My thoughts on DLSS 5: Not groovy, man

[waltzoid]

Nvidia's demo of its latest iteration of DLSS graphic filtering tech almost instantly became the butt of social media jokes when it showed off a demo that applied it to Grace Ashcroft from Resident Evil Requiem, landing her right in that "AI-generated uncanny valley" of characters with too sleek and shiny skin that I've seen in a lot of games in the last two years or so.

I'm reminded once again of a line from "We Are Neighbors" by the Chi-Lites (which was sampled by Groove Armada for their song "If Everybody Looked the Same"):

If everybody looked the same

We'd get tired of looking at each other

The original song promotes racial unity and harmony, but I feel like it could easily be repurposed to criticize the race to create a quick-and-dirty "universal graphic beauty standard" in which every game or other piece of art using this new tech has the same aesthetic. I have a gaming PC that can run most big games from 2023, but I still need to be economical with my settings so my fans don't constantly rattle while I play. And since it sounds like DLSS 5 applies these smoothing filters on the fly, I wouldn't be surprised if it needed a crazy amount of energy to run. I don't think I'll ever need to use that stuff, but I'll happily sit back and look at other people's image memes dunking on it.