Returnal PS5 Pro Enhanced Patch is Out Now!

Console gamers getting all excited about this, when every PC game ever has had the option to up resolution.
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A PC patch would be nice too. I'm awful at this game but do enjoy the occasional attempt.
Huh? You can do native resolution or choose your upscaler, I'm not exactly sure what you're hoping for on the PC front considering they've enhanced the hell out of it already
 
Huh? You can do native resolution or choose your upscaler, I'm not exactly sure what you're hoping for on the PC front considering they've enhanced the hell out of it already

It's the best looking version but stutter (with RT on) was never fixed, they abandoned it. PS5 Pro is now a nice balance between looks and performance.
 
Fook boys, I want to play this so bad but it's still 70 Eurodollars FFS.

Played it for a good 17 hours back when I had PS plus extra but I'd like to start it again, that price though...we Nintendo nao 😁
 
Did they ever fix the texture issue on the pc? After a while they basically stopped loading beyond some initial low lod version. Tried to troubleshoot it a while back and people just pointed towards low vram. I have 24GB so it couldn't have been that.
 
They were too conservative with the resolution. PS5 could have bumped it up significantly without dipping below 60fps.



I think it only uses ray-traced audio.
I'm pretty sure they are using RT for lighting.

From Digital Foundry:

"After checking in Housemarque, we got some answers: the PlayStation 5's RT hardware is used to accelerate global illumination queries, essentially speeding up a software-based system and not used for direct visual results. A similar system is used in Nvidia's RTXGI, so I'll be curious if this technology is repurposed in some way for Returnal - RTXGI is a part of Unreal Engine 4 now. Housemarque also shared that the hardware RT system in PlayStation 5 is also used to take the 3D audio in Returnal to the next level: audio environment queries are accelerated with hardware ray tracing support."
 
A lot of armchair developers in this thread, claiming that pushing a PS5 Pro update that achieves 2.5x the resolution is 7 lines of code and/or an afternoon at work.

You guys would all make great project managers at any software development company, and that's not a compliment.

Yeah, let's just pull the band-aid off and call it for what it is: moronic.

No matter how elementary a change is, it still needs validating which is a significant effort just in test-time.
 
Fook boys, I want to play this so bad but it's still 70 Eurodollars FFS.

Played it for a good 17 hours back when I had PS plus extra but I'd like to start it again, that price though...we Nintendo nao 😁
It goes on sale at 50% on the big sales. Maybe check at the summer sale.
 
I'm pretty sure they are using RT for lighting.

From Digital Foundry:

"After checking in Housemarque, we got some answers: the PlayStation 5's RT hardware is used to accelerate global illumination queries, essentially speeding up a software-based system and not used for direct visual results. A similar system is used in Nvidia's RTXGI, so I'll be curious if this technology is repurposed in some way for Returnal - RTXGI is a part of Unreal Engine 4 now. Housemarque also shared that the hardware RT system in PlayStation 5 is also used to take the 3D audio in Returnal to the next level: audio environment queries are accelerated with hardware ray tracing support."
You got your answer and they aren't. The quote you provided tells you that much. It's using rasterized GI and the PS5's RT hardware is used to accelerate it. It isn't RT lighting you're looking at.
 
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You got your answer and they aren't. The quote you provided tells you that much. It's using rasterized GI and the PS5's RT acceleration is used to accelerate it. It isn't RT lighting you're looking at.
Yes but the rendering is accelerated by the Hardware RT. So the improved Hardware RT on Pro should really help here to improve either performance or increase resolution.
 
Not going to lie kind of dissapointing effort especially from a first party studio. They have a pro console with a massive uplift in rt arch and they decide to just bruteforce bump up the res.. they could have used the rt tech on pc and used pssr to upres from 1080p.
 
You got your answer and they aren't. The quote you provided tells you that much. It's using rasterized GI and the PS5's RT acceleration is used to accelerate it. It isn't RT lighting you're looking at.

