| Mummelmann said: I use DLSS myself from time to time, especially in more demanding titles. My main gripe with the technology is that it removes focus on optimization in favor of software bypasses, this reduces the required competence required to utilize tools and engines for development. UE5, with all its baked-in functionality, led to similar issues; developers have enough "auto-fill" options to not need proper skill and understanding of various, singular tweaks and adjustments. All in all, this leads to poorly optimized games that function poorly on hardware that can't use the latest generation Super-Sampling and/or fram-gen, or even games that run poorly with DLSS enabled, taking ages to fix (if it happens at all) by developers who skill and insights. |
I know this is a common sentiment amongst some gaming enthusiasts, but I am not convinced that there is actual evidence for it. (See my conversation with Curl-6.)
I think there might have been a very slight drop-off in game optimization compared to 2013-2017, but before then AAA games weren't very well optimized at all, in my opinion. On consoles, games usually struggled to hit a 30fps target, and on PC even people with the highest end GPUs would struggle to set all settings to maximum. Games would release with max settings that would only be hit after a new generation of GPUs would release after the game's release.
I also don't think there has ever been a time period in the history of gaming where somebody can play modern games on as old of hardware or on as low-budget of hardware as we can now. Crimson Desert has a minimum requirement of a GTX 1060. That's a ten year old mid-ranged GPU. iGPUs are viable options for playing games. Sure, it is in part because of Moore's Law slowing, but if these new features like DLSS, Ray Tracing, etc have not made the games literally un-playeable on ten year old GPUs that don't support them well, how exactly are they crutches? In the 2000's you could have four year old hardware that struggled or just outright didn't support new games.
