A big boost over the base PS5 – and higher resolution too.

Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro currently reigns as the most powerful console on the market, making it fitting for Epic Games to introduce significant upgrades for Fortnite. The Pro’s enhanced rasterization delivers higher resolutions compared to the standard PS5, but the true game-changer is hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This feature elevates global illumination and reflections while maintaining nearly flawless performance at 60fps. Interestingly, one of Sony’s touted features, the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), is absent here, with Epic opting for its proprietary Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) instead. 

This decision sheds light on how PSSR may or may not be implemented in Unreal Engine 5 titles. Epic has been refining TSR for at least four years, optimizing it to deliver quality enhancements with minimal computational costs. Tailored specifically for Unreal Engine, TSR integrates seamlessly with other engine techniques, ensuring impressive image quality overall. 

Epic’s avoidance of PSSR in Fortnite is logical. PSSR is computationally expensive, a significant factor for a game targeting 60fps or 120fps. Additionally, TSR avoids some of PSSR’s issues, as observed in Silent Hill 2 on PS5 Pro. This decision may signal to Unreal Engine licensees that TSR remains the more reliable option for now. 

The PS5 Pro version also sees resolution boosts. In one scene, the base PS5’s internal resolution measures 1080p, while the Pro hits 1350p, marking a 25% axis resolution increase and roughly 50% more overall pixels. However, dynamic resolution scaling limits on consoles mean the difference appears less pronounced in practice, thanks to TSR’s application across both platforms. 

Ray tracing takes center stage in Unreal Engine 5, offering both software-based and hardware-based options. The PS5 Pro leverages the latter, a rarity among console titles. Hardware ray tracing vastly improves reflections, rendering trees, characters, and dynamic objects like cars with unprecedented fidelity. Unlike the base PS5’s software ray tracing, the Pro delivers stable, lifelike visuals, including player reflections absent on the standard version. 

Source: Eurogamer