Roblox Embracing AI Graphics

The CEO of Roblox has introduced an AI feature that is being worked on called Roblox Reality, which creates hyperrealistic visuals from existing game data. The team at Roblox reportedly wants to get this feature launched no later than 2027, but many fans of the game have quickly raised their voices in protest.

Roblox has seen a rough time recently in terms of making changes and how the playerbase has perceived those alterations. Players have been upset about everything from Roblox removing System Badges and Classic Faces to changes to the game’s chat and age verification, which has led to some players losing their conversation histories. This isn’t the first time that Roblox has utilized AI, as it was recently revealed that the game is testing a feature to create filtered chat summaries, but this visual overhaul goes considerably further.

Roblox Reality Could Dramatically Change the Look of Games

As revealed on the official Roblox blog and on CEO David Baszucki’s Twitter account, Roblox Reality is a new feature being worked upon that creates “photorealistic detail” from existing game data. According to Baszucki, the existing Roblox Engine still provides most of the game’s data, including physics, multiplayer sync, and the score, but a video model “acts as a Super Upsampler” to create the realistic visuals. He notes that the team thinks that this could lead to “a team of three people” being able to produce a “photorealistic masterpiece” in a mere week, “turning solitary AI dreams into a social, playable reality.”

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Roblox has shared a couple of demonstrations of the technology being applied to existing games on Roblox, including Grow a Garden and Summon Heroes. Roblox Reality definitely adds more realism to the scenes depicted, with more depth, shadows, and reflections. However, that doesn’t mean that players are happy about it. The comments on the original tweet have strongly leaned negative. Many have compared the technology to Nvidia’s DLSS 5, which Nvidia’s Jacob Freeman explained takes images from a game and runs it through generative AI to add more details and improve fidelity. Nvidia’s own reveal also saw considerable blowback from the gaming community, including some developers, who argued that the technology takes away autonomy.

So far, the complaints from players have varied. Some are upset that Roblox isn’t addressing ongoing issues they’ve been bothered by and are focusing on this instead, while others say that no one asked for this technology in Roblox. One developer noted that they didn’t want to put time into developing a game in a specific style just for an AI filter to change it. Though it’s still in development with improvements likely to come, some have pointed out visible problems with the tech demo, like at the 9-second mark of the tweeted video, where the “Super Upsampler Vision” seems to get confused, and the background noticeably pops from one image to another.

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The use of AI continues to be a hotly debated topic in gaming, with many finding its use in development at all objectionable. Some have gone so far as to request refunds for games after discovering AI was utilized in their creation. In addition to some gamers not being interested in this type of upscaling, many are angry about the technology in general, due largely to AI data centers’ demand for parts leading to RAM shortages and price hikes. It remains to be seen if visual technology like Roblox Reality become the norm in the industry.