{"id":127399,"date":"2024-09-25T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/25\/i-played-the-ps5-pro-and-its-clearly-better\/"},"modified":"2024-09-25T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T15:00:00","slug":"i-played-the-ps5-pro-and-its-clearly-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/25\/i-played-the-ps5-pro-and-its-clearly-better\/","title":{"rendered":"I played the PS5 Pro, and it\u2019s clearly better"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Eight years ago, PlayStation lead architect Mark Cerny showed me the power of the PS4 Pro in this very room. Today, I\u2019m checking out the new PS5 Pro instead \u2014 and feeling some major d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Like before, Sony is showing journalists a room full of screens at its PlayStation US headquarters just outside of San Francisco, playing 11 games side by side on both the original hardware and the guts of the new $700 Pro<\/a>. Like before, you\u2019ll pay a hefty premium for graphical improvements alone. Like before, games will need to be patched to give you most of those boosts, and not all patches will be equal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And like before, those improvements are seriously impressive<\/em> if your TV is close enough to your couch. This time, it brings out details like individual blades of grass, improves the density of particles onscreen, unlocks optional 8K and ray tracing modes, and even reduces the distracting shimmering that often popped up in games on the original console. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Michiel van der Leeuw, technical director on all the Horizon <\/em>games, shows me how much smoother Horizon Forbidden West<\/em> can be on the PS5 Pro, how much sharper now that it\u2019s sampling textures that render more crisply, and how it no longer needs to display the same ugly clouds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt was as if a pair of dirty goggles had been lifted from my eyes,\u201d I wrote in 2016 about the PS4 Pro<\/a>. I get the exact same vibe from Horizon<\/em> and most other PS5 Pro Enhanced games I\u2019m trying now. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Horizon Forbidden West technical director Michiel van der Leeuw shows me another scene, where the PS5 Pro loads this dino\u2019s skin at higher quality, sooner, than the PS5 below.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ll get into more details below, but I want you to know my conclusion isn\u2019t<\/em> quite the same as it was eight years ago. While it\u2019s clearly better than the PS5, I\u2019m not yet sold. That\u2019s mostly because Sony is charging several hundred dollars more than last time \u2014 but also partly because I had to stand so close to the 4K screen to get that eye-popping result. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sony\u2019s demos keep us so close to the TVs it\u2019s impossible not to see improvements, with fixed-length wired controllers encouraging us to stay nearby. When I step back anyhow, the PS5 Pro\u2019s graphical improvements get harder to make out. Some disappear at six feet, most of them at 10 feet, in game after game. That\u2019s a bit further than I measured with the PS4 Pro vs. PS4 eight years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But if you\u2019re the kind of person who already sets your PS5 games to \u201cQuality\u201d or \u201cFidelity\u201d or \u201cGraphics\u201d mode rather than \u201cPerformance,\u201d I bet you\u2019ll see a huge increase in smoothness with the PS5 Pro no matter how far away you sit. Some went from utterly choppy to downright buttery for me on the PS5 Pro, with almost all the visual quality (if not more) than the original PS5\u2019s fidelity modes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The biggest surprise for me, though, was seeing a console that can offer so many of the immersive benefits of ray tracing without massive slowdowns. It\u2019s unlikely many games will add<\/em> ray tracing modes specifically for the PS5 Pro, but Formula One racing game F1 24 <\/em>already had them \u2014 and it now lets you drive at an upscaled 4K and 60fps with them turned on. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When producer Simon Lumb flicks ray-traced graphics on and off for me, it feels like the whole image comes to life. Suddenly, the car\u2019s crash-protection halo casts realistic shadows on the bodywork; reflections naturally appear in puddles on the track and on the car\u2019s shiny hood; windows appear to refract light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Demon\u2019s Souls\u2019 smoky boss barriers now have more particles \u2014 an interesting feature of Sony\u2019s PSSR. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Both F1 24<\/em> and Gran Turismo 7<\/em> will let you choose other modes instead of ray tracing. They can optionally use the PS5 Pro\u2019s extra horsepower and AI upscaling to offer an 8K picture (for the few and proud with 8K TVs), or a smoother 120Hz mode at 4K upscaled resolution instead. But now that I\u2019ve experienced it, I\u2019d pick ray tracing every time. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Quick note<\/strong>: if a developer says their game is running at \u201c4K\u201d resolution, you should know that\u2019s not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison with other \u201c4K\u201d games. In every case, the PS5 Pro is outputting <\/em>a 4K picture to your TV thanks to the magic of AI upscaling, with all the crispness that provides. The game\u2019s internal render resolution may be quite a bit lower, though, and it varies<\/em> as you play, all of which can affect the end quality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Just for transparency\u2019s sake:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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