As if Nvidia weren’t already facing plenty of criticism for its DLSS 5 showcase from earlier this week, veteran animator on a number of major games like God of War Ragnarök and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Mike York, has offered his own thoughts on the technology. In a video reacting to Digital Foundry’s coverage of DLSS 5, York analysed one of the major examples used by Nvidia – Resident Evil Requiem protagonist Grace Ashcroft.
On seeing Grace’s transformation for the first time, York seemed to be visibly dumbstruck, saying “Whoa, hold on” as he more carefully analyzes the changes. He went on to note that the changes made by DLSS 5 are quite radical rather than simply being upgraded lighting. Instead of simply being improvements, he referred to it as being “like a complete AI re-render.”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he exclaimed. “No. This isn’t just some lighting, dude. What the f–… I’m telling you, this is like a complete AI re-render.”
“Who even is that? That’s a different girl,” York continued. “You know why I can tell […] – look, her eyes are no longer looking, like, correctly. That one eye is looking over here, and one eye is looking there. And it rendered the eyes differently. And you can also tell that it’s… how do I say this… it has somehow put wrinkles into her lips that weren’t there before… it’s added all kinds of details that were not there before.”
“They’re literally re-rendering this completely, frame by frame. You’re no longer looking at the game anymore, does that make sense? This is scary.”
In its own statement, Nvidia had noted that developers and artists would have complete control over how DLSS 5 changes the looks of various scenes and characters. The company argued against the idea that the technology was simply an “AI filter” on top of the game’s own visuals. Rather, DLSS 5 seemingly uses information from the game for each individual frame.
“Important to note with this technology advance – game developers have full, detailed artistic control over DLSS 5’s effects to ensure they maintain their game’s unique aesthetic,” wrote the company. “The SDK includes things like intensity, color grading and masking off places where the effect shouldn’t be applied. It’s not a filter – DLSS 5 inputs the game’s color and motion vectors for each frame into the model, anchoring the output in the source 3D content.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has also been on the defensive since DLSS 5 was first unveiled. When asked about the technology, he said that critics are “completely wrong. The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI.”
A report has indicated that developers and artists from Capcom and Ubisoft were left in the dark about the DLSS 5 presentation. One unnamed Ubisoft developer even revealed that they only learned about the technology when the rest of the world did – during Nvidia’s showcase.
