Looks like you can try DLSS 5 out today yourself

We know that DLSS 5 is due to arrive with us in the autumn time, but that release date feels a lot closer, with specific files being picked out of an early access version of NBA2K27 and dropped into Remedy’s Control (via Notebookcheck). The files in question have been found in the 2K ball-tossing title’s PC version—which is currently playable for gamers who purchased the Deluxe or Ultra editions—and a modder from the RenoDX team has managed to inject it into Control with sliders.

And, while I’m likely to be pilloried for saying so, I’m kinda impressed with the changes and the level of… ahem… control you have over the visuals with the number of sliders at play in the mod. It’s also impressive that this has been knocked together using an early DLL file from a completely different game and dropped into Control.

The mod has been released in the RenoDX Discord channel and offers up seven different styles, which seem to range from conservative to full-on yasification. So far it’s just aimed at the character models, but given the suggested performance hit from enabling it, you are going to want to limit its reach.

Looking into the Reddit chats about it, people are suggesting drops on an RTX 5070 Ti that take Control from 71 fps to 35 fps. That’s a big hit, though we are talking about a pre-release feature in a game that it’s not (yet?) designed for. When ray tracing still gets a lukewarm reception due to its performance impact, yet another resource-hogging feature will likely struggle for traction even outside the AI antipathy in gaming.

And that’s without taking into account the current ludicrous pricing situation for every Nvidia GPU from the fifth tier of its RTX 50-series and up.

There are various images of the lead character, Jesse Faden, but I think one of the most interesting is linked in the original X post, where the conservative preset is seemingly being used. The character model doesn’t look markedly different, but as the sliders are adjusted, you can see how the filter is layered on without negatively impacting the original design or geometry.

Then there’s another uploaded image where you can slide between the DLSS 5 on and off versions of the character model, where it’s far more extreme. But still, I don’t think it looks bad. If you’d given me that Faden model from the outset natively, I’d have marvelled at Remedy making such a detailed character, especially given the company’s obvious desire for photorealism in its characters. It still obviously retains the geometry, but this is far more of the AI beauty filter fear that large parts of the gaming community are concerned about with this feature’s release.

I think the fact this has all been pulled together from one DLL file taken out of an early access game is impressive, and makes me think that the instant DLSS 5 gets released, we’re going to see a whole lot of these mods out there giving gamers access to all the controls for a whole bunch of games… whether those game developers like it or not.

And that’s going to be a whole other debate.

One final thing to note is that the DLL file in question is noted as DLSSNR in the description, which suggests that DLSS 5 as the catch-all name for this AI game filter is going to change. Rebranding it as DLSS Neural Rendering feels far more suited to this feature, and might have led to less of a backlash at the start, where calling it DLSS 5 from the outset made it feel like this is just what the next version of DLSS is in its entirety.