It may be hard to imagine any need for DLSS-style technology in Roblox when you can likely play it on hardware that’s more than a decade old. But DLSS isn’t solely about performance anymore when you look at DLSS 5. Roblox Corporation has just unveiled its own take on AI-generated upsampling with a project called Roblox Reality. It’s designed to bring photorealistic visuals to the traditionally blocky art style – of course, the game has grown massively from its LEGO-style roots already.

The dust has settled after Nvidia’s big DLSS 5 reveal at GTC in mid-March. Its new neural rendering feature caught the internet’s attention and faced immediate criticism for looking a little too much like an ‘AI filter’ – though it also earned some praise from game developers, too, being described as “just a little uncanny beginning,” with the expectation being that it will improve.

Roblox Reality gives the game an AI-generated makeover

Roblox Reality is described as a “hybrid architecture” that combines the Roblox Game Engine’s “structured simulation” with “edge-based Video World Models” that essentially give everything a makeover with generative AI. It’s easy to see why it’s already drawing comparisons to DLSS 5, though it should not be viewed as a direct alternative. DLSS 5 will still come with all the performance-boost tech people love it for, such as upscaling and frame generation features.

The devs have showcased how it all works with a comparison video, split into four screens. It shows the transition from the natively rendered look in Roblox and the final results after everything is put through the ‘Super Upsampler lab’ – the technology creates an AI-generated ‘vision’ which is applied to Roblox’s 3D geometry.

An important note revealed by the video is that Roblox Reality is not currently working in real-time. This is perhaps the biggest difference between the tech and Nvidia’s DLSS 5 reveal (even if it required two RTX 5090s running at the same time) – Nvidia has already said that it will be optimized to run on a single GPU before launch this Fall.

The developers openly admit the constraints, as the model struggles with aspects such as maintaining visual consistency and “true multiplayer agent simulation”. Roblox Reality is admittedly too cost-intensive to achieve real-time performance with high-fidelity visuals; 2K at 60Hz is given as an example. The comparison video is only published in 720p, after all.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.