Call of Accountability: Unveiling the Surprising Enhancements of Unlit Ops 6 on PS5

Before the official launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro hardware, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 showcases a host of notable upgrades over the standard PS5. We’ve gathered unique insights thanks to a recent visit to meet the series’ Lead Rendering Engineer, Michal Drobot, along with the skilled team at Infinity Ward in Poland. Black Ops 6 is crafted by several studios—mainly Treyarch and Raven Software—but during my time at IW’s Poland office, I was fortunate enough to receive an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the tools used to create the game. Fundamentally, this article aims to discuss the Pro enhancements with input from the developers, while also shedding light on some of the broader advancements made to the engine.

Since its official update has been available for a month, it’s clear that Black Ops 6’s improvements run deeper than most. Some adjustments are subtle, while others yield a more noticeable difference in frame-rate performance. In essence, PS5 Pro users receive enhanced visual settings while operating at 60Hz, coupled with the integration of PSSR for improved image quality at 4K as the target output. An anti-tear VRR feature has also been added exclusively for PS5 Pro—allowing gameplay at over 60fps in that default graphics mode. Moreover, there is a significant performance boost when the 120Hz mode is enabled, where PS5 Pro defaults to the original PS5 visual settings to achieve a higher frame rate.

Starting with the 60Hz mode, four upgraded visual settings are available, beginning with a 2-4x enhancement in shadow resolution, depending on the shadow type and your distance to it. This primarily affects environmental shadow maps, improving quality across approaches and enhancing shadows that traverse walls. The improvement is subtle, yet often welcomed as a reduction in the jagged edges found along harsh shadow lines. Moving on, and perhaps more impressively, there is the enhanced global illumination. Specifically designed for PS5 Pro, a screen-space GI method simulates light bouncing between surfaces. Again, while subtle in some areas—requiring a toggle between base PS5 and Pro in full view to truly appreciate—the benefit is a significantly better light interaction between characters and their surroundings, brightening up the scene.

This SSGI feature is something the team takes great pride in, utilizing a rasterized approach that attempts to replicate the quality of ray tracing. It’s engineered to achieve results similar to the team’s internal, ray-traced benchmark, albeit at a fraction of the cost. This also influences how ambient color is applied. With the enhanced SSAO on Pro, a richer palette is introduced into the scene, particularly for enclosed environments like headquarters—creating a more life-like overall appearance.

Screen-space reflections (SSR) are also enhanced on Pro, with the goal of aligning closely with the team’s internal, ray-traced reference as closely as possible. In contrast to base PS5, the primary difference on Pro is in how accurately reflections are obscured by objects in the scene. When comparing the Skyline map, PS5 Pro significantly reduces the ‘light leak’ around geometrical shapes—walls, tables—due to the updated SSGI, resulting in a domino effect on reflection accuracy as well. Overall, we observe a modification that might not grab your attention amidst the rapid pace of Black Ops 6, but it does skillfully utilize Sony’s mid-gen system to enhance the game’s visuals.

The other major change for PS5 Pro is its native upscaler: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. PSSR only activates within the default 60fps mode, and concerning the raw metrics, it runs at 2560×1440 internally before being upscaled to 4K. This resolution is dynamic as well, with adjustments made horizontally down to 1280×1440 in more demanding scenarios, helping maintain a consistent frame rate. In terms of perceived benefits, the outcome is polished, but at times more prone to artifacts compared to the engine’s own custom TAA used on the base PS5. There are some initial issues, particularly where PSSR introduces white flickering pixels in very specific scenes. This noise tends to be more apparent in darker, shadowy areas. Furthermore, when assessing the presentation of ultra-detailed components, like textures, there is also a slight smudging compared to the TAA on standard PS5.

Speaking directly with Michal Drobot, he confirms a fix for these PSSR artifacts is already in the works—a patch that should be rolled out soon as it goes through QA. The issue, it seems, arises from PSSR not being optimally tuned for denoising imagery in its current state. The team’s custom TAA certainly has its merits here: it’s significantly quicker to deploy. Moreover, the proprietary TAA is tailored specifically for the type of output this engine generates. PSSR, it appears, excels at anti-aliasing the image, but struggles with denoising the noise created by the game’s shadows, variable rate shading, and especially its SSR.

