Topic: The 'PS5 Pro is technically for me' Thread

@Ralizah @graymamba

We just have to hope that the ever so meme-able Mark Cerny has unlocked some kind of new power within Sony and AMD's project amethyst. They may have been behind the 8-ball on upscaling and RT for a while, but with Cerny by their side, they may just get the knack.

@Ravix 🤣 well they’ve already made a huge leap forward with FSR4 to decrease NVIDIA’s lead with DLSS. My two cents… I kinda think that NVIDIA will always have their nose in front though.

Anyways, Steams own user survey results show that 72% of PC gamers are gaming on equipment less powerful that the impending Gabecube… which in turn is around the same power as a base PS5 and is rumoured to cost a lot more. So… the amount of PC gamers using rigs less powerful than a Pro is even higher than 72% (not worth guessing that figure without further info). Therefore, what people can get at the moment for £569.99 is simply an incredible deal.

It begins (again)

Instantly everything looks far more detailed, better textures, sharper images and it has fixed the fizzies from those games that weren't working as well with old PSSR.

Also, Cyberpunk with PSSR is going to be a thing, too. The game they definitely won't update gets another update, I guess 😁

I wonder if Sony do a soft-relaunch ad campaign. I know I would. And maybe just stop making PS5's without PSSR the by time PS6 is out.

@Ravix As a Pro owner this is what I’ve really been waiting for. Exciting times and I anticipate that the split public opinion on the Pro will calm down as there will cease to be games that look or play worse on it. Crimson Desert and GTA6, among others will change perceptions as well.

What’s interesting from what I’ve seen so far is that the PSSR technology seems to be making the Quality mode obsolete. It seems like the image fidelity and ray tracing are basically the same in the 60 fps modes as in the 30 fps modes of the base PS5. I was one who would often choose the fidelity/quality mode because I wanted the ray tracing and 4K image but now you get that with Performance mode too.

One question I had (and I’m not very knowledgeable with the technical aspects) is whether the first party games will benefit from PSSR. My understanding is that the Decima engine stuff has its own upscaler and doesn’t use PSSR, so I would suspect Horizon Forbidden West, Death Stranding 2 would not really change any with this update. Not sure about Insomniac’s games like Spider-Man 2, Rift Apart, and upcoming Wolverine, etc. I don’t know if they have a proprietary upscaler too.

It really seems like the third party games are the ones getting the big benefit.

@Th3solution I feel much the same.

Personally, I never liked using the 60fps performance modes on PS5, they were utterly horrible to me, now I play most games at either above 60fps variable refresh rates which feel great, or utilize much more ray tracing or higher fidelity in what is basically an extended quality mode that can also hit 60fps in a lot of games. Games look better and feel much better to play because of it. So, to me, it seems like a much bigger upgrade than just graphics or just performance. Plus the extra storage is finally the roght amount for this current gen where games are huge. Original ps5 had a hit of a joke amount of storage, to be honest.

We also will never have to deal with the much worse upscalers that base ps5 games are stuck with which just aren't up to the task in my opinion. FSR 1 & 2 or TSR or whatever. They held games back, they really did.

It also doesn't mean that the base PS5 is now crap and worthless, it just means those of us that want to can now choose to move on from it and embrace a decent upscaler that makes games look and play as they should have always done this generation, in all honesty. 4k 60 now looks and feels like 4k 60 and that is kind of the baseline for pro performance mode, often reaching higher frames whilst still looking as good as quality mode.

So far I just loaded KCD2 to have a run through the countryside and everything looked fuller, lusher, and more detailed, and overall just nicer. And that was a pretty well optimised game to start with, it just struggled on all systems with vegetation and high detail, I believe, and that hasn't had a specific pssr 2 patch yet, just the toggle made it appear far nicer. Games with detailed worlds like this should benefit so much in future.

As for PS studios games, i'm not sure. I think Yotei used PSSR. But they have the different pro upgrades anyway and all the PS studios stuff runs really fast and obviously fidelity is already top tier for those. I can't remember the exact reasons why they were better on pro to start with, either. The GPU was a bit better I think, so it unlocked more power.

What were you playing at the moment? Was it one of those Horror games? Resi/silent hill?

Crimson Desert will be my first real test in a few days, I think. But I might have a mess around on some games I know well like KCD2 and Dragon's Dogma 2 in the meantime out of interest.

@Ravix So yeah, playing Silent Hill 2 and Horizon Forbidden West. I’ve started to leaning toward more SH2 to be honest. It’s holding my interest a little more. It might be just because I know it’s relatively short comparatively.

So I’ve played about 10 hours of SH2 pre-PSSR2, a good chunk of that was on the Portal though, so it’s going to be a little harder for me to compare, but today playing about 2-3 hours more after the upgrade I do think I see and feel a difference. Mainly it is with the light flickering. Use of light is so central to the visual experience in this game. Before the update there would be sometimes that the light and fog would shimmer or flicker, and I didn’t notice much of that today. It really didn’t bother me before and I thought the game looked great, but now I do feel a slight difference. Perhaps I’m imagining it. And like I said, I might be comparing it to the Portal streamed version in my head, which is not a fair comparison. Either way, it look great and runs perfectly now. 😄

And I suspect HFW won’t have much of a change, but I’ll probably check it out in earnest this weekend. That is if I can pry myself away from March Madness! 😅