game.)
Assuming you don't mind DLSS 5, one of the benefits is that it's easy to integrate. Developers don't need to tell DLSS 5 which objects are “silverware†and which are “furniture†because the AI models can automatically recognize and isolate objects in a scene, distinguishing between faces, textiles, foliage, and more to apply different amounts of AI processing. Game engines that already know which video game objects are which can help DLSS 5, too:
For more targeted control, semantic AI masking can automatically recognize scene objects, while engine-level masking allows artists to isolate specific props or groups of assets, such as glassware, water droplets or foliage, and apply custom neural lighting adjustments to those elements.
Unreal Engine 5 has a native plugin, and Nvidia also has SDKs.
Nvidia says developers can apply DLSS 5 to their entire game this way, or do it differently for different scenes, cutscenes, or portions of gameplay, and the company tells The Verge that its DLSS 5 models run on every single frame, so there's no minimum framerate for it to work.
We're still waiting to find out if the early backlash against DLSS 5 scared away publishers and developers that had originally committed to the technology. Nvidia's response to us today suggests that perhaps some companies have backed away.
When we asked if the company could re-confirm that it will come to Assassin's Creed Shadows, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, Resident Evil Requiem, and the other 12 originally-announced titles, this was the company's only reply:
“More games are on the way. Many developers are actively integrating DLSS 5, and we'll share updates on upcoming titles as partners finalize their integrations.â€
