Comments 29

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

@themightyant

Do you GENUINELY not see the AI filter / uncanny valley when you watch the faces in motion?

I see the uncanny valley effect, semi-realism causes that on all humans and is a well documented phenomenon.

It's the "AI filter" comment that I don't agree with. Perhaps if people's understanding of tech is SnapChat or TikTok filters (not how they work, just turning them on) then that's what they can articulate as their understanding.

I'm interested in hearing more about how this fits in the rendering pipeline — also this clearly doesn't work with path-tracing, which I think was mentioned in the video.

It appears to me to be either a) a low cost way of improving the lighting in games that don't have ray tracing, or b) optionality on games with ray-tracing.

Or have I got that wrong on b) I know it doesn't work with path-tracing does this work with ray-tracing … or is it only for games with rendering that has no RTX?

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

@themightyant The consoles may be running AMD, but this is exactly the kinds of technologies that Microsoft are talking about for Project Helix and Sony are same for PlayStation 6.

This is just the start of the next transformation to gaming tech—like sprites to 3D, software 3D to GPUs, etc.—it's not going away, and there's going to be a whole lot more of it.

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

@Dort

going to fly with folks who are clearly seeing a big change in aesthetics

This isn't going to magically appear in games without the developers putting it in the games.

Talking of things that deliver a drastic change on artwork, path-tracing doesn't magically appear in a game either.

The game developers put it in there.

What if the devs develop the game with this technology at front and centre … and so turning it off is therefore going against their vision of the game? i.e. Turning it off has the drastic change on the artwork? 😱

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

@Mookmac

bucket of angry gamer buzzwords

Rings parallel with:

➡️ Native resolution rendering is the only thing that matters — ML upscaling is cheating, brute force rasterisation for the win

➡️ Native FPS only — frame-rate insertion is fake frames

➡️ Baked in lighting for me — ray-tracing looks worse than pre-rendered bitmaps

➡️ AI slop — new lighting model ruins creative integrity and artistic vision.

It's all the same.

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

@maxeez0323

Its inherently changing the artistic and creative integrity of games seemingly just as a business decision.

Can you explain how?

Do you think Nvidia somehow got these demos together without the developers from Capcom, Bethesda, etc.? That they let their assets be used in these promotions without their approval?

If the artists use this lighting tool when building a game, does that mean the creativity remains integral, and that it's acceptable? Perhaps not using it would then be going against the creative design?

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

@NetshadeX

if the changes to artistic vision bother you then I'd encourage you to not use it.

But is it a change to artistic vision if the game artists put it in the games themselves — which is discussed in the DF video.

It's not like DLSS upscaling or frame generation appears in games without the developers putting it in there. 🤷‍♂️

Plus like path tracing, frame insertion, etc. it's going to have an off/on switch … for the performance hit to an Nvidia GPU if nothing else 🙄

Perhaps some modders will patch it into games that don't natively support it — but people don't have to install those mods.

Re: Nvidia's new DLSS 5 Brings Photo-Realistic Lighting To RTX 50-Series

StooMonster

For the DF video we learn that it's only about changing the lighting … not the meshes, textures, etc.

You can see that if you watch closely what DLSS 5 is doing, and listen to the explanations of the DF team.

Very interesting technology, looking forward to more coverage of this … and all the other neural rendering, ML led techniques we're going to see emerging over the transition to the next generation.

Re: The AI Tech Crunch: Are We Looking At A "Dark Age" For Gaming Hardware?

StooMonster

Was talking about this with mates and colleagues last week. I think that we're seeing the beginning of the end of consumer PC builds.

I think all electronics like consoles, computers, phones, are going to get much more expensive as the AI world sucks in all the global production.

The answer is for supply chains to ramp up, but I think in today's market they're just going to increase their margins instead and build up reserves of capital.

Re: Interview: Sektori's sole dev on Housemarque past, tuning Unity to 60fps

StooMonster

Downloaded Resogun on my launch day PlayStation 4 — still love it, haven't played it in a while but will now.

However, am absolutely loving Sektori on Steam Deck, the inky blacks versus the beautiful and fast graphics, the visual design is top notch as is the gameplay. Cannot recommend this enough.

So good that it may have to get a double-dip with PlayStation on the OLED television. Gorgeous.

Re: Beyond Steam Machine: Why Valve's New ARM Support Shouldn't Be Overlooked

StooMonster

I agree Rich. Also interesting titbit is that Apple's Rosetta 2 solution wasn't just software. Apple built specific hardware features into Apple Silicon chips to make Rosetta 2’s x86‑64 translation fast.

