When Nvidia unveiled its new DLSS 5 feature, which uses AI to overhaul the visuals of video games, gamers knew what they were getting into.
The official demos Nvidia had shared previously looked uncanny, disjointed from the game’s original aesthetic, and worst of all, bore that unmistakable AI sheen. Gamers reviled it as “slop tracing” — a play on Nvidia’s ray tracing graphics tech — and it spurred so much backlash that even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who nowadays is usually too busy hyping the AI boom to pay attention to the company’s gaming roots, got dragged into defending it.
Now, adding to Nvidia’s woes, an unfinished version of the upcoming feature was accidentally leaked, and modders have jumped on the opportunity to see just how bad it can get. The results have been horrors far beyond what anyone could’ve anticipated.
One viral video shows a cutscene from the classic 2001 title Halo: Combat Evolved. With the bootleg DLSS 5 enabled, it looks less like it’s been injected with cutting edge tech and more like it’s been put through fourteen different stages of compression to make a deep fried meme. The colors are blotchy, bordering on cheap HDR, and faces are rendered in disturbingly hyperrealistic detail. Bringing back the magic of how these old games look in your childhood, right?
