Post

The most obvious issue is with the shadow cast by the tree (and also the turret in the mage's guild building there). It's almost gone; if you zoom in you can see the edge of the penumbra still there, but it's kind of of just become a noisy boundary.

In fact, the area shaded by the tree is now brighter than the area in direct sunlight in the foreground. This is a general pattern with this postprocessing effect – cast shadows are gone and replaced with general, undirected ambient light with what looks like a very heavy ambient occlusion pass.

But this "ambient occlusion" is just bad guesswork. Another example of weird incorrect stuff is this curb, where the edge of the curb is now arbitrarily darker than the top of the sidewalk. This stone is being lit almost at a 45 degree angle by the sun; the top and sides should be the same value.

You know, it occurs to me that this would be a lot more impressive and workable if the starting point was like, an unshaded scene, and not the latest AAA game graphics that require raytracing as a baseline anyway.

a whole rendering mode for people who's sole feedback is "make it pop"

it doesn't even pop though it's so washed out

yes! but in my experience doing beauty renders like this (at previous jobs) people with no taste *love* a super contrast AO with no depth

I wonder if the specific implementation of this game either disabled shadows for DLSS 5 or they failed to make them work in the new render path I find it difficult to imagine that any post-process filter could remove shadows that cleanly, especially around high frequency detail

If you zoom closely on those shots you can see that the shadow is still present – the edges of the shadow are visible – but values all around the image have been changed so aggressively so it's not visible any more.

I did zoom closely and don't see the edges (except some dark spots that could be decals) there's a particularly interesting example in the bottom right corner since 1) the caster of the shadow is not in the frame; 2) there's a thick part but also a thin part which resembles nearby texture detail

As long as we're all DESERVEDLY ragging on this, i think its also worth saying that I expect moving around in this space with DLSS5 is going to be mad disorienting. That depth information isn't just for show! Lighting is a huge part of how we navigate and orient in a virtual 3d space!