Alan Wake 2 on PS5 Pro uses PSSR to upscale from 864p, sub Full-HD, to hit 4K 60 FPS

One of the big criticisms of Sony's big PlayStation 5 Pro reveal was that it was hard to see the difference in visual quality when it showcased footage from games like Ratchet & Clank running on the baseline PS5 hardware, comparing it to the beefed-up PS5 Pro. Like others, part of the issue stems from Sony dealing with YouTube compression and artifacts when live-streaming a presentation.

As part of its next DF Direct show, Digital Foundry has gotten access to uncompressed or direct-feed-like footage of the PlayStation 5 Pro running Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Alan Wake 2, Horizon Forbidden West, Hogwarts Legacy, Gran Turismo 7, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Dragon's Dogma 2. Although currently locked behind a paywall for its members, X user @JMaine518 has posted a summary of Digital Foundry's findings.

Specifically, Sony's brand-new AI upscaler PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution). The good news is that PSSR delivers a higher-quality image than AMD's FSR. However, it falls short of NVIDIA DLSS regarding image stability - in that some scenes have noticeable ghosting and shimmering.

And PSSR is required to hit 4K 60 FPS and even 4K 30 FPS in games. With PSSR enabled, Remedy's Alan Wake 2 is rendering in a sub-HD 864p to hit 4K 60FPS with PSSR or 1260p to hit 4K 30FPS, presumably with advanced ray-tracing. This might sound like a cause for alarm, but rendering at a lower resolution is typical for modern high-fidelity games.

Alan Wake 2's incredible path tracing mode on PC requires DLSS 3, Frame Generation, and Reflex rendering at 1080p to run at 4K 80+ FPS on the GeForce RTX 4090. That said, the higher the base resolution, the better the image quality - which is why DLSS Quality in 1440p or 4K looks better than or on par with native rendering.

Here's a quick summary of the PlayStation 5 Pro's performance per Digital Foundry.

• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart- Runs at a variable resolution of 1440p to 1800p to hit a native 60 FPS or 4K 60 FPS with PSSR.
• Alan Wake 2 - Runs at 864p to hit 4K 60 FPS with PSSR or 1260p to hit 4K 30 FPS with PSSR and presumably with RT.
• Horizon Forbidden West - Runs with higher quality visuals comparable to PC on the PS5 Pro.
• Hogwarts Legacy - Running at 30 FPS on the PS5 Pro with higher quality ray-tracing.
• Gran Turismo 7 - Running at 1188p with ray-tracing and PSSR to hit 4K. Baseline PS5 runs at a native 4K 60 without RT.
• Assassin's Creed Shadows - Runs at 864p to hit 4K 60 FPS with PSSR.

In response to this analysis, Digital Foundry has responded to the initial knee-jerk reaction of the PS5 Pro running a game at a sub-1080p resolution. "The reason why high-quality upscaling was created was to shift the balance from quantity of pixels to quality of pixels, and opening the door to smoother performance. It's down to developers to strike the right balance, but PSSR is a big step in the right direction."

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