Sony’s new PSSR 2 upscaler for the PS5 Pro is not only returning better results than its predecessor, but it’s also achieving them faster.
As you may or may not know, everything you see outputted by your console has a computational cost, and this is sometimes measured in time.
Take upscaling, for example: it takes time for the image to be processed, reconstructed, and sent to your display.
Speaking with Digital Foundry, system architect Mark Cerny has revealed that Sony’s goal with PSSR 2 was to achieve a better upscale faster than with the original PSSR. This would allow it to include a universal toggle for all supported games.
Watch on YouTubeSubscribe to Push Square on YouTube168k
And it reached its target with room to spare.
Cerny explained:
“I was a bit uncertain about whether there could be a user option to upgrade all PSSR-supported titles to the new PSSR the key issue being that for that option to make sense, the new PSSR would have to be faster than the original one.
We made that our target, and ultimately managed to achieve it - the new PSSR is something like 100 microseconds faster than the original. Which in turn allowed us to implement the 'Enhance PSSR Image Quality' option to force-upgrade all PSSR-supported games. If you use it, frame drops should become oh-so-slightly rarer.”
Digital Foundry follows up with some research which confirms what Cerny is saying, using Monster Hunter Wilds as an example. That game has practically identical performance with the new PSSR 2 enabled, despite it having improved image quality.
So, this is a remarkable achievement, then.
While some of the nitty-gritty goes over our head somewhat – we’d recommend you refer to Digital Foundry for the full interview – the fact that PSSR 2 delivers improved visuals at faster speeds is remarkable.
As we’ve repeated on a few occasions now, this all bodes well for the PS6, which will continue to iterate on the ideas incorporated here.