Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro is the most capable console money can buy right now, so it's only fair that we see Epic's Fortnite receive a substantial update. The Pro's additional rasterization performance is leveraged to deliver higher resolutions compared to the standard model, but that's not really the game-changing difference. Instead, Epic implements its high-end hardware ray tracing features in 60fps gaming mode, offering a much better level of overall lighting and reflections, and does so while maintaining its near-flawless level of performance. It's also interesting to note that one of Sony's “big three” improvements it's not used. Epic prefers its own temporal super resolution (TSR) technology over PlayStation's machine learning-based spectral super resolution (PSSR) on the Pro.
This is a pretty interesting decision and I think it highlights some important points about how PSSR can, should and probably willpower be implemented in UE5 games. Epic has been working on TSR for a long time (four years, if not more) and, through its research and version updates, has improved its quality while reducing its cost through optimizations with minimal impact on quality. general. TSR is tailored to the needs of the Epic engine and is fully integrated and responsively developed with all other engine techniques. The TSR works as harmoniously as possible with the particularities of the engine, which leads to a generally competent image quality.
Epic avoiding PSSR for Fortnite makes sense. For one, PSSR will be more expensive from a computational perspective and in a world where this game stubbornly runs at 60fps or 120fps, every millisecond counts. Secondly, TSR avoids the problems that PSSR has, as recently seen in Silent Hill 2 on PS5 Pro. I imagine this will be something we commonly see in the near future for titles using Unreal Engine 5 until PSSR has proven itself. a viable alternative. In fact, with Epic sticking with TSR for its showcase game, the engine's creators are sending a message to its many licensees.
So, the TSR is maintained and the resolution increases. At one point I measured an internal resolution of 1080p with Fortnite running on PS5, versus 1350p on Pro in the exact same scene. That's a 25 percent increase in on-axis resolution, but more on the order of a 50 percent increase in total pixel count. This is a big increase in resolution, which doesn't align with the spec differences between PS5 and PS5 Pro, but it's worth noting that for power-saving reasons, the console versions of Fortnite lower the upper limits of the dynamic resolution scaling solution… and it's uncertain. if a similar limitation applies on PS5 Pro. In practice, however, the difference is surprisingly smaller because TSR applies to both, despite a seemingly huge gulf in resolution. Pixel count is not the story here.
Ray tracing is where things get interesting, because it comes in two forms in Unreal Engine 5: software-based and hardware-based. Hardware RT is not at all common in UE5 console titles, although the classic Matrix Awakens demo does they have it, which might have given the impression that it would be used more widely. Since then, almost all UE5 titles have shipped with the lower quality ray tracing software. The fact that Fortnite on Pro has RT hardware tells me that Epic doesn't think it's a good fit for the base hardware, but it can be used on PS5 Pro as an easy-to-use upgrade. In fact, if you take a look at Silent Hill 2 on Pro, RT hardware is it's in 30fps quality mode, where it's absent on the standard PS5 equivalent.
In terms of difference, RT reflexes have improved a lot. The engine now plots the triangles that form an object instead of the distance fields with blob marks as found in software mode. The reflected trees actually look like trees rather than basic weirdly divided approximations. The LOD SDFs also see pop-ups with reflections, which doesn't happen with the Lumen hardware on PS5 Pro. Everything seems stable and more consistent. The same applies to the shadows of objects in reflections: they are blurry and confusing in software mode, while the shadows of trees look much more like real ones in hardware mode. Moving objects, such as characters, are also added to reflections, which do not exist with the software's ray tracing. The most obvious example of this is that your own player character is not present in reflections on PS5, but is on Pro. Other dynamic objects, such as moving cars and other players, are also rendered in reflections with RT hardware, but not in the software version of the base console.
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Global illumination also benefits to varying degrees. The nature of diffuse lighting is that it doesn't need a huge amount of precision, so in some cases the Lumen software works well in the existing game, but as you'll see highlighted in the video included above, sometimes the lighting just isn't right. necessary. It's not physically plausible, while temporal stability is another big problem with obvious flicker issues. This is all gone on PS5 Pro thanks to hardware-accelerated RT. Dynamic object lighting has also been dramatically improved – the floating effect seen in the base PS5's software solution has been replaced with distinct, accurate bouncing lighting in world space as objects made of triangles are traced. , not just in screen space as is the case with Lumen software.
The last big difference between Pro and PS5 is in lighting stability. Since Lumen hardware can literally “see” more objects more accurately, it has fewer “boiling” errors and artifacts. Most of the emissive lighting in the Lumen software is in screen space, making it very unstable, while the Lumen hardware displays it better, making it more stable on the move.
So RT is the key update, but there are a couple more points to highlight. 120fps gameplay never had the cutting-edge features of Unreal Engine 5 to begin with, so perhaps it's inevitable that the PS5 Pro version will look virtually identical, with a near-perfect 120fps readout. Performance at 60fps, even with the updates, remains solid overall, only dropping the occasional frame during times of heavy loading, and even then, very briefly. Frame rate drops are very rare and essentially unnoticeable, whether you're playing on the standard PS5 or the Pro model.
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As for comparisons of the PS5 Pro configuration to the PC, it's interesting to see that despite the improvements, the new console doesn't get overall equivalents to the “epic” PC configuration. For example, with RT reflections, we are at the equivalent of the height of a PC, based on the lighting detail and geometry seen in those reflections, along with their overall resolution. However, the diffuse lighting on PS5 Pro is actually the closest to the highest “epic” settings, where the high settings on PC sometimes introduce speckled artifacts on geometric edges and also have a blurry grainy look overall.
However, there are two other configuration settings that surprised me. TSR is set to around the medium quality setting on Pro, with more aliasing edges than their high or ultra counterparts. This is a computationally inexpensive setup on PC, so I'm curious why it was chosen. Finally, there's the post-processing quality setting, which at high settings removes some of the more cinematic tone mapping found in 'epic'.
Even with this combination of settings, we're still getting a big upgrade over the standard PS5 version of the game, especially when it comes to the base console's lack of hardware ray tracing support. Seriously, it would be great to see more UE5 games on PS5 Pro with RT hardware, as the quality benefits are substantial, as this piece will hopefully demonstrate. Maybe it wouldn't be possible for every game's 60fps performance modes, but as Silent Hill 2 demonstrates, it can surely find a home in quality 30fps modes. For now, though, Fortnite continues to serve as a great “showcase” for Unreal Engine 5 on consoles, with a smartly implemented update that takes advantage of the strengths of the new hardware. Even if you're not a fan of the game, it's still absolutely gorgeous and worth checking out.