Kingdom Come: Deliverance director defends DLSS 5 saying neural lighting restores "original vision"
Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s director Daniel Vavra has been pretty vocal about DLSS 5. Recently, he shared before-and-after screenshots of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 on X and said the 3D neural rendering technology restored his game’s original artistic vision, despite numerous detractors online calling Nvidia’s upcoming technology AI slop. Somewhat ironically, this isn't the first time the creative director has stepped in to defend Nvidia's AI-centric upscaling technology.
No "official" support yet for many titles as modders rule the roost
Previously, a leaked build of DLSS 5 floating around the internet, sourced from a beta build of NBA 2K27, allowed gamers to run the early-in-development technology on RTX 40-series and RTX 50-series GPUs.
At present, DLSS 5 is supported on RTX 50-series desktop and laptop GPUs and Nvidia GeForce Now. Still, modders have managed to get DLSS 5 running on numerous unsupported titles like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, using both RTX 50- and 40-series GPUs.
DLSS 5 basically uses 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, leaving the underlying geometry of characters and assets untouched while using the game engine’s own color data and motion vectors to overhaul lighting and add shadow and skin detail on a pixel-by-pixel basis, something KCD 2’s own engine was too limited to draw.
DLSS 5 is currently only supported on NBA 2K27 and is not officially supported on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but that might change in the near future. Still, the leaked DLSS 5 DLL running on KCD2 has left Daniel Vavra arguing with detractors and gamers online about the game’s facial models.
A restoration of the game’s "original artistic vision"?
He called the new DLSS 5 implementation a restoration of the game’s original artistic vision rather than a distortion, and closer to what his artists wanted the game to look like. The only thing holding back the game was that the game engine’s native output could never come close to such fidelity.
Vavra argued in his posts that the unenhanced render showed a head messed up by the game engine’s limited lighting implementation, which couldn't render skin textures, shadows, or normal-map detail. The head scans taken via photogrammetry from real individuals never changed. DLSS 5 only enhanced the lighting and shadows across the face.
Despite this, detractors argue that the effect sometimes overpolishes characters and assets in the pursuit of photorealism. Currently, DLSS 5 is limited to RTX 50 series GPUs and is slated to arrive on RTX 40 series cards soon, with only one supported title so far: NBA 2K27. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 isn’t natively supported yet, but based on how things are progressing, that could change soon.
Source(s)
Add as a preferred source on Google
