AI image upscaling is coming to PlayStation 5, Sony has announced, and it’s available already in two games: Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei.
The image-upscaling technology is called Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), and it’s positioned as a slightly diluted or lesser version of the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is available on PS5 Pro – the “gold standard” of “AI-guided upscaling”, Sony said on the PlayStation blog.
QSSR apparently provides improvements to image detail and “stability”, courtesy of “a hand-tuned implementation that maximizes performance on PS5”. In a comparison video for Marvel’s Wolverine, the close-up image appeared fairly clear – detail is noticeably crisper with QSSR on.
“QSSR adds more pixel-level clarity and stability to our environments,” Insomniac head of tech Mike Fitzgerald commented, “bringing out extra detail amidst the busy streets of Madripoor, the dense alleyways of Shinjuku, and many other areas across Logan’s epic journey.” It apparently “brings a great taste of the PS5 Pro experience” to players on PS5.
A short comparison video for Ghost of Yotei displayed similar results, revealing less blurry background and environmental detail. “QSSR excels at resolving the fine details in our characters and environments and does so with a level of temporal stability that hasn’t been possible on the PS5 console until now,” Sucker Punch’s lead rendering engineer Jasmin Parry said.
Digital Foundry has already tested QSSR and seems enthusiastic about it, saying that in Marvel’s Wolverine’s case especially, “the quality boost can be exceptional”. “In terms of image quality analysis, suffice it to say that temporal stability is substantially improved, detail level increases, sub-pixel integrity is considerably superior, while artefacts from elements like moving foliage are much reduced. That said, with Ghost of Yotei, a game with already decent image quality saw less dramatic improvements.”
The impressive bit about QSSR comes from the PS5 not having dedicated AI upscaling technology like PS5 Pro does, apparently, and Sony finding a way to get it working on PS5 means there’s now a potentially better solution for image upscaling than upscalers like FSR – AMD’s native solution (PS5 has AMD-based architecture). Nevertheless, DF said: “There remains a big divide between the same game running QSSR on standard PS5 and PSSR on Pro.” DF has a QSSR video with comparison footage, if you’re interested.
Following QSSR’s experimental application in Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei, QSSR is going to be “offered broadly to all PlayStation developers”, Sony said in the blog post. It’s not clear whether this QSSR update has anything to do with a PS5 firmware update that’s just rolled out, incidentally. That update apparently makes some security fixes and improves “system software performance and stability”.
