Nvidia DLSS 3.5's AI Ray Reconstruction makes ray tracing look even better

Nvidia created its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology to help improve performance in games when you turn on ultra-strenuous ray traced visuals, all the way back when both ray tracing and DLSS were introduced alongside the GeForce RTX 20-series. DLSS 2 greatly improved the visual quality of upscaled images, while DLSS 3 added AI-generated frames to boost performance even more. Now, Nvidia returns to DLSS's ray tracing roots with DLSS 3.5, introduced today at Gamescom in Germany. While DLSS 3 boosted performance, DLSS 3.5's "Ray Reconstruction" aims to improve the visual quality of upscaled, ray traced games, specifically by turning Nvidia's AI models on a critical process called "denoising." Ray tracing is limited by the number of rays a GPU can "cast" into a given scene, to create the data needed for the realistic lighting effects.