To mark its fourth anniversary, developer Housemarque has announced a free PlayStation 5 Pro upgrade to Returnal, promising to give a superb PS5 game a resolution boost of up to 2.5x on Sony’s Pro hardware. The exact phrasing of “up to 2.5x” does suggest a form of dynamic scaling is in play, which I’ll get to in a minute – but it’s a welcome move that addresses one gripe with base PS5’s image quality. Beyond that, are there any other improvements to the original experience? Are the performance issues addressed and what about the slight traversal stutter issues?
As a refresher, base PS5 to this day uses a fixed 1080p base resolution, which – according to the developer – is temporally reconstructed to 1440p, and then upscaled to a final 4K output via checkerboard rendering. While the game is brilliantly executed in its core technology – with particles often filling the screen to dazzling effect – this unusual setup does cause some visual noise on the standard PS5. It’s a hardly a dealbreaker and gameplay is king after all, but high frequency detail appears rather grainy in the final resolve. It certainly falls short of what the PC version is capable of, even at a native 1440p via DLSS.
To cut to the chase, the PS5 Pro update gives us a boost to 3072×1728 at peak, with dynamic resolution scaling in place to adjust to GPU load. The introduction of DRS is new to the Pro version, replacing the static, fixed 1080p of the base PS5 – which does have a small bearing on frame-rate. The lowest figure on record on PS5 Pro meanwhile is 2400×1350, caught during intensive boss battles where the frequency of screen-filling effects is most apt to hammer the GPU. Lower figures might be possible of course, potentially in later areas. Even so, that maximum possible 1728p on Pro is a surprisingly frequent event across the first three biomes I’ve tested, and in fact, over-delivers on Housemarque’s promise of a 2.5x increase. Rather, this best case value is closer to a 2.56x increase over base PS5’s static 1920×1080 resolution, which is a nice bonus.
The result in comparing PS5 to PS5 Pro pans out as you’d expect. Admittedly, the rapid pace of Returnal’s action means that a resolution boost won’t always scream at you, but, supposing you want to take in the sights at your leisure, this a clear upgrade. Focusing on staircases, or detailed floor textures, the moire patterns present on base PS5’s are minimised. The flickering is reduced on hard edges, and notably, any sudden burst of effects, where the pixel structure appears in its raw form for a few frames, you’ll notice less aliasing.