Astro Bot has received a patch for PS5 Pro, version 1.012, promising “an improved version” of the game on the console at “a constant best resolution” at 60fps – but what does it do? That was what we wanted to answer on this week’s DF Direct, and the explanation is a little more complex than than the tweak to dynamic resolution than we expected.
In short, the game now looks to be using PSSR, PlayStation Spectral Resolution. This upscaler replaces the previous TAA and delivers better image quality in most – but not all – scenarios by targeting a 4K output resolution. That mix of fortunes is more or less par for the course when it comes to PS5 Pro upgrades, with some titles and scenes particularly suiting the technique (eg Final Fantasy Rebirth) and others not so much (eg Star Wars Jedi: Survivor).
Aliasing here tends to be improved in still shots, and PSSR tends to look sharper in more scenarios – whereas the TAA approach could result in sharper or softer images depending on the complexity of the scene, differences that could occasionally be noticeable.
Astro Bot Gets PS5 Pro Upgrade: But What Does It Do? Watch on YouTube
Screen space reflections (SSR) also look a little worse with the PSSR approach, likely down to PSSR’s somewhat less elegant approach to denoising, though there’s not a huge margin between the two patch versions.
Ultimately, the new version with PSSR does look better most of the time, with less aliasing and a sharper resolve, with the noise that we spotted in some scenes being somewhat hard to make out a traditional TV viewing distance.