Dark Souls 3 is receiving a major visual overhaul through a fan-made mod that adds path tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 5, giving FromSoftware's 2016 action RPG a dramatically more modern look.
Modder Ganaboy is bringing the same Lighting Engine technology previously developed for Dark Souls 2 to Dark Souls 3. A new showcase set in the Crucifixion Woods demonstrates the game's redesigned path-traced lighting alongside NVIDIA DLSS 5, applied before Super Resolution to reduce performance cost while enhancing the rendered image. The end result is quite impressive, especially considering this is a fan mod and not an actual studio-level graphical overhaul.
The project, known as DS3LE, uses NRD-SH as its primary denoiser. According to Ganaboy, the technique delivers image quality comparable to NVIDIA's Ray Reconstruction while being less demanding on RTX 20- and RTX 30-series GPUs, where Ray Reconstruction is quite heavy on both GPU generations.
More than 80% of Dark Souls 3 has already been added to the mod's BVH structure, and the finished installation is expected to take up around 3 or 4GB. Ganaboy says performance should be similar to the Dark Souls 2 version, although players who previously used DLSS Quality may need to switch to Balanced because Dark Souls 3 contains substantially more geometry.
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The mod will also support AMD GPUs capable of ray tracing, although Ganaboy warns that a reasonably powerful GPU will still be required. DS3LE is currently expected to release by the end of 2026, though no firm launch date has been announced. For those who have questions bubbling around in their head about the mod Ganaboy has provided an FAQ, which you can find below.
- LE (Lighting Engine) uses the advanced form of NRD-SH which gives comparable quality to Ray Reconstruction. Ray Reconstruction has a heavy performance penalty on RTX 20 and 30 series GPUs, so it's recommended to use NRD-SH. NRD-SH is the primary/default denoiser for DS3LE.
- Release date is expected to be the end of the year.
- More than 80% of the entire game is now added in BVH.
- Install size is expected to be around 3-4 GB (10x geometry of DS2).
- Performance is similar to DS2LE. Even with a large increase in geometry, if you used Quality mode DLSS in DS2, you will need to use Balanced mode in DS3.
- Postprocess/lighting tweaks will be made as per testing.
- DS3LE lighting will have fake lights in worst-case scenarios. Unlike DS2, torch mechanics will not be given priority in the default lighting setup. You will not need a torch to progress using DS3LE-PT.
- It will work with UXM / ME2 / ME3.
- Online/Seamless compatibility is untested, so the developer can't say anything definitively right now.
- All AMD ray tracing capable cards are supported. Note, however, you still need a decent GPU.
