DLSS 5's Bizarre AI-Generated Visuals Ruin Classic Games
Nvidia's DLSS 5, an AI-powered graphics technology, has been applied to several classic games, resulting in bizarre and often unpleasant visuals. The tech, designed for real-time rendering of scenes with more realistic lighting, textures, and geometry, is meant to improve performance but instead creates comically inefficient results.
DLSS 5 was tested on Super Mario 64, originally released 30 years ago on the Nintendo 64, resulting in a game that looks like it's been 'surgically replaced' with AI-generated graphics. The technology chain yields only 10 frames per second and an unsettlingly glazed plumber.
Other games affected by DLSS 5 include the original Doom from 1992, which is filled with strangely mirrored textures and deep-fried pixel art, and Final Fantasy VII, where memories of the game are 'surgically replaced' with more realistic visuals. Even when it works perfectly, DLSS 5 can make things look unpleasantly realistic.
A YouTube video by why u why criticizes DLSS 5 as an 'AI photo filter draped on the game,' suggesting that some people might not want their memories of classic games altered in this way.