TBH, I think it's for people wanting to create media.

Those screenshots could easily be a movie or TV show. Get rid of actual creative people. AI could create an OK (at best) video and run it through DLSS5 to look real, package it, sell it to the streamers.

Yet another way to fuck actual people over.

DLSS 5 (slop filter) you mean? Because the regular old upscaling DLSS doesn't really produce uncanny valley stuff. Only artifacts, and mostly on presets like Performance or Ultra Performance.

And I do also agree about RT. Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 both had great visually impactful ray tracing and GTA 6 (as much as it pains me to say it) looks like a fantastic showcase of real-time lighting.

I love RTX in CP2077, it looks awesome. Funnily enough, i saw a video segment of DLSS5 in Cyberpunk, and i was astounded - it looked as if it were made for it. https://youtu.be/8r-wEn3CIb8?si=nMQKXUNrVGqSXAWS&t=148

And oh I dunno maybe the developers could just use better base models??? For the perf hit they could be pushing way more polygons and higher res textures at a fraction of the perf loss

You claim you've been gaming since the original Doom but this is not something anyone who gamed before the Xbox 360 would think was a joke. It was a regular experience that the most graphically impressive games would target future hardware, people used to look forward to the next big graphical showcase of a game.

Because Crysis ran out of the box on min spec hardware of the era and no meme ever came out of a system being able to run the game.

The Xbox 360 was your childhood console, huh?

The problem isn’t that they don’t look good, it’s that they don’t look right. Modders extracted the DLSS 5 library from this game and tried using it with a bunch of other games, and it completely changes how characters look (down to altering facial structure).

Says who? If I paid for the game and the tech, can't I be the judge of what looks right? You mention modders, who themselves often completely change the look and feel of a game, and characters.

Modders extracted the DLSS 5 library from this game and tried using it with a bunch of other games

But it looks good in stills in this game. It should be obvious why it looks bad in games which assets were never optimised for it and that the highest adjustment level will never be used in a game like the FFVII remake were the model tries to contort the anime faces into photographies.

I aim at a stable 60-90 Fps (which goes well with my 180Hz Monitor + Vsync) , while cranking up the visuals as far as i can, normally starting with max and then slowly inching backwards if needed. I don't like it if my textures get muddy, or shadows look like crap - or even worse, Pop-in and LOD shenanigans.

You are kinda in the minority, I'm guessing you play mostly FPS games where framerate is king. Normally I agree, but there's something to be said for cranking games to max settings and enjoying 60-90fps. I play Cyberpunk maxed even though I don't get over 100.

I do the same thing but then I also limit my framerate on most games because I've been playing on a potato laptop that overheats and crashes.. and I don’t really play games where amazing framerate matters, tho 1-5 fps is still painful. Looking at you, whiskerwood, where I can get a max of 20fps on a brand new game.

I now have rebuilt my gaming pc, and it can run cyberpunk at max settings with no issues, but damn if the laptop isn’t more convenient most of the time.. I’ll still probably turn all the settings way way down because IDGAF. Grew up on 8bit, lived through low-poly, have low standards.

(I rebuilt it so I could get my rimworld colonies comfortably to 100 pawns, but I’m sure I’ll use it for other stuff!)