Sony upgrades controversial PSSR upscaler in PS5 Pro

The upgraded version of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) now rolling out is expected to improve PlayStation 5 Pro's "AI" upscaling performance in games.

PlayStation 5 Pro has proven fairly popular, but its built-in game upscaling system, PSSR, has been controversial. PSSR is designed to upscale games running at lower resolution to 4K, but gamers have complained that the "AI" upscaler introduces shimmering, flicker, artifacts and other visual issues, with some titles looking worse on PS5 Pro than on the standard PS5.

Sony is now rolling out an improved PSSR 2.0 to PS5 Pro:

- "The algorithm and neural network used in the new PSSR stem from our Project Amethyst partnership with AMD. Through AMD's FSR 4 upscaling technology, PC gamers have already seen the benefits of our collaboration. With the updated PSSR, we're delivering the very latest of this co-developed technology with a further six months of refinement for PS5 Pro players," said Mark Cerny, Lead Architect for PS5 and PS5 Pro.


Resident Evil Requiem is the first game
Sony confirmed that Resident Evil Requiem, available now, is the first PlayStation 5 Pro title to take advantage of PSSR 2.0.

- "We are happy to share that Resident Evil Requiem – shipping today – is the first title to use this more advanced PSSR, which is helping to keep both frame rate and image quality high," said Mark Cerny.

The improvements should be particularly noticeable in scenes with fine detail, such as hair rendering, as illustrated in the example from the game below.

- "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. 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," explained Masaru Ijuin, Senior Manager Engine Development Support, Capcom.


More updates later this month
Sony said the upgraded PSSR upscaling will roll out globally to PS5 Pro over the coming weeks.

Later in March, Sony and game developers will provide additional updates. Sony has promised to introduce a new toggle that allows players to enable PSSR 2.0 even in games that have not yet been officially updated beyond the original PSSR version. Meanwhile, developers will gradually release patches with full support for the new PSSR.

More than 50 games currently take advantage of the old PSSR system on PlayStation 5 Pro.

Sony said the manual toggle must be enabled by the user and may result in unexpected behavior. For most players, it may be better to wait for official game patches or new titles that have PSSR 2.0 support baked in.