[STEAM] Nvidia says it's only targeting "photorealistic" games with DLSS 5, but am I the only one who thinks "realistic" visuals are worse?

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Back in the 2010s, it felt like we were witnessing a race to the most "realistic" graphics possible. As consumer hardware and game dev tools got more powerful, the piss filter faded into obscurity as lens flare, more detailed textures, and a push to make the most of next-gen

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came to the *****. We saw an influx of video games striving for a hyper-realistic look back in those days, that were inevitably followed by even better-looking remasters of themselves as time went on. For a while there, more realistic meant better, but I was hoping that school of thought had disappeared.

Graphical fidelity hasn't stopped progressing, but I really thought we were past that quite narrow-minded view of "objectively" good or bad video game graphics. Now, Nvidia is preparing to boot DLSS 5 into our games, and it somehow feels like we've taken a backstep.

If you haven't heard, DLSS 5 is making its way to 50 Series GPUs at the end of this week, initially launching alongside NBA 2K27, but almost certainly coming to other titles in due course.

When I was at Gamescom last week,

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, and I got to ask questions about how the brand intends it to be used.

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Nvidia / 2K But here's the thing: it's still a generative AI layer that's trained on striving for photorealism above all else; it might be somewhat more sensitive to visual styles now than it was when we initially saw "yassified" Grace and Leon back in March, but it's still using its AI model to make things look more photoreal.

While Nvidia thinks this makes games look objectively better, I don't agree.

In fairness, this difference of opinion makes sense. Nvidia has been striving to create the

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for decades now, with an end goal always to provide the power to gamers so that they can say they have the best graphical power on their machine, which can produce the most realistic lighting, faces, and objects in their titles.

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(Image credit: Nvidia) Our brains are getting better at looking for generative AI imagery by the day. As advanced as AI gets at creating false photography and graphics, I can spot it a mile off because I'm morally opposed to the use of AI for creative ventures. I don't see "more photoreal" graphics when I look at DLSS 5; I see uncanny AI that reminds me of how disruptive and broken it's making so many creative industries. If anything, that presence of AI takes me out of things more than slightly less realistic graphics made by humans would. I'd happily sustain my belief with NBA 2K27's best attempts at making realistic athletes in games, but I can't do that with generative AI faces because I'm thinking more about AI than I am about how impressive it all looks.

And yet, I feel as though that strive for realistic graphics back in the day was so that people would feel more immersed in their games. It might sound counterintuitive, but I think the less photorealistic a game looks, the more of my imagination it's likely to capture.

It also might be worth looking at the

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, the

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, and the

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if you're interested in improving your gaming setup.

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