Summary
Sony has switched on its Quick Spectral Super Resolution upscaling in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on the standard PlayStation 5, in a rollout set out on the PlayStation Blog on 13 November, with five more games to follow. Daniel Craig, principal engineer for graphics research and development at Sony Interactive Entertainment, wrote that QSSR was introduced “last month”, “bringing AI-guided upscaling to the console you already own”. He added: “The next set of games is on the way, with updates rolling out over the coming weeks.” The Spider-Man 2 patch is version 1.006.000. Insomniac Games’ release notes, posted on 13 November, say the game “now uses QSSR for improvements to both image details and image stability on PS5”. Mike Fitzgerald, head of technology at Insomniac, said the studio had “seen great results integrating QSSR in Marvel’s Wolverine” and decided to bring it to Spider-Man 2 “in an update that’s live now”. Players would see image stability and sharpness benefits “in both Fidelity and Performance modes”, he said, describing Spider-Man 2 as the studio’s “2023 title”. What QSSR does on the base PS5 QSSR is built on the same foundation as PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, the upscaler that runs on the PS5 Pro. Craig wrote that it can deliver “sharper details, cleaner edges, and more stable images than traditional upscalers”, and that because it shares its interface with PSSR, it is “a natural fit for games that already support PSSR”. The technique is familiar from PC graphics, where a game renders at a lower internal resolution and a trained model reconstructs the displayed frame. Nvidia’s DLSS popularized the approach on desktop graphics cards. Neither Sony nor Insomniac published frame-rate or resolution figures for the Spider-Man 2 update, and the blog post gives no performance numbers for any of the titles listed. The stated gains are image detail and image stability. QSSR is aimed at the console without the mid-generation upgrade, an install base that has grown over six years; PS5 shipments have passed 100 million units. Craig opened the post by writing that “six years after launch, PlayStation 5 is still getting better”. Spider-Man 2 is not the first game to use the technology. Digital Foundry, which covered the announcement, reported that QSSR “debuted on only two games – Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei”, the second of which Sony styles Ghost of Yōtei. The outlet said the upscaler delivered better image quality and temporal stability than previous techniques such as FSR or TSR. Five more games, one with a month Only one of the five titles announced alongside Spider-Man 2 has a stated month. Remedy Entertainment is adding QSSR to Control Resonant, and Erik Jansson, senior graphics programmer at the studio, said the team had “worked closely with Sony to have it ready in an update coming in December”. Jansson said QSSR gave Control Resonant “a much more stable and detailed image”, and that it was “great to see PlayStation bringing the same kind of leap on the PS5 that PSSR brought to PS5 Pro”. Embark Studios is bringing the upscaler to two of its live games. Mikael Linderholm, technical art director at the studio, said QSSR was “coming soon to ARC Raiders and The Finals” and would deliver “increased sharpness, better environmental clarity and overall visual improvements to even more PlayStation players”. Hello Games is working on a version for No Man’s Sky. Sean Murray, the studio’s founder, said QSSR “allows us to render the universe in sharper, cleaner and more beautiful detail, while delivering the best possible framerate”, and told players to “look for it in the next few weeks”. Expression Games is adding the technology to Hell Let Loose: Vietnam “through an upcoming update”, according to game director Paul Rustchynsky. He said console visuals were “something our community has been passionate about”, and that QSSR would bring “sharper, cleaner image quality to the battlefield, from dense jungle to the chaos of a full-scale firefight”. Digital Foundry said players will “have to wait a little longer” for the other five games, with the Control title set to get support next month and the rest promised either “soon” or “in the next few weeks”. Project Amethyst and what comes next QSSR grew out of Project Amethyst, Sony’s continuing collaboration with AMD, which also produced the upgraded PSSR running on the PS5 Pro. Craig called it “another example of how that shared work continues to benefit players across platforms”. Sony has not published a list of candidate titles beyond the six in the announcement, nor a schedule for further updates. Craig wrote that “developers are just getting started”, and that the company was “excited to keep working with them to bring QSSR to more games on PS5 in the coming months”. For owners of a standard PS5, the step is the Spider-Man 2 download. The Insomniac notes for version 1.006.000 cover the QSSR change and point players to the PlayStation Blog, where Fitzgerald places the upscaler inside the game’s existing Fidelity and Performance modes.