Nvidia hasn't released DLSS 5 yet, so naturally the first thing people have done after getting hold of it is start putting it into games that were never supposed to have it, because if you give the PC modding community an unreleased graphics technology and a weekend, somebody is going to find out what happens when you point it at Control.
As reported on VGC, it started with NBA 2K27, where the DLSS 5 Neural Rendering files were reportedly discovered in the game's early-access build, giving curious players access to the same technology Nvidia is preparing to roll out officially. It didn't take long for the files to escape their intended home, with modders on gaming forum ResetEra now experimenting with DLSS 5 in other games, including Control and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
That is handy for the rest of us, because while Nvidia has been talking up what DLSS 5 can do, these experiments give us an early look at what happens when you drop the technology into an existing game to see what survives. The results? According to users over at gaming forum ResetEra, it's "objectively horrendous", "uncanny crap" and "horrifying". On the bright side, one gamer did point out, "It looks really good with foliage in particular, and I think it will work pretty well with racing and sports games".
DLSS 5's AI controversy
DLSS 5's Neural Rendering system is designed to use AI as part of the final rendering process, with Nvidia promising improvements to things such as lighting, reflections and materials, essentially giving the finished frame another layer of visual processing before it reaches your screen. The company sees it as a way to push games toward more convincing photorealism without asking developers to build and render everything traditionally.
The leaked version is interesting because the games modders are testing it on haven't been built around it. The artists haven't spent months preparing assets for DLSS 5, technical artists haven't been tuning materials specifically for it, and lighting teams haven't been working out where Nvidia's neural rendering should and shouldn't be allowed to interfere.
Sometimes the answer is better-looking lighting and more convincing surfaces; other times it's less convincing, particularly around faces and characters, where the AI processing can produce distinctly odd results. That's the caveat here: this isn't quite how DLSS 5 was intended, because a game's developer and artists haven't been involved in setting the boundaries of how it can be used, but they do show just how much the system can potentially change the image after a game has already done all the hard work of rendering it.
This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when new graphics technology gets loose on PC. Developers can spend months working out how a new system should be implemented, then somebody finds the files and starts trying it in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and all of a sudden Cloud looks like Scarlett Johansson in a Mötley Crüe wig. One ResetEra user called it "one of the most unsettling things I've ever laid my eyes on in gaming".
Nvidia still has plenty of time to show us what DLSS 5 is supposed to look like when it's properly integrated, but for now the PC modding community has got there first, and they're already finding out what happens when you let the new AI rendering tech loose on pretty much anything they can get running.
