When it comes to AI-assisted PC gaming, Nvidia has been all over it for years. Team Green has been leading the way with frame-boosting AI tech in the form of DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), which has leaned increasingly heavily on machine learning since it first released back in 2019.
Enter Project G-Assist. Nvidia’s “RTX-powered AI assistant technology demo” has just been announced at Computex 2024. While it looks fairly niche on paper, it definitely has the scope to be a big deal for fans of the best PC games.
The headline selling point of G-Assist? It can react and give you insight and advice regarding whatever contextual action is happening on-screen in a game through voice or text inputs that are powered by “LLM” (Large Language Model). Nvidia claims that G-Assist “can be customized by developers for a specific game or app, providing a high degree of accuracy and insightfulness.”
Historically, I’ve never been much of an AI-oriented user. As the owner of the most powerful consumer GPU on the planet in the form of the RTX 4090, I’ve always gone the brute force hardware route. AI-assisted features are becoming increasingly compelling to me, though, as they don’t require you to splurge for a graphics card that costs roughly the price of a half-decade-old used hatchback.
G-Assist has the potential to massively reduce the need to use an online guide when you get stuck in one of your favorite games.
The game that’s currently showcasing Project G-Assist is ARK: Survival Ascended. The dinosaur survival sim has always been a bit janky — its Nintendo Switch port was a complete disaster until a lot of commendable post-launch work was put into it — so this doesn’t seem the most natural marriage at first sight. Still, Studio Wildcard’s dino jaunt has proven to be one of the most enduringly popular video games of the last decade, so this partnership makes sense on a pure business level.
Such is the tech transformation ARK has undergone, it’s now one of the more compelling posterchildren for Unreal Engine 5 technology. In that context, G-Assist does look to be a boundary-breaking match for a game that has continued to evolve.
Nvidia’s new AI assistant can be activated by the hotkey on one of the best gaming keyboards, and it has the potential to massively reduce the need to use an online guide when you get stuck in one of your favorite titles. In the case of ARK, the GPU manufacturer states G-Assist will be able to suggest the best weapon to use if you’re just starting out with the game, while also giving you the option to get tips on bosses or school yourself on dino lore through text and voice prompts.
Dino-mite
Another cool example Nvidia has provided is that G-Assist can tell you whether a particular prehistoric leathery lizard should be avoided or not. Though seeing as Jurassic Park is my favorite movie of all-time, and a flick I’ve watched close to 100 times since 1993, I don’t need an AI assistant to tell me the difference in threat level between going against a T.rex and a baby Triceratops.
The fact G-Assist is able to do this is in part because its drawing data from the official ARK wiki. That means it can analyze your crafting preferences or outstanding skill points and help tailor your experience to squeeze the maximum enjoyment out of the dinosaur smash hit.
Stepping outside out of the realm of the creatures that ruled over our planet far longer than we’re likely to, Nvidia also says G-Assist will help you out in finding secret items in an RPG or action-adventure. As someone who constantly had 14 windows open at any given time on his iPad Pro to help me find the best weapons for my Tarnished while playing Elden Ring, I would have cherished the ability to lean on G-Assist’s promised features back in 2022.
The other area where Nvidia’s latest tech has colossal potential centers on performance tweaking. I’ll openly admit that I’m way too obsessive about in-game frame rate counters, even though I own one of the best gaming monitors that comes kitted out with G-Sync, so G-Assist's potential to help me optimize my settings is a massive allure.
Team Green claims you can get peak performance out of the likes of the best Steam games, with the company specifically highlighting Cyberpunk 2077 in its blog through what it describes as a “simple prompt”.
G-Assist is being promoted with the idea that it can pre-bake and tweak your hardware configuration with minimal fuss
Auto detection hardware settings have obviously been a thing in the PC gaming space for years, but running in-game benchmarks doesn’t always equate to the average fps you’ll experience while playing a title. G-Assist is being promoted with the idea that it can pre-bake and tweak your hardware configuration with minimal fuss, which is a game-changer for hardcore PC folks like myself who spend way too much time manually fiddling with individual graphical sliders.
The specifics Nvidia is quoting are absurdly exciting for someone who lives and breathes PC gaming. The AI assistant is apparently capable of tracking frame rates, latency and overly high power usage, with the end result being more performant in-game experiences.
There’s also the promised added bonus of benefits to whatever Nvidia-friendly screen you’re using. The Muhammadi Ali of the GPU market promises G-Assist can scan your PC or laptop to “take full advantage of your display’s resolution, refresh rate, or other capabilities, including HDR and G-Sync.”
The bottom line? If G-Assist can deliver on the level of eye-alluring features it’s currently promoting, you could be looking at a PC gaming feature that has an impact on the level of the company’s superb DLSS tech.
