The PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaler can produce excellent results, but that’s not always the case.

In fact, there are positive aspects to PSSR, but when it falters, it not only fails to keep up with Nvidia’s DLSS, but also lags behind the older AMD FSR 2. This happens in cases where the native resolution of the game is low, because in this case upscaling to 4K doesn’t produce excellent results. A good example of this is Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake II, which has probably not yet turned a profit for the Finns, as publisher Epic Games Publishing has yet to recoup its costs…

Digital Foundry recently compared Alan Wake II on the PlayStation 5 Pro in performance mode (using PSSR) and on a PC with Nvidia DLSS at ultra graphics settings. In both cases, the same native resolution of 864p was used. With PSSR, the image quality generally doesn’t look much like 4K because Sony’s upscaler doesn’t bring out very fine details, while Nvidia’s does. On the PlayStation 5 Pro, the image looks “soft” and unstable, because it looks visibly noisy and shimmering, and therefore even AMD’s upscaling technology looks better…

The PlayStation 5 Pro’s scaler leaves something to be desired compared to both the Nvidia DLSS and the AMD FSR 2 with effects like SSAO, SSR and volumetric effects as shown in the fog example. In the case of the PSSR, a clear shimmering can be seen. Thus, the upscaler in its current state is not only inferior to the DLSS, but even the AMD FSR 2 can outperform it. It looks better in motion, but not so much in other scenarios. Still, looking at how far Nvidia has come with DLSS since its release, we can expect a lot more improvement for PSSR.

Digital Foundry also took a look at the ray tracing capabilities of Alan Wake II and compared it to the low RT settings of the PC port. The console effects are worse, so the technology has room for improvement…

Source: WCCFTech