Nvidia developed its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology to improve in-game performance when using extremely demanding ray-traced graphics. That was already the case when both ray tracing and DLSS were introduced along with the GeForce RTX 20 series. DLSS 2 greatly improved the visual quality of upscaled images, while DLSS 3 added AI-generated frames to boost performance even further.
Now Nvidia is coming along DLSS 3.5, which was presented at Gamescom 2023 in Cologne, goes back to the roots of DLSS in the field of ray tracing.
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While DLSS 3 boosted performance (more details on that here), DLSS 3.5’s “Ray Reconstruction” aims to improve the visual quality of upscaled ray-traced games, specifically by applying Nvidia’s AI models to a critical process called “denoising”. be switched
This is how Nvidia improves the DLSS technology
Ray tracing is limited by the number of rays that a GPU can “throw” into a given scene to generate the data needed for realistic lighting effects. But there’s no way to create endless amounts of rays for perfect images in games. Movie studios have all the time in the world to render the scenes for their movies, but games need to respond to your feedback without lag, without melting your GPU. As a result, modern games and graphics cards use “denozers” before rendering a ray-traced scene, which removes the graininess caused by missing ray information in game images.
Nvidia
That’s all well and good and necessary, but it gets a bit more complicated, especially when DLSS comes into play. DLSS runs at a lower resolution than your screen’s and then uses AI to upscale the image to its native resolution. Traditional hand-tuned denozers take bits of a ray-traced scene—either temporally, across multiple frames, or a spatial model based on neighboring pixels—and use the information to fill in the missing pixels which the rays could not bypass.
Nvidia
Nvidia
Anyone who has played a ray tracing game knows that the end result is really, really good. However, Nvidia says that traditional denozers sometimes produce slightly different results, resulting in inferior reflections and global illumination in particularly detailed scenes, as well as occasional inaccurate lighting effects.
Have you ever played a game where your car’s lights seemed to emanate from the underside rather than the headlights, or have you seen “ghosting” from the side mirrors as you pull alongside your car? This is due to the way the defusers and DLSS work together.
Nvidia
Now DLSS 3.5 is coming. Nvidia’s new ray reconstruction technology replaces manually adjusted denoisers with an AI-driven denoiser trained to recognize good and bad pixels from temporal and spatial denoising, specifically identifying ray tracing effects and other game information – like motion vectors and surface colors – to include in ray tracing games for a much more accurate final image, as you can see in the images below.
Nvidia
Nvidia
These are examples from Nvidia’s press conference and should be taken with a pinch of salt, but there’s no denying that the clarity, accuracy, and sharpness of ray-traced effects look significantly better with DLSS 3.5’s active ray reconstruction.
Either way, we can’t wait to see DLSS 3.5 in action. If you’re at Gamescom, be sure to stop by the Nvidia booth, where DLSS 3.5 is being demonstrated.
First games with DLSS 3.5 support available from September
DLSS 3.5 will be later this year in the Phantom Liberty expansion from Cyberpunk 2077 in September, in October in the equally eagerly awaited Alan Wake II and in the fall in Nvidia’s portal Debut RTX Remake. It will also be available in the D5 Render apps and Nvidia’s Omniverse platform for creatives.
Depending on how many denozers Ray Reconstruction replaces in the game engine, there may be a small performance boost on complex ray-traced games, but to be clear, DLSS 3.5 focuses on the visual quality of ray-tracing, not the Speed.
Good news: DLSS 3.5 is coming for all RTX cards
Now for some good news: Unlike DLSS 3’s AI-generated frames, which require special “optical flow accelerator” hardware only found in the new 40-series GeForce RTX GPUs, DLSS works 3.5 with any RTX graphics card – yes, even with the original RTX 20-series models. Fantastic. It will also be available to GeForce Now subscribers in supported games.
Nvidia
Half-Life 2 is getting an RTX remix
In addition to DLSS 3.5, Nvidia has also announced that a team of top modders from Half Life 2 teamed up to give the classic a full RTX Remix makeover, similar to Portal RTX. DLSS 3 (not 3.5) will also apply to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Payday 3 and – one hears and marvels – Fortnite appear. All gamers who wondered how well DLSS 3’s AI-generated frames would fare in fast-paced, competitive shooters will soon find out.
Finally, on August 24th, GeForce Now will get the first taste of Microsoft PC Game Pass games, including titles like Gears 5 and Bethesdas deathloop as well as some third party games like No Man’s Sky. You must, of course, be a PC Game Pass subscriber to play them on GeForce Now.
This article originally appeared at our sister publication, PC-World.
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