NBA 2K27 Uses Nvidia's DLSS 5 to Retouch Every Frame With a Neural Network

aakashgupta · x · 2026-09-22

NBA 2K27 is described as the first game where a neural network retouches every frame: the engine renders normally, then Nvidia's DLSS 5 applies its own lighting and materials — skin light scattering, contact shadows, sweat catching arena lights.
Nvidia says these effects would conventionally need a ray-tracing budget no consumer GPU can afford, so an AI model trained on real light behavior paints them in real time.
The other half is Visual Concepts' 25-year pursuit of the NBA TV-broadcast look: haze, grain, camera height. Viewers have watched thousands of hours through a TV camera and almost none courtside, so matching that look reads as photoreal.
The quoted max-settings PC demo suggests "we might have completed graphics."

More from Multimodal