Sony Interactive Entertainment has introduced new AI upscaling technology to the base PlayStation 5, called Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR).
SIE developed QSSR through its ongoing AI graphics collaboration with AMD. QSSR features “streamlined neural network architecture” and “hand-tuned implementation [to] maximise performance on PS5” to enhance image quality and improve frame rate.
PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) remains exclusive to the PS5 Pro, which SIE says is the “gold standard” of this technology.
“It’s great to be improving the PS5 this far into the generation, enabling developers to make even better-looking games,” Daniel Craig, SIE principal engineer for graphics R&D told Digital Foundry.
“The reality is that the PS5 Pro has 300 TOPS of dedicated hardware for this purpose and is free to pick a much more generous spot on that cost-versus-quality curve.”
Craig continued: “It’s true that PS5 Pro was purpose built for the task, so QSSR relies primarily on FP16 math. A streamlined neural network architecture got us close but from there we leveraged a variety of less obvious hardware features to maximise efficiency (as console developers tend to do)… packed math instructions are used extensively. The real challenge is keeping the pipeline full and reducing or amortising the costs around the math.”
QSSR will be “offered broadly” to PlayStation developers, and the technology is “fundamentally a drop-in replacement for titles that already support PSSR,” said Craig.
“That said, tuning game settings takes a bit more time, perhaps a few days. For example, teams may need to adjust streaming settings to ensure higher quality mips are resident.”
The first titles to implement AI upscaling on the base PS5 are Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Wolverine and Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Yōtei.
“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,” said Sucker Punch Productions’ lead rendering engineer Jasmin Patry.
“We’ve long wished that all PS5 players could experience the incredible image quality that PSSR brings to PS5 Pro, and QSSR is a positive step towards that goal.”