‘I Don’t Think We’re Seeing It Here’: GTA 6 Launch Trailer Not Using PS5’s New QSSR Upscaler

“That’s rather lavish”

• by Sammy Barker
• Yesterday, 1am

Image: Push Square

Earlier this month, Sony unveiled QSSR, presenting a variant of the renowned PSSR upscaler from the PS5 Pro for standard PS5 devices.

At the moment, this innovation is solely integrated into first-party games such as Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei, although it will also be accessible to third-party developers, with many theorizing that its debut may have been strategically aligned with GTA 6.

(According to Rockstar’s promotional material, it will “perform optimally on PS5.”)

Nevertheless, technology analysts from Digital Foundry are skeptical about any signs of its application in this week’s release trailer, which, as per the video’s disclaimer, was recorded on Sony’s console.

During a 20-minute discussion, Rich Leadbetter commented:

“I don’t think we’re observing it here. If the internal rendering resolution stands at 1440p, then what role is QSSR playing? If the intention is to upscale to 4K, considering the metrics we’ve analyzed for Quality Mode in Marvel’s Wolverine, achieving a 4K upscale would take approximately 4ms. With a 33ms rendering budget, that amounts to over 10% of your rendering allocation primarily on QSSR. That’s rather lavish.

Thus, the inquiry is: if it’s present, how will they implement it? And what might it entail if your internal resolution is already sufficiently high and ‘good enough’? Image quality was one aspect we critiqued in the Extended Look, and I’m eager to discover what QSSR might contribute and its feasibility.”

This clearly indicates a complex evaluation from Leadbetter, suggesting that QSSR might not be ideally suited for GTA 6 if the game is already aiming for a resolution that effectively upscales to 4K displays.

» …
Read More