Seems they were right to laugh, since you’re unable to show how the PS4 Pro was a ‘glimpse into the future’.
Was there anything the PS4 Pro introduced that made a big splash in Cerny’s famous PS5 hardware introduction?
FP16 and lower-precision compute.
Why wouldn’t this just be Nvidia’s GPUs that are actually leading the way vs AMD’s stuff?
Because Nvidia don't have the in-house devs to make meaningful use of their hardware, and most PC-exclusive 3P don't have the pipelines (budget, studio size, backing, arguably talent) to push those high-end GPUs to their limits, either.
The PC GPUs and related tech have to rely on console-centric game devs & publishers to actually push the tech they make in meaningful ways (related to playing video games).
PS4 pro can do RT and AI upscaling? If my mind is not playing tricks on me, no. But it was sweet playing games at higher native resolution with it.
Technically the SEGA Genesis and SNES can do RT, you don't need specific hardware for that. The CPU could handle all that calculation on its own, in theory.
Just depends on other design targets of the game, obviously.