The PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaler is one of the key features of Sony’s half-generation console.

The PSSR upscaler is still behind Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR 2 (not 3!), and we haven’t even mentioned Intel’s XeSS, which we wrote about yesterday and how many games support it, and which will probably gain even more interest thanks to the new generation of Arc cards and GPU architecture. But back to PSSR: the first version of it is good, but not always great!

A new video from Digital Foundry looks at how well the remake of the first part of The Last of Us, and then the remaster of the second part, perform on the PlayStation 5 Pro thanks to PSSR. They also compare the AI-powered upscaler to Nvidia and AMD’s solution. The PC port was run with similar graphics settings, but image sharpening was set to the lowest on both AMD FSR 2 and Nvidia DLSS, as PSSR does not appear to use post-processing on Sony’s console.

In motion, PSSR can outperform AMD FSR 2, as FSR 2 is better at smoothing out detailed geometry and vegetation. The PSSR image also has a bit of noise, while the FSR doesn’t, so the two upscalers are essentially neck-and-neck in both The Last of Us games, but the FSR 2 provides a sharper, more stable image when looking at still images. Nvidia’s upscaler, on the other hand, performs much better than Sony’s in most scenarios. It’s almost flawless in stills and very refined in motion, even in performance mode. Meanwhile, PSSR shows better detail in motion than DLSS, so there’s a lot of potential for Sony’s technology.

It’s no coincidence that if PSSR performs so well in the beginning, it could improve a lot later on.

Source: WCCFTech