Sony just revealed the PS5 Pro, and the updated console, which will be released on November 7 for $699, comes packed with a feature PC gamers have enjoyed for years. It’s called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR, and it’s an AI-assisted upscaler that Sony claims will end the debacle between Performance and Fidelity modes in most console releases.
Most console games use some form of upscaling today, rendering the game at a lower resolution in order to improve performance. There are a couple of key differences with PSSR, however. For starters, it uses machine learning. Sony says the PS5 Pro has dedicated machine learning hardware that’s tapped to perform the upscaling. That’s similar to what PC gamers have with Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), which uses dedicated Tensor cores on RTX GPUs for AI-assisted upscaling.
In addition, it sounds like PSSR runs at a system level. It’s not clear if games will need explicit support for PSSR now, though Sony says that the console supports a library of 8,500 titles that could have performance or image quality improvements.
Most console games today use some form of temporal upscaling. This is where the game is rendered at, for example, 1080p and outputs to 4K. It works by rendering two frames and comparing them. Based on how objects are moving in the scene, the upscaling algorithm can step in to fill in the missing details. This type of approach is similar to something like AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), which doesn’t require dedicated AI hardware.
This is a breaking story. Check back soon for updates.
