PS5 Pro update reportedly will upgrade PS3, PS2 and PS1 games using PSSR upscaling

The real shocking news would be PS3 games running on PS5 in the first place using some sort of magic that we can hardly conceive of. A Cell emulator for a console...my head hurts...

Once we have that, we can be happy to hear they are higher res from AI, which is a big nothingburger in comparison to the first hurdle.
 
Somewhat related, but those PS3 server blades they're using for cloud streaming PS3 titles are aging, and I wouldn't be surprised if their failure rate has significantly increased over the past couple of years. I'm also uncertain if they have enough replacement blades to keep them operational. They really need to consider developing PS3 BC for the PS6, otherwise, we might have to say goodbye to even streamed PS3 games.
 
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probably because they want them to still look "retro". there's no good reason other than that to do it, other than reduce issues like visible polygon seams.
Yeah since the PS3 era Sony has had an obsession with maintaining the original look, I mean if you can improve it why not do that.
no they don't. you can do that, like enabling sub pixel calculations for polygons, or proper perspective corrected texture mapping. but you don't have to do that in order to run games at 4K.
on top of that, imaging adding a temporal upscaler to an image that uses dithering in order to blend colors lol. the amount of artifacts would be insane.
also there's nothing a 4K image would change compared to a 1440p image... 1440p is already an insane increase in resolution for PS1. that's a 36x increase...

they'd also need to modify literally every PS1, PS2 and PSP game to support this. modify in a way that's not viable even remotely. PSSR = TAA. TAA only works if the game has a way for it to hook into its motion vectors and camera... the former of which no PS1, PS2 or PSP game even tracks in the first place.
in short, it's impossible to add PSSR to a game that doesn't already use a form of TAA. even on PS3 only some rare late gen games did that.
it can't...
That's a shame
Actually, you can easily bump the resolutions of the vast majority of the PS2 catalogue (90%+) without code overwriting using simple emulator-level memory manipulation. If you want 100% compatibility, sure, you'd need a little help to get there, but there's legitimately very little stopping Sony from at least doing it automatically for the titles where it works flawlessly. For everything else, they can simply reach out for licensing / agreements, similiar to Microsoft's emulation efforts, for example. Given Sony charges for it's emulation efforts while Microsoft doesn't, doesn't feel like too much to ask.

Given the state this emulator stuff launched in, Sony clearly doesn't really give a shit about matching how things were. They fixed it up because people screaming about it because Sony has the balls to charge a subscription for PS1 emulation in 2024. If fans hadn't of screamed, they wouldn't offer any improvements of any kind at all.

You don't need PSSR to upscale emulators. If that's the best use Sony can muster for their PS5 Pro, then that's kinda sad, frankly.
Honestly I know little about Emulation.
My experience is from the 2000's so you guys obviously know more then me with what's possible, the most modern thing I know is replacing textures 😔
 
I feel like PS1 and PS2 games would look like ass upscaled with pssr.
More like piss

Happy Dog GIF by ProBit Global
 
Another "fuck you" base PS5 players from Sony, "you bought our console and supported us from the beggining ? Too bad, upgrade your poor console or get fucked"

Never buying base Sony console ever again
 
The best way to play PS3 games while having PS5:

1. Buy used PS3
2. Enjoy it

Don't wait for PS3 BC because it won't happen. I'm replaying MGS4 right now on PS3 (I bought my fourth or fifth PS3 few months ago) and plan to buy peace walker hd on PSN store that still is functioning. It's like 2008 all over again!
 
The best way to play PS3 games while having PS5:

1. Buy used PS3
2. Enjoy it

Don't wait for PS3 BC because it won't happen. I'm replaying MGS4 right now on PS3 (I bought my fourth or fifth PS3 few months ago) and plan to buy peace walker hd on PSN store that still is functioning. It's like 2008 all over again!
Off topic: MGS4 is the best. I enjoyed that game on Ps3 in the past. It is an underrated in the MGS series.
 
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Even if true Sony can fuck off, they promised the world with PS1 / PS2 emulation, pretty sure they also said you can keep and play your classic library from what you purchased on PS3, on PS5. What they have on offer now is actually pitiful.
 
The best way to play PS3 games while having PS5:

1. Buy used PS3
2. Enjoy it

Don't wait for PS3 BC because it won't happen. I'm replaying MGS4 right now on PS3 (I bought my fourth or fifth PS3 few months ago) and plan to buy peace walker hd on PSN store that still is functioning. It's like 2008 all over again!
For a lot of games PC emulation will be even better vs native but a PS3, maybe even connected to a good upscale is always a good choice.

I have two PS3s (the original Slim versions) myself, one hooked up and one for backup.
 
For a lot of games PC emulation will be even better vs native but a PS3, maybe even connected to a good upscale is always a good choice.

