DLSS 5 mod on San Andreas looks rough, hope Rockstar keeps GTA 6 away from that
Saw a GameSpot article about some modders getting their hands on an early DLSS 5 build and injecting it into a bunch of games. Nvidia hasn't even announced a release date for DLSS 5 yet, but someone found it in an NBA 2K27 build and the RenoDX crew made a tool to force it into other stuff.
They tested it on Control, Cyberpunk, Skyrim, and GTA San Andreas. The San Andreas one is the one that got me. It's a PS2 game, and the AI filter just goes to town on it. Character models get completely redone, environments look like a different game, and not in a good way. It's like someone ran the whole thing through one of those "enhance" filters from a bad CSI episode.
Control is a bit more mixed. Jesse's face gets more detail, but she also looks like a different person. Some environmental stuff looks better, but it's inconsistent. The whole scene feels off. And performance is terrible. Modders got it running on RTX 40 and 50 series cards, but frame rates get cut in half sometimes, VRAM usage is through the roof. This is an early version, sure, but it's not promising.
What bugs me is Nvidia's whole pitch was that DLSS 5 just enhances geometry that's already there, doesn't fundamentally alter it. But watching San Andreas get turned into some uncanny valley nightmare, that claim falls apart. It's not enhancing, it's replacing. And for a game like GTA 6, which Rockstar has spent years crafting with a specific art style, I don't want some AI filter smearing Vaseline all over it.
I know GTA 6 is console only for now, no PC version announced. But eventually it'll come to PC, and then we'll have to deal with whatever upscaling tech is around. Rockstar has their own stuff, but if Nvidia pushes DLSS 5 hard, some people will mod it in anyway. After seeing what it does to San Andreas, I'm not excited about that.
Would you want DLSS 5 in GTA 6 if it ever hits PC, or is Rockstar better off without it?
Source: GameSpot · Curated content.