Gamers and developers are disappointed with Nvidia's new DLSS 5 technology, which uses artificial intelligence to add photorealistic lighting and other elements tied to the original 3D scene in games.

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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This 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 claims it is "the most significant breakthrough in computer graphics since the advent of real-time ray tracing."

The solution works at resolutions up to 4K.

The AI model is trained to understand complex scene elements based on a single frame: characters, hair, fabric, translucent skin, and lighting conditions such as frontal or backlighting and overcast 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 new technology as "garbage" and even a "betrayal of the artistic vision of games." Memes mocking the visual style of the technology have started circulating online, comparing original characters to their DLSS 5 versions, which often appear nearly unrecognizable.

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Some have coined the sarcastic term "sloptracing" for the technology, playing on the term ray tracing.

Critics noted that instead of enhancing image clarity, the technology resembles an overly complicated Snapchat filter that imposes excessive "generative" processing on the game's style. This effect is particularly noticeable on faces.

Nvidia stated that DLSS 5 "represents a real-time neural rendering model that fills pixels with photorealistic lighting and textures." It "uses color and motion vectors from the game as input for each frame 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 potential of this technology, calling it the "GPT moment" in the gaming industry.

In March, Nvidia announced plans to create a computing platform for orbital data centers.