TECH

NVIDIA DLSS 5 mod runs in a browser and even works on Apple Silicon

If you've been fascinated by NVIDIA's DLSS 5 technology, yet lack the requisite hardware or necessary gumption to try it out for yourself, you can now see a live demo right on your PC, directly in your browser, without having to manually download or install anything. The demo works in your web browser, and it uses your GPU, but it doesn't run the DLSS 5 model in real-time, so you can get it to work on just about anything with the requisite WebGPU support.

A developer going by MAAN has demonstrated NVIDIA DLSS 5 Neural Rendering running inside a web browser using WebGPU, and according to their post on X, it works on macOS too. A live demo is up now, and MAAN says people can try it with their own models as well. This is odd because NVIDIA doesn't officially support DLSS through WebGL or WebGPU at all. DLSS normally runs through NVIDIA's NGX interface or the Streamline SDK, which sits between a game and DirectX or Vulkan and needs motion vectors, depth data, and the rendered frame handed over directly. None of that maps cleanly onto a browser's pipeline, so it's not clear which approach the developer has used to get it running on a web browser.

The developer hasn't shared technical details either, but they have confirmed that the source code will be shared on GitHub soon. Performance is another question mark. VideoCardz says loading the Neural Rendering model alone took a second or two on an RTX 4090, and running on Apple Silicon apparently works but isn't fast. That probably rules out real-time gaming for now, though the concept could still be useful for 3D model previews, where a slower response time matters less. It's an early proof of concept more than anything, but getting DLSS 5 working outside NVIDIA's own supported paths entirely is still a neat trick.

Created by a developer known as MAAN and spotted by Videocardz, this web implementation of DLSS 5 is little more than a model viewer that has the ability to apply the DLSS 5 neural filter to loaded models. It offers a chance to preview the look of DLSS 5 on most platforms, as unlike the official release (currently only available in NBA 2K27), it does not require a GeForce RTX 50 series graphics card. I was able to get the demo working on my ASUS ROG Flow z13 tablet with Radeon 8060S graphics, although it didn't load on my aging Snapdragon 888-powered smartphone.

That could have been down to the amount of memory required. The models that the site includes are pretty big, but the DLSS 5 neural network itself is the largest amount of the download, totaling nearly 150 MB by itself. This is pretty large for a website, and some devices may balk at the bulk. However, the developer notes that it works on MacOS, and in theory it should work on most devices with a compatible browser.

If you keep up with DLSS news, it should come as no surprise that the page is able to run the DLSS 5 neural filter on nearly any hardware, as it's not doing anything unique to NVIDIA's hardware. Indeed, modders have gotten DLSS 5 working on older GeForce hardware, AMD and Intel hardware (including integrated graphics), and even on video feeds with no 3D information. While DLSS 5 is AI-powered, it's mostly a post-processing filter, so you can apply it to nearly anything, and it can be run on nearly anything with a little tweaking.

As Whycry notes, the interesting part of MAAN's demo is how he's wired it up to the Three.js framework. NVIDIA doesn't offer WebGL or WebGPU as supported DLSS interfaces, which means the developer has either extracted the weights and reimplemented the network or created some kind of shim to use the leaked binary directly. In any case, it's impressive stuff, and you should check it out if you have a minute.

mundophone