I have two PS3s (the original Slim versions) myself, one hooked up and one for backup.
Off topic: Ps3 console for me is completely underrated. Cell processor is still very impressive technology for me. I hope Ps6 will add some kind of a cell processor technology, along with the AMD that they will be using, like a hybrid.
 
no they don't. you can do that, like enabling sub pixel calculations for polygons, or proper perspective corrected texture mapping.
Ok so as a thought exercise - I gave some thought what it would take to hack 'driver level' Temporal Upsampler into BC.
First you need to insert sub-pixel jitter into every rendered frame - this is pre-requisite for any TAA algorithm and none of the games do it natively. It is - however, what current PS2 emulator does in the first place on PS4/PS5 (output 4 jittered frames and reconstruct them into one high-res image). So this is obviously doable.
Then you need to capture frame history (Ideally depth + RGB) - this is doable in an emulated environment although capturing specific buffers can be... fiddly (so risking compatibility). There's no standard APIs to hook for knowing what's a Frame vs Depth buffer etc - but using available HW-context, I'd still mark it as - doable.
Finally - the hard part, run a heuristic that extracts motion data from frames - amusingly this has been in some TVs since late 00s. It's also ostensibly how AMDs auto-frame gen works, and Oculus's VR frame-gen (I think that's still a thing on PC). Plus side - this can probably be improved with ML - but it'd be a new model to train for it.
Then you run TAA/PSSR as usual on that data.

The downsides from heuristically derived motion vectors is that you get various fail-cases and to not add latency you have to accept situations where generation fails/isn't ready. So it would 'work' but it wouldn't give consistent AA/resolution results (you can imagine it like DRS style drops - but not related to performance, just kind of random).

In summary - it's 'quite' complex to implement (not so different from pixel/perspective hacks in PGXP), it will not guarantee stable results (as someone else pointed out - polygon wobble would introduce ... interesting problems for AI to deal with even without hacked Velocity buffers), and it would be limited to PS5Pro only according to the rumour.
Occam's razor isn't on the side of this plausibly happening.

it's sort of analogous to hacking the pixel/perspective math in PGXP.

game that doesn't already use a form of TAA. even on PS3 only some rare late gen games did that.
Was there actually any PS3/360 game that did this? I'm not aware of any. Lots of games had motion vectors (for the motion blur) - but TAA wasn't really a thing until 2014 in terms of getting 'nice' looking results(earlier attempts were quite - bad looking), and that was on much more powerful hw at the time.
 
Was there actually any PS3/360 game that did this? I'm not aware of any. Lots of games had motion vectors (for the motion blur) - but TAA wasn't really a thing until 2014 in terms of getting 'nice' looking results(earlier attempts were quite - bad looking), and that was on much more powerful hw at the time.

Halo Reach famously had a really early and shitty form of TAA
 
Doubt this is true, but all I want is for Sony to put more resources into it.

They have an incredible backlog that would add value, especially if they make a handheld companion device in future.
 
Nintendo did that on 3DS with SNES games. You are probably right lol.

they didn't lock it behind a subscription tho.

also on the New 3DS it made sense given it had a more than 3x faster CPU than the normal one.
on PS5 Pro it wouldn't make sense since it barely got any CPU upgrade
 
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but there's legitimately very little stopping Sony from at least doing it automatically for the titles where it works flawlessly.
I'll get hate for this one - but there's like what ... a handful? of titles on PCSX2 where that is true. Almost everything else is artifact ridden to hell and requires hacks to fix and then it still usually doesn't actually look right (as in accurate to original) - just - not offensive.

It's not exclusive to PS2 either - SSX3, much as I love the game - has no 'perfect' version to choose from on modern hw. PS2 has completely broken light and fog effects, and shit input latency, GC version has some weird artifacts as well and I don't know if the music ever got fixed - plus it's not the same music PS2 had so it's downgraded out of the box and XBox even on MS emulator has texture borders all over the place in skybox etc - it's 'so close but no cigar'.
Sure if you squint your eyes - they all look kind of fine - but it's just not that 'flawless 4k experience' people love to rave about - at all.

Anyway - Sony's approach to PS2 emulator fixes all that, since
a) it's not scaling the image - the closest way I could describe it is 'accumulation upscaler' render multiple subsamples and rearrange it back into an image. This guarantees same output as originally intended without creating new artifacts in the pipeline.
b) it's perfect integer upscale (2x on each axis) so it doesn't have the filtering issues naive high-res hacks often do.


at something weird like 576p with a doubling to 800p-ish on the other axis according to Digital Foundry.
It's just 2x on each axis (plus a postprocess filter - to add some edge AA) - see above.
Pixel counts look 'weird' because PS2 era games often ran at weird resolutions (well, PS2 and GC did at least) - we had programmable CRT that allowed quite a bit leeway in output odd sized pixels into that 640x480 signal (think of it like an analog upscaler - yea 360 was not the first console to do this at all).
But I digress - point being even if they did 4x or 6x on each axis - the numbers would not look any less weird, just higher.

