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But a question from a member of The Full Nerd audience during this week’s recording got me thinking: with so much control over how big-budget games look being ceded to Nvidia’s algorithms, is it time for developers to start putting “as the developer intended” modes into their games?
I don’t know if the person who asked a similar question to The Full Nerd crew (shoutout to friend of the show LiquidR) had the same concerns, but after watching all the brouhaha unfold over the initial DLSS 5 demo at GTC earlier this year I think I’ve been mulling this over for a while now.
I like to play my PC games on my big LG OLED TV when I have the time, but when I’m just watching movies I leave the TV in its Filmmaker Mode. I do that because it’s marketed as disabling image processing (not that I’d ever turn motion smoothing or image sharpening on to begin with) as well as staying as close as possible to the movie’s “original aspect ratios, colors, and frame rates to more closely match the vision of the director”, according to LG’s marketing materials.
I don’t have the best eye for details like aspect ratio or frame rate so I can’t say for sure how much of a difference Filmmaker Mode makes when I’m watching my 4K copy of Sorceror, but I can tell you that it looks amazing on my LG OLED and I feel good about knowing I’m doing what I can to see the film as its creators intended.
Should game developers start putting something similar in their games, like a “Game Maker Mode” or a “As the developer intended” setting or something?
This is why I’m so excited yet nervous to see how DLSS 5 affects the way games look and play this year. I remember how drastically different the character of Grace from Resident Evil Requiem looked when DLSS 5 was enabled during an Nvidia demo, for example, and it freaked me out.