PS5 Pro Can Now Give Your PS4 Games a Visual Boost
The PS5 Pro is an interesting console upgrade: it doesn’t have exclusive games, comes without a disc drive or stand, and costs $699. In fact, aside from a slightly tweaked design and quieter fans, it’s all about the graphics upgrade. And from the looks of it, these updates aren’t just extending to PS5 games, but PS4 games as well.
To be clear, PS5 Pro does not automatically improve the quality of every game in your library. When it comes to PS5 games, developers need to update games to make them “enhanced” for the new console. On Monday, Sony shared a list of 55 such games , including God of War Ragnarök and The Last of Us Part II Remastered , that when played on PS5 Pro can take advantage of the new GPU to run games at higher resolutions and increased resolutions. frame rate.
It’s in these games that Sony’s advertised expertise shines through. Players can expect faster ray tracing effects (so lighting should be more realistic), AI scaling to improve visuals without taxing the hardware, and more choice in “game modes.” When playing on a base PS5, many games offer the option to play in Performance mode, which lowers graphics quality to improve frame rates, or Fidelity mode, which lowers frame rates while increasing frame rates. Improved games for PS5 Pro will offer more choice with the ability to play in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second.
PS4 games aren’t “improved” but you can improve them
On the other hand, there are games for PS4. These games will not receive enhanced versions as they are PS4 games and not PS5 games. So, you shouldn’t buy a PS5 Pro assuming that a more powerful console will automatically make your PS4 library as good as improved PS5 games.
However, Pro does offer the ability to improve the graphics quality of PS4 games through a new option in the settings menu. If you enable “Image quality enhancements for PS4 games”, you can slightly improve the appearance of your older PlayStation games. (The use of the word “enhancement” here is a little confusing. The difference is that enhanced PS5 games are changes made by game developers to optimize their games for the PS5 Pro, while PS4 games benefit from hardware tweaks on the PS5 Pro itself. console.)
Again, since this is a simple tweak and not a developer-optimized update, PS4 games won’t look any better on the PS5 Pro than they would on the PS5 or PS4 Pro. In fact, this setting will not improve frame rates in games, meaning that if the game is capped at 30 frames per second, running with the PS4’s image enhancement setting will not change this.
However, you will notice some improvement in the visuals themselves. The best example (at least the most popular at the moment) is Bloodborne : Sony never offered a remastered version of this fan-favorite game on PS4, so since its launch in 2015 you’ve been stuck playing it at 1080p and 30 frames per second. no matter what PlayStation console you were running it on. This feature still keeps the frame rate at 30fps, but the visual enhancement officially makes this the best way to experience Bloodborne on PlayStation.
Sony hasn’t revealed details about how it handles visual zooming (there may be some AI processing going on here). However, in the setting itself, the company warns that this mode may lead to unexpected behavior in games. If you experience this behavior, Sony recommends disabling this feature.