Fancy AI upscaling is no longer just for PlayStation 5 Pro. Sony announced it’s bringing a version of the technology to base PS5s starting with Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei.
The tech is called Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), as compared to PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which originally debuted on PS5 Pro. Sony is calling it a “new performance tier of AI upscaling” born of its collaboration with AMD called Project Amethyst.
QSSR relies on “streamlined neural network architecture” and a “hand-tuned implementation that maximizes performance on PS5” which, combined, are supposed to bring “notable improvements to both image detail and image stability on PS5.” If you’re not really sure what any of that is supposed to mean, don’t worry; there are some brief video clips to illustrate the difference.
The first shows a zoom-in of a background in Marvel’s Wolverine. Buildings far away are crisper-looking and less blurred. “QSSR adds more pixel-level clarity and stability to our environments, bringing out extra detail amidst the busy streets of Madripoor, the dense alleyways of Shinjuku, and many other areas across Logan’s epic journey,” Insomniac Games’ head of tech, Mike Fitzgerald, said.
The second clip is from Ghost of Yotei and compares close-ups of some reeds sticking out of a nearby pond. They do look better in the QSSR version, though how much of this detail you’ll be able to notice with the naked eye when you’re actually playing the game remains to be seen. “We’ve long wished that all PS5 players could experience the incredible image quality that PSSR brings to PS5 Pro, and QSSR is a positive step towards that goal,” said Jasmin Patry, lead rendering engineer at Sucker Punch Productions.
QSSR comes to both games on PS5 today, and is being offered to all developers on the platform. We’ll see how many take advantage of it.
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