At Gamescom 2023, NVIDIA announced a new version of its deep learning super sampling technique, DLSS 3.5. DLSS 3.5 will focus on improving the quality of Ray Tracing in games, and the first three titles that will support it will be Alan Wake 2, Portal RTX and Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty.
DLSS 3.5 will be focusing on Ray (Tracing) Reconstruction (RR). Primarily, this new version of DLSS 3 will improve the visual quality of Ray Tracing in games that support it. This isn’t meant to be a performance enhancement, like the previous versions of DLSS (although there will still be a small performance increase when using it).
The above slide also confirms that Alan Wake 2 will have Ray Tracing effects on PC. That’s a safe assumption as this is the main reason why a game would support DLSS 3.5. This is also the first time we hear about RT in Alan Wake 2. As such, we can’t wait to see what Remedy has in store for us. After all, CONTROL was an RT showcase when it came out.
DLSS 3.5 promises to deliver a visibly enhanced visual experience compared to traditional denoising techniques. As Videocardz who shared the following slides explained.
“NVIDIA claims that Ray Reconstruction has been trained on five times more data than DLSS3. It has been trained to incorporate additional game and software engine data, recognize various ray-traced effects, distinguish between good and bad temporal and spatial pixels, and preserve high-frequency data for upscaling.”
In short, Ray Reconstruction will improve the visual quality of ray-traced global illumination, shadows, reflections and ambient occlusion. As such, by using it, we can get better RT visuals with a slightly improved performance. It’s a win-win scenario for games that support both Ray Tracing and DLSS.
Do note that this sounds like an evolution of DLSS 3, and not of DLSS 3 Frame Generation. So, in theory, older RTX GPUs may be also able to take advantage of DLSS 3.5.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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