With the introduction of PS5 Pro, it was clear that PSSR is one of the most important innovations of this console. This technology is hardware-accelerated intelligent scaling that enables improve performance rendering at a lower resolution than the target resolution and achieving higher graphics quality than other basic resizing technologies that do not use AI or specialized hardware such as AMD FSR.

In an interview, Tymon Smektala, director of the Dying Light franchise at Techland, confirmed that the improvements the PS5 Pro has received in terms of GPU performance are important, but also acknowledged that PSSR is such a big advance that it could become key element of this new console, i.e. in the most important improvement of all.

The director of the Dying Light franchise, one of the most relevant and technologically advanced, says that AI-based scaling technology could be more important than using a more powerful GPU. Interesting because until relatively recently, some specialized media limited interest in this type of technology and even went so far as to say that we should not attach such importance to this technology as to prefer buying one graphics card over another. How wrong they were.

PSSR is an exclusive rescaling for PS5 Pro

PSSR on the right. The difference it makes is huge in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Image: Digital Foundry.

I already hinted at something at the beginning of the article, but I know it’s a topic you’re very interested in, so I’ll get into it. This technology It is still a matter of scaling, which means that the basis of its operation is the same as other similar technologies. What it does is render the image at a lower than native resolution and then rescales it to the target resolution.

This scaling process can start with different resolutions. For example, you can render 33%, 50%, 58%, or 67% pixels and cover the missing pixels by scaling the image. The key difference is in the way this scaling process is performed and the technologies on which it is supported. Scaling like FSR 3 uses spatial and temporal elements but It does not rely on artificial intelligence or specialized hardware.

PSSR uses artificial intelligence and relies on specialized hardware enabled by artificial intelligence algorithms for PS5 Pro improve the scaling qualitywhich we notice both in the sharpness and level of image details, as well as in its stability. Specialized hardware frees the GPU from the burden of scaling with artificial intelligence, speeding up the process and prevents it from having a negative impact on performance.

No specialized hardware is required derive the workload represented by the PSSR on the GPUand this would significantly reduce game performance. That’s why it can’t be used on the PS5, as it would be totally counterproductive, as this console doesn’t have enough power to move this technology, so it’s limited to other simpler rescaling technologies like AMD FSR.

With PSSR it is possible upscale from 1080p to 2160p (from FullHD to 4K) maintaining higher image quality and stability. In its first tests with this technology, Digital Foundry was able to confirm that the difference it offers is significant, and that in terms of image quality, PSSR performs so well that it outperforms AMD FSR 3.1, even though It falls under NVIDIA DLSS.

NVIDIA DLSS and the beginning of intelligent upscaling

He was in 2018 when NVIDIA DLSS was announced, a technology that appeared alongside hardware-accelerated ray tracing in the GeForce RTX 20. These graphics cards were the first in the mainstream consumer market (TITAN V doesn’t count as it was a professional market solution) to include tensor cores to accelerate AI and RT cores to accelerate ray tracing.

His debut took place in February 2019 and the truth is that It was pretty bumpy.and rightfully so. The first version of NVIDIA DLSS was sorely lacking, requiring individual training for each game and blurring the image so much that it could not be compensated for by improving performance. Games like Metro Exodus and Battlefield V were the first to use this technology, and as I said, the results were not good at all.

NVIDIA knew how to respond and in 2020 released DLSS 2.0a much better version that fixed all the flaws and problems of the original and no longer required individual training for the game. The improvement in graphics quality between the first and second versions was enormous, and the difference in performance was also significant.

From there, NVIDIA DLSS 2 became the benchmark in its category and remains the best intelligent upscaling technology to date. Intel developed plays at a lower level.

It’s funny to see where the industry has taken us. Criticism of NVIDIA for betting on DLSS has been fierce, and the technology has not stopped being questioned even after it has reached a significant state of maturity and shown that it can make a big difference. Six years later, Sony had to come and agree with the green giant by betting on PSSR, and developers have confirmed the different role that intelligent scaling can play.

The future of video games is passing through AI

NVIDIA has said this on numerous occasions, and it’s clear that it’s not wrong. The inclusion of PSSR in the PS5 Pro is just the beginning of a new stage in which artificial intelligence will be increasingly present on consolesi.e. in games, all with the aim of improving performance and enabling the use of increasingly demanding graphics engines and technologies such as full ray tracing.

I believe that many of the features we enjoy on PC, such as AI image generation and noise reductionthey will eventually make it to consoles one way or anotherand that these will have specific hardware to be able to speed up all the tasks necessary to use these features.

The big revolution of the next generation consoles, currently known as PS6 and Xbox Next, may be the implementation generation of intelligent frames combined with scaling also powered by artificial intelligence. We have already seen some PS5 and Xbox Series X games integrate the frame generation present in AMD FSR, although the result was not good. It is logical, because without AI and without specialized hardware, these technologies, as I said, are on a different level and not for the better.

In this sense, I want to remind you that the division of Xbox Microsoft has already given up on AI being key in the leap that next generation consoles will take. We don’t have concrete details yet, but looking at the technology available on PC today, we can get a rough idea of ​​what’s to come. I would bet, as I said, on the frame generation as the central pillar of the next generation. I hope in a few years I can confirm with you whether I was right or wrong.