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YouTube creator Valery Kryzhanovsky has demonstrated an experimental application of DLSS 5 on the MS-DOS version of Pac-Man. This project utilizes the MAME arcade emulator alongside ReShade to inject the upscaling technology into the game's graphics pipeline, with RenoDX employed to adjust specific parameters.
The implementation requires a 4x Multipass approach because single passes often fail to produce visible changes in older titles. Valery notes that while multiple passes can occasionally aid photorealism, Pac-Man lacks the 3D data necessary for effective upscaling, resulting in unintended visual artifacts like sunken cheekbones or missing eyes on ghosts.
Valery tested four distinct rendering modes: Natural, Default, Cinematic, and Denoise. Each mode produces vastly different visual outcomes, ranging from maintaining maze readability to completely removing game elements like dots. The creator acknowledges that the game was never designed for such technology, necessitating this external injection method.
According to Valery, the current 150MB DLSS 5 build is an undertrained, early version lacking temporal context. The developer suggests that the final release will feature a more mature model and likely a larger file size, as this current iteration serves only as a small preview of the technology's potential.