Apple Silicon adds microarchitectural support specifically aimed at making x86‑64 emulation efficient, which Rosetta 2 takes advantage of. Key changes include:

  • x86‑style memory ordering (TSO): M-series SoCs implement support for x86‑64’s Total Store Order memory model so that translated x86 code can run without constantly inserting extra memory fences.
  • Special flag/condition‑code instructions: M-series chips include custom ARM instructions for computing x86 flags, which lets Rosetta 2 map x86 condition codes directly instead of emulating them with long instruction sequences.
  • Paired load/store and stack operations: Apple’s cores support efficient paired loads/stores and stack‑pointer‑modifying operations that Rosetta 2’s translator targets to reduce instruction count and improve cache behaviour.

Together with Rosetta 2’s ahead‑of‑time translation and aggressive optimisation, these hardware features are a major reason x86‑64 apps under Rosetta 2 often reach a large fraction of native performance on M‑series chips.

This a key feature missing on Microsoft's Prism that works by just-in-time compiling x86-64 code into ARM64 instructions without this boost in the generic ARM64 Qualcomm Snapdragon for example; one of the reasons it's not as performant as Apple's translation layer.

Interestingly Apple have already set a sunset for this, Apple has stated that Rosetta 2 will remain a general‑purpose Intel‑app translation layer through macOS 27, covering the next couple of major releases, but also that starting with macOS 28, Rosetta 2 will be scaled back to a more limited, legacy‑focused mode mainly for older games and unmaintained software that rely on Intel‑specific frameworks … and the expectation is that it will eventually be dropped — like Rosetta that translated PowerPC to x86-64 before it — and will eventually be dropped from M-series chips too.

Wouldn't it be marvellous if Valve worked with likes or Nvidia or AMD to include similar x86-64 translation boosting hardware that they could take advantage of in FEX … rather than relying on generic ARM64 chips that lack this hardware optimisation?

Customer ARM64 CPU for Steam Deck 2 could be very interesting.

Even if they don't, I'm keen to see SteamOS offer Nvidia options — come Nvidia with your Linux drivers — moreover with the Nvidia N1X/N1 processors there could be some very interesting things to come.

Re: Valve "Looking Into" a Steam Frame Half-Life Alyx Standalone Experience

StooMonster

In theory, Half-Life: Alyx should run on Steam Frame already, barring incompatibilities with the new x86 to ARM translation layer … the CPU not only has to run game logic and prepare GPU draw calls, but also needs to run the title's x86 code through the FEX translation layer to run on an ARM-based processor

Do Valve have a native ARM64 build of Source 2 engine is key here, if they can get rid of the overhead of running the FEX translation layer and run native instead then it could be transformative to some titles … maybe Half-Life Alyx among them.

Which brings me to questions of Steam Platform, clearly it can manage Windows vs Linux vs Mac vs SteamOS on x86-64, are we about to see different processor architectures supported too?

Re: Analysis: How Steam Machine can aim for PS5's $499 price

StooMonster

Did I dream this or hear it on some YouTube video, that Valve will sell the Steam Machine sans a controller … with the assumption that you have an Xbox or PlayStation or other controller laying around, as these are all compatible.

That would give it a lower 'entry price'.

Not to say they won't sell a bundle with the controller too, but this might be a tactical option to give a "from $499" price tag.

Re: Should DF introduce PC Linux Benchmarks?

StooMonster

@fatpunkslim

Are we comparing SteamOS versus Xbox Full Experience on Windows?

Soon enough we're going to be comparing Valve's Steam Console (codename "Fremont") running SteamOS versus Xbox's next-gen PC-console hybrid (with "Magnus" APU).

In addition to the Steam Deck versus other handhelds.

Fascinating times.

Re: Feature: PS5 Pro Year One: Was It Worth It?

StooMonster

From your list you've missed the PSVR2 games with PS5 Pro enhancements … tiny list that there is!

I am happy with my PS5 Pro — although it makes my buys games that support it that I wouldn't otherwise, just to test it out.

I wish there were more titles with support for it launching, plus a bit of love from Sony first-party studios tweaking older titles would be nice.

The weird thing is the PSSR being subpar in so many regards, one would've thought Sony would be on top of that for PS6 — I hope we see their PSSR hybrid to FSR4 before long, and that perhaps it's easy to back port to games with PSSR shimmer issues.