Fortunately, PSSR still performs well in most scenes with the tool-based variable rate shading implemented. For each group of pixels the game can render at full, half, a third, or a quarter resolution. For instance, edges or sharp features in geometry are rendered at full resolution. A form of foveated rendering is also in play here, prioritizing crucial elements at the center of the screen, while experiencing a decline in quality towards the edges or flatter, simpler surfaces. VRS was only integrated within the last five days before Black Ops 6 launched, I was informed, and it ultimately helps extract the best performance from each frame while improving efficiency.

Regarding frame-rate testing,

On the Legit hardware, the final outcome is commendable. Unlit Ops 6 has previously operated smoothly at 60fps on the standard PS5 during the advertising campaign mode, and despite PS5 Legit’s visual enhancements in SSGI, SSR, AO, and shadows—along with the demanding PSSR upscale—we maintain a consistent 60fps here. The reassuring fact is that no mission falls beneath the threshold according to my testing. However, there’s one method to put stress on the standard PS5—by invoking a repeatable decrease—in the form of its split-screen mode. Utilizing the Derelict multiplayer map and adjusting a second player’s viewpoint around the action, the standard PS5 experiences consistent drops to the 50fps threshold. In contrast, when switching to PS5 Legit in the same area, while keeping the second player’s perspective in the same spot, we are now nearly reaching the 60fps threshold, with only a few isolated dropped frames. In essence, we gain the visual upgrades, and with the GPU under pressure, the Legit version is also capable of delivering superior performance.

There is another technical advantage for PS5 Legit, manifested as an ‘anti-tear’ VRR feature in this 60fps mode. This activates as long as you have a 120Hz VRR display connected, specifically with the 120Hz mode turned off in the game menu. Developed alongside Sony, an additional API call is executed on PS5 Legit in this manner, to anticipate the forthcoming frame-time. Here, rather than VRR being utilized to mask drops below 60fps—as is common in many games—Unlit Ops 6’s VRR is designed to render frames more rapidly, surpassing 60fps when conditions allow. This is accomplished through logical prediction. Based on a few preceding frames, the engine is positioned to recognize where there is ‘slop’—or, a substantial amount of frame-time that is consistently not being used within a 16.7ms budget for 60fps. By exploiting this slop, the engine can generate a frame earlier, thereby reducing latency within the system, from the input of the controller to the displayed frame.

The ultimate result is an increased frame rate compared to what one might anticipate. In most cases on my VRR display, frames are genuinely rendered at between 60-120fps, but efficiency generally hovers around 80-90fps throughout the initial mission. Only one significant drop, slightly below 60fps, is observed when detonating a planted C4 during the open-world missions. Beyond this event, the VRR mode performs exceptionally well, and the community reports that it feels more responsive than running the game unlocked with the true 120Hz output mode active.

The true 120Hz mode on PS5 Legit, however, disables all contemporary features: the visual enhancements, the PSSR, and also the anti-tear VRR capability. Instead, the Legit hardware operates at an internal resolution of 1440p while utilizing the group’s proprietary TAA, employing the same quality settings as the standard PS5’s 60Hz mode. In direct comparison between the standard and Legit consoles, we are witnessing a performance increase of up to 35 percent here as well. Areas where the game previously experienced drops to 95fps, such as the initial stretch in the first mission, now operate at an average of 120fps. We do not have a fixed lock on PS5 Legit just yet—but drops to 100fps remain possible—yet the gap has narrowed significantly now.

As a side note, the effective PSSR appears to be underutilized here, partly due to the frame-time cost: it occupies 2.1ms of the frame-time, which in its current form is simply too substantial a portion of the required 8.3ms frame-time needed to run at 120fps. In the future, enhanced versions of PSSR might alleviate this issue, but for now, the TAA is better suited for 120Hz. Similarly, I have been informed that the proposition to use PSSR for enabling a theoretical 8K resolution mode in Unlit Ops 6 presents a comparable challenge. In short, an 8K frame consists of four times the pixel output of a 4K frame, which for PSSR’s reconstruction…