The Finals does the same. they also use RTXGI as it's a decent looking and fast realtime GI solution (better than Lumen by a mile)
 
Not going to lie kind of dissapointing effort especially from a first party studio. They have a pro console with a massive uplift in rt arch and they decide to just bruteforce bump up the res.. they could have used the rt tech on pc and used pssr to upres from 1080p.

That assumes that the RT used in the PC version lends itself well to the RT tech in the PS5 Pro... It also assumes that the RT plus PSSR at 60 fps looked good from 1080p and looked better than what's created here.

And that PSSR plays nicely with UE4.
 
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Interesting. I didn't know that, even with RT?
I installed and tried it for science! Worked well on a 9000x3d/5080 with high RT shadows/Reflections, mix of Epic/High settings and DLSS quality with framegen.
240-300'ish FPS without a noticeable hitch. Played it for 60-70 minutes and my room was pretty toasty. If I continue playing it, I'll try dialing back RT to low/medium.

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Yeah, let's just pull the band-aid off and call it for what it is: moronic.

No matter how elementary a change is, it still needs validating which is a significant effort just in test-time.
I've stayed 4 hours longer at the office one time, when a colleague decided his change was trivial and could get squeezed in the release last minute.
Whole damn thing collapsed like a house of cards.

Assessing the impact of a change, actually applying it and then going through qualification testing again takes time.
 
A lot of armchair developers in this thread, claiming that pushing a PS5 Pro update that achieves 2.5x the resolution is 7 lines of code and/or an afternoon at work.

You guys would all make great project managers at any software development company, and that's not a compliment.
Confused Abc GIF by The Bachelorette
 
Looks like I'm going back. Returnal has to be one of the best purchases I have made ever with the amount of times I've replayed it.
 
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The amount of crying about difficulty levels around launch was just as embarrassing. it's been happening for years with this game and it's easily one of the best of this gen

Frank, I've loved what I've played but, IMO, the roguelike nature of the game...I don't know brother, repetition is not a good trait and I still don't understand how the whole roguelike genre took off...

Story wise it makes sense, yes (the whole "cycle" theme), from a gameplay standpoint though, I just don't know, I mean, I managed to reach the 3rd level boss after a good run, lost and every subsequent try on my part was just a failure, in the end I dropped it and never managed to see the story to its conclusion which...is a shame.

The "git gud" meme is for kids and internet muppets, I'm a guy in his late 40's and I don't have the time nor the will anymore to "git gud" since I don't draw any kind of satisfaction from beating ridiculous difficulty spikes anymore, instead, and while i still enjoy a good challenge, nowadays I enjoy games that have a good story, atmosphere and gameplay, the super repetition though due to the whole "you lost , now do it all over again" is just too much, not to mention, unneeded.

I'm one of the crazies that also thinks that this would have worked better as a tough, story focused linear shmup.

Cheers
 
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Frank, I've loved what I've played but, IMO, the roguelike nature of the game...I don't know brother, repetition is not a good trait and I still don't understand how the whole roguelike genre took off...

Story wise it makes sense, yes (the whole "cycle" theme), from a gameplay standpoint though, I just don't know, I mean, I managed to reach the 3rd level boss after a good run, lost and every subsequent try on my part was just a failure, in the end I dropped it and never managed to see the story to its conclusion which...is a shame.

The "git gud" meme is for kids and internet muppets, I'm a guy in his late 40's and I don't have the time nor the will anymore to "git gud" since I don't draw any kind of satisfaction from beating ridiculous difficulty spikes anymore, instead, and while i still enjoy a good challenge, nowadays I enjoy games that have a good story, atmosphere and gameplay, the super repetition though due to the whole "you lost , now do it all over again" is just too much, not to mention, unneeded.

I'm one of the crazies that also thinks that this would have worked better as a tough, story focused linear shmup.

Cheers
Some gamers just like a repetitive loop that is easy to understand. And rogue games almost always have random loot, enemies and level layouts.

Kind of like Diablo. Its the same mouse clicking mashfest since Diablo 1, but nobody cares about the story which is simply make to the end and kill Diablo for the millionth time. The hook is plowing through mobs of enemies to get loot from randomized fights.

