Why don't blockbuster movies want to function normally without DLSS?

System requirements are rising for the purpose of ray tracing becoming the norm for PC games, and with it the popularity of DLSS and other technologies is growing. PC Gamer portal has explained what the problems are and why they are so popular.

Black Legend: Wukong and Star Wars: Outlaws are two recent big-budget titles with very different ratings and sales. But they are similar in one way: both games support ray tracing. Until recently, this technology was largely considered an optional setting. There have been exceptions, like Portal RTX, but such projects are usually developed specifically to demonstrate the technology.

Wukong and Outlaw were the first mainstream games to use ray tracing permanently and by default. The first one runs on Unreal Engine 5 and uses the so-called. “full ray tracing” mode pushes the physical fidelity of light to unprecedented levels. Star Wars: Outlaws doesn't look as impressive but at maximum graphics settings it can still look good.

Naturally, both games are extremely GPU-hungry because ray tracing involves a large amount of repetitive calculations. However, from a programming perspective, it's a much simpler and cleaner way of handling lighting than traditional rendering (or rasterization) techniques.

Unfortunately, ray tracing actually requires image scaling technology. And often – also the generation of personnel. Otherwise, playable fps cannot be achieved. Gradually, more and more games appear on the market, whose system requirements only describe a certain level of performance when scaled.

Scaling is not always necessary, and much of this depends on the characteristics of the particular PC. But if ray tracing cannot be turned off, there is no other choice. I wish DLSS, FSR and XeSS were good enough to not notice a difference between the native and processed resolutions. But no – all three technologies sometimes make graphics look blurry. And framing often fails and creates lag when entering commands.

Some might argue that the widespread use of scaling is a result of poor game optimization. Implementing DLSS support is easier than tweaking meshes, shaders, registers, and other nuances.

This is partly true, but to some extent, modern games were initially developed with the intention of upgrading technology. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 struggled to hit a consistent 60fps at max settings in 4K, but DLSS in quality mode almost doubled the frame rate. In other words, this is a developer's choice, not an optimization issue.

It seems like the PC gaming market has followed PlayStation's lead. Scaling and framing are used to achieve new levels of detail, complexity, and realism in graphics at the expense of artifacts and blur. One day DLSS, FSR, and XeSS will actually be good enough that gamers won't notice the difference, but that day will come in the future.