PS5 Pro's New PSSR Upgrade Arrives With Big Visual Gains For These AAA Games

When Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro shipped with the initial version of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, eventual updates were expected since it was heavily based on AMD FSR 4, which is also still being updated. Now, the first wave of PSSR updates has arrived and it turns out not all PSSR updates are automatic. A number of games that shipped with PSSR 1 support will require the activation of a manual override in the PS5 Pro's Screen and Video system settings; specifically, it's the "Enhance PSSR Image Quality" option.

It's being left as an optional toggle in case users wind up preferring the original upscaler for whatever reason (like potential bugs or performance losses). The implementation recalls the existing system on PC for forcing AMD FSR 4 over FSR 3 games. Both PSSR variants are based on FSR 4, but PSSR 2 seems to boast a substantial improvement in visual quality for supported games, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. As when PSSR 2 launched with Resident Evil Requiem, its improvements for hair and other fine detail have been remarkable.


Other games listed as now having official PSSR 2 support in the PlayStation blog post include SILENT HILL 2 (remake) and SILENT HILL f from Konami, Dragon Age: The Veilguard from BioWare, Alan Wake 2 and Control from Remedy, Hellblade: Senua's Saga from Ninja Theory, Nioh 3 and Rise of the Ronin from Koei Tecmo, and finally both Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon's Dogma 2 from Capcom. Each of the listed developers is quoted with enthusiastic praise for the improvements made to both PSSR 2's fine details and motion handling compared to the original algorithm.

A few other games are also receiving PSSR 2 updates; most notably this includes Cyberpunk 2077 which didn't have any form of PS5 Pro support at all before now. If this trend continues, the manual override may not be quite as necessary as previous reports indicated, but it's still excellent to have as an option moving forward, especially for smaller developers who may not have the time or budget to return to previously-released software for PSSR version patching.

As outlined in the PlayStation Blog post, this wave of updates to PSSR 2 or "the new PSSR" sees console gaming properly enter the era of machine learning-powered upscaling, recalling the countless Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR update posts we've covered in the past. While there are no signs console gaming may also adopt neural rendering in their upscaling pipelines, the expected high-end spec of PlayStation 6 and Project Helix may make a stripped-down version feasible. Maybe it's better if that doesn't happen, though.