Twin stick shooters took off way back but disappeared. But they were similar. Geometry Wars was simply just last as long as possible in randomized progressing gameplay. Game over and you start from scratch. Repeat 100 times for a high score.
 
Not something id give a go but great to see they sorted the Resolution out. Maybe they could have done more but the IQ was definitely the biggest issue looking back.
 
Frank, I've loved what I've played but, IMO, the roguelike nature of the game...I don't know brother, repetition is not a good trait and I still don't understand how the whole roguelike genre took off...

I mean most of the popular games aren't rogue-likes they are rogue-lites.
a rogue-lite constantly gives you new abilities and upgrades, which is hitting exactly the same sort of psychological reward and progression trigger as unlocking new guns, perks and addons in Call of Duty does.
even more so in fact, as many of them eventually make you into a super overpowered character that blasts through parts of the game that previously gave you issues, simply due to your new upgrades.

so it's easy to see why Rogue-Lites are very popular.
and in the same vein it's easy to see why Returnal has a harder time finding an audience as it is an actual Rogue-Like, as in it doesn't really give you new stuff after you die. there's a really simple progression system, but nothing comparable to something like Rogue Legacy where you constantly get new shit, build new stuff, upgrade stuff etc.
 
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Frank, I've loved what I've played but, IMO, the roguelike nature of the game...I don't know brother, repetition is not a good trait and I still don't understand how the whole roguelike genre took off...

Story wise it makes sense, yes (the whole "cycle" theme), from a gameplay standpoint though, I just don't know, I mean, I managed to reach the 3rd level boss after a good run, lost and every subsequent try on my part was just a failure, in the end I dropped it and never managed to see the story to its conclusion which...is a shame.

The "git gud" meme is for kids and internet muppets, I'm a guy in his late 40's and I don't have the time nor the will anymore to "git gud" since I don't draw any kind of satisfaction from beating ridiculous difficulty spikes anymore, instead, and while i still enjoy a good challenge, nowadays I enjoy games that have a good story, atmosphere and gameplay, the super repetition though due to the whole "you lost , now do it all over again" is just too much, not to mention, unneeded.

I'm one of the crazies that also thinks that this would have worked better as a tough, story focused linear shmup.

Cheers
the first boss is a bastard but once you start to play through the game you can breeze through it pretty damn quickly.
 
I've ranted about it a lot on here but this game absolutely consumed me when it came out. I even got namedropped on a gaming podcast with the director for my reddit theory posts lol. Nerdiest shit of my life...at this age!

I still have it installed now and I've run through it who knows how many times. It's one of the most satisfying games I've ever played. It plays, sounds, feels and looks fucking amazing and I love the idea of a super-slick, modern and "mature" take on...an Arcade game. To have a fantastic, lore-heavy character and world is the icing on the cake.

This is pushing me closer to a Pro trade-in and I already have like 200 hours.
 


the dynamic resolution does seem to stay pretty high.

but now I wonder how high the base PS5 could go with a similar dynamic resolution setup.
locking it to 1080p might have been a bit conservative, although probably needed due to their roundabout way they reconstruct the image
 


the dynamic resolution does seem to stay pretty high.

but now I wonder how high the base PS5 could go with a similar dynamic resolution setup.
locking it to 1080p might have been a bit conservative, although probably needed due to their roundabout way they reconstruct the image


Yeah I think their reconstruction requires dynamic res off. In the end it hurts PS5 version, at least on Pro game looks very clean now.
 
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I assume adding RT reflections would have been an issue on the CPU.
Or possibly something to do with RTX not being do easy to port to consoles. They'd probably have to implement an entire new system for RT reflections. Can't juste use the one from PC.
 
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Best I could do, in a shot for shot. Found an old screenshot

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This is proof that youtube videos are an absolutely terrible way to judge IQ and don't do justice to the higher powered machines. They don't show even half the difference a TV or computer monitor does. Look at the Brazil Pixels video. Despite being 4K, the difference isn't really big between the Pro and PS5 versions. Now look at the screenshots and the difference is huge. The PS5 looks blurry as hell on a TV compared to the Pro version.
 
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