As for why they don't go above 4x - I don't know. MRT limit on PS4 GPU is supposed to be 8 (and besides, it should be fine to do multiple passess on higher end hw too), but it's plausibly something related to that - and they just don't bother differentiating between SKUs for emulation.

It looks like absolute shit,
It looks like PS2 games in 4x resolution do - plus the added spatial AA smear.
I agree better AA would help (as would more resolution - but AA would make a bigger difference tbh). Frankly if they just let PS5 run larger number of samples they could both enhance the AA and resolution - but I guess the cost of maintaining different emulator targets isn't worth it for them.
 
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and then there's the fact that literal 10 year old mobile hardware can play PSP games at native 4k. I played Crisis Core FF7 via PPSSPP on my old Nvidia Shield K1 at 4k connected to my TV through mini HDMI. that's a tablet that uses the Tegra K1, a cut down version of the Tegra X1 inside the Switch. so the Switch could run them at 4k.
I really don't like being a grammar nazi, but the Tegra K1 and X1 are two different SoC's, no cut downs. X1 uses Maxwell-based GPU, K1, has 192 cores of the Kepler generation.

But i do like that you use the Shield Tablet for this, because the Shield Tablet was essentially a proto-Switch when it released in 2014. Having better GPU perf than PS360, it had a beautiful port of Trine 2 (which also went to Wii U, mind you) aswell as native ports of Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel. You could use the HDMI to play those on TV, and use a separate controller for that Switch-like experience. Not bad for 4x Cortex A15, 2 GB DDR3 and 192 CUDA cores.

I wish DF did a throwback on those, because even at 10 years old, Shield Tablet/Shield K1 was remarkable hardware. Having PS360 perf in that form factor in 2014 was cool as heck. Sadly all these exclusive games are woefully unspoken of. Which is a shame. It was pretty on par with a PS360, in 2014.

... In fact it was more powerful than a Wii U on GPU perf. It sucks that Nvidia did do a push for the machine but it never became quite the console that it could be (Same for the Shield TV).
 
Oh man, how did Sony know that the one thing retro gamers want is texture filtering on PSX games. Throw in some bloom lighting if you really want to make them happy. Hopefully the PS2 games become unrecognizable too. Retro gamers prefer temporal shimmer much more than a 1:1 transfer of games from the past. Keep the good stuff coming! I hope they compress the shit out of those PCM PSX audio files. The broad dynamic range doesn't sound right on my ear buds.
 
it needs a AutoSR feature like on those snapdragon laptop, the PS4 enhanced option is too limited and cost quite a bit in performance. They should make it compatible with all PS4 games and some PS5 games that never got pro patch and also improve the quality big time. Also something like AutoHDR is also welcome.
 
For a lot of games PC emulation will be even better vs native but a PS3, maybe even connected to a good upscale is always a good choice.

I have two PS3s (the original Slim versions) myself, one hooked up and one for backup.

I can play both ways but original hardware have some benefits (zero additional bugs, trophies with PSN, full DS3 support etc.). I also can't explain why but 30fps on PS3 it totally playable for me, while on modern consoles and PC it looks like slide show. And this is on OLED...
 
I really don't like being a grammar nazi, but the Tegra K1 and X1 are two different SoC's, no cut downs. X1 uses Maxwell-based GPU, K1, has 192 cores of the Kepler generation.

But i do like that you use the Shield Tablet for this, because the Shield Tablet was essentially a proto-Switch when it released in 2014. Having better GPU perf than PS360, it had a beautiful port of Trine 2 (which also went to Wii U, mind you) aswell as native ports of Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel. You could use the HDMI to play those on TV, and use a separate controller for that Switch-like experience. Not bad for 4x Cortex A15, 2 GB DDR3 and 192 CUDA cores.

I wish DF did a throwback on those, because even at 10 years old, Shield Tablet/Shield K1 was remarkable hardware. Having PS360 perf in that form factor in 2014 was cool as heck. Sadly all these exclusive games are woefully unspoken of. Which is a shame. It was pretty on par with a PS360, in 2014.

... In fact it was more powerful than a Wii U on GPU perf. It sucks that Nvidia did do a push for the machine but it never became quite the console that it could be (Same for the Shield TV).

it also had some exclusive graphics modes in normal Android games like Asphalt 8, which looked significantly better than on any other device.
the tablet was used in official demos on TV shows and trade shows for mobile games for years after it came out.

just like the X1, the T1 was far ahead of the competition. which is why I always found it idiotic when people called the Switch an outdated system when it launched... like... there literally was no better hardware on the market that they could have realistically used.
even in the downclocked state Nintendo used the X1 in, it outperformed the best chips of the competition when they ran at their max rated GPU clock.
 
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