It’s been a frustrating few days as someone who saw Nvidia’s DLSS 5 demonstration at Gamescom last week. Since a recent mod leaked that showed DLSS 5 adjusting some characters in a pretty confusing manner, I’ve been under embargo and unable to discuss the true functionality, or intent, of the AI-powered filter.
First teased back in March 2026, the feature received a largely negative reception due to the stark differences in character models, with some claiming they were “unrecognizable.” To address the elephant in the room–yes, some of the DLSS 5-infused creations are horrific. Final Fantasy’s Cloud looks like something straight out of a horror game, while adding multiple layers of DLSS 5 has made characters from The Legend of Heroes series look utterly harrowing. But from my time with Nvidia at Gamescom, I’m trying to be realistic about the use and power of the feature.
“DLSS 5 is intended to be used for photorealistic situations and characters,” Edward Liu, Nvidia’s director of applied deep learning research said at the demo. That means no Final Fantasy, no Kingdom Hearts, and nothing that would stylistically suffer as a result of implementing it. What’s more, developers can opt in or out of using the AI-powered tool, and there’s more customization than just “on” or “off.”
For example, developers can create masks in their games to ensure DLSS 5 is only applied to those areas. If you just want to enhance the appearance of food in a game, that’s possible. If you’re just looking to make the foliage and plants look better, that’s okay too. The intensity of the filter is completely customizable by the developer. Perhaps more importantly, it can be disabled entirely as a gamer–there’ll be a simple toggle in the menu to turn it on or off.
