With the launch of the PS5 Pro, those with the cash to splurge on the mid-gen refresh were initially enthusiastic to check out the many games that were declared to be PS5 Pro Enhanced with patches coming alongside the console’s launch or shortly after.
That enthusiasm however has greatly waned, after titles like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora were made to look worse than their non-PS5 Pro counterparts.
The reasons behind why some games look worse with PS5 Pro updates than without are technically varied from game to game, but a common denominator is the AI-upscaling technology PlayStation introduced along with the PS5 Pro, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR).
Which is why Avatar developer Ubisoft Massive announced today that this coming Thursday, December 12, 2024, a hotfix will be deployed that adds a key option for PS5 Pro players – the option to turn off PSSR.
“Our team is working on addressing the issues introduced with the PlayStation 5 Pro update for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora,” the team began in a statement posted to Twitter.
“On December 12, we will deploy a hotfix allowing PS5 Pro players to choose between enabling or disabling PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. With PSSR disabled, the game will use the same upscaling technology as the PlayStation 5.
While the PS5 Pro Quality (60 FPS) mode will still be available, PS5 Pro players will be able to toggle between the base Performance (60 FPS) and Quality (30 FPS) modes.
We will continue improving the quality of the PS5 Pro Quality Mode (60 FPS) using PSSR. We will let you know as soon as we can share more.”
Avatar of course isn’t the only game struggling with PSSR. The Silent Hill 2 Remake no longer has PSSR enabled as well, replaced by a different upscaling solution.
Of course all this doesn’t mean that PSSR will never get better or that developers won’t get better at installing it with their titles. These issues are the unfortunate reality of what can happen with new tech being introduced to software that wasn’t built to use it.
Early adopters (everyone who bought a PS5 Pro) are unfortunately, as they always do, paying the price for being on the cutting edge.
Source – [Ubisoft Massive]