The “Enhance PSSR Image Quality” option present on PS5 Pro titles that make use of the newer version of the image upscaler is not getting updated with future releases. PS5 Pro lead architect Mark Cerny revealed this in an interview with Digital Foundry, where he also explained that it so that the PS5 Pro community could “provide clear guidance” on when to actually use the feature.
“The current strategy is that it will be fixed, i.e. even if there are updated network parameters for the most recent PS5 Pro games, those parameters will not be applied when the Enhance feature is used,” he explained. “That allows the PS5 Pro community to provide clear guidance on how and when to use the Enhance feature – conversely, if the parameters were continually being updated then that guidance would be much harder to provide. Having said that, we are in very early days here at PlayStation with these ML libraries, and I’m certain our strategy will evolve over time.”
The option essentially allows games that can make use of the upgraded version of PSSR to toggle between it and the older version, giving players more options in how they want their game to look. However, Cerny’s last line about machine learning libraries still being in their “early days” for PlayStation might give players more hope about the option itself also getting upgrades. As it currently stands, however, developers will need to manually update games to support newer versions of PSSR as they come out.
Cerny also spoke about other improvements that have been made to PSSR over time. The newer version, for instance, is faster than the original, which in turn allowed Sony to implement the “Enhance PSSR Image Quality” option to begin with, thus forcefully upgrading the visuals for any game that might support the upscaler.
“The new PSSR is something like 100 microseconds faster than the original,” he explained. “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.”
In the same interview, Cerny had also revealed that, through Sony’s partnership with AMD, frame generation will also be a feature that makes its way to PlayStation consoles in the future. This, he said, was thanks to a new version of FSR, dubbed FSR Redstone, which features frame generation algorithms that have been co-developed by the two companies.
“Just to clarify a few things about the collaboration with AMD, the new PSSR uses the same core co-developed algorithm as FSR Redstone’s Upscaling (to avoid confusion, I’ll use the new names today rather than FSR4),” Cerny shared. “FSR Frame Generation is also based on co-developed technology (or as my good friend [SVP and GM of AMD’s Computing and Graphics Group] Jack Huynh puts it, ‘co-engineered technology’). I’m very happy with how that work is progressing, and an equivalent frame generation library should be seen at some point on PlayStation platforms.”
Cerny is yet to offer any more comment about what these “PlayStation platforms” might be, however. “All I can say is that we have no more releases planned for this year. And I look forward to discussing this more in the future!”
