PlayStation has announced, via a blog post from its Lead Architect, Mark Cerny, that PS5 Pro’s PSSR upscaling technology is getting its first big upgrade.
The updated version of PSSR, a technology employed exclusively on the PlayStation 5 Pro to boost game resolutions and performance through machine learning, will leverage six months of extra development on the technology to improve its output and better handle fine details and complex moving scenes – things the current iteration of the technology can struggle with and wind up producing noticeably worse results.
And it’s already in play, with the recently-released Resident Evil Requiem already sporting the upgraded version of PSSR.
“With Resident Evil Requiem, we focused on enhancing the presentation quality of the protagonist through an upgraded version of RE Engine to deepen the player’s immersion in horror,” Masaru Ijuin, a Senior Manager at Capcom says in a quote on the PlayStation Blog. “For example, each individual strand of hair and beard is rendered as a polygon, allowing it to move realistically in response to body motion and wind. The way light passes through his hair changes depending on how the strands of hair are overlapped as well. This detailed expression of texture is one of the many details that we would especially love for our fans to see.
“The upgraded PSSR has allowed us to elevate our expressiveness by successfully processing these details and textural particularities, which are traditionally difficult to upscale because of their intricacy. We hope you will experience this unprecedented level of horror and visual fidelity, and the new gameplay feel it delivers.”
You can see the differences between Resident Evil Requiem running on the “old” PSSR versus the “new” one in this side-by-side. Note the more defined and less “blurry” strands of hair in particular:
PlayStation has confirmed that the PSSR upgrade will continue to roll out this month with multiple existing games set to be boosted alongside a system software update that allows PS5 Pro users to toggle on an “Enhance PSSR Image Quality” option, adding the new benefits to any game that already supports the current version of PSSR.
We gave Resident Evil Requiem a huge 5/5 stars here at covergeek, with my review saying, “A greatest hits mix of the finest bits of design, storytelling and pure terror to have come out of the series in its 30-year history, Resident Evil Requiem confidently does the impossible with a dual-protagonist setup that successfully makes Grace and Leon’s sections feel like two sides of the same coin. The same disgusting, freaky, ridiculous coin. This is the best that Resident Evil has ever been.”