Some PlayStation 5 Pro owners have been facing a rather perplexing issue. Certain games that are marked as 'PS5 Pro Enhanced' on the PlayStation Store actually seem to perform worse in their enhanced versions compared to the base PS5 console. Silent Hill 2 and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are prime examples.

Unraveling the PlayStation 5 Pro Gaming Conundrum

Silent Hill 2: The PS5 Pro Enhancement Dilemma

Players on the Silent Hill 2 Reddit page have been voicing their concerns for over a week. Despite the game being advertised as PS5 Pro Enhanced, it still offers options for Quality and Performance graphics. It's claimed that Quality mode runs at a steady 30 frames per second with no significant improvement. However, Performance mode now exhibits an odd shimmering effect on certain surfaces. This shimmering might be a result of the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling technology used by the PS5 Pro, which seems to be working incorrectly with this particular game. A video shows a player switching to Performance mode mid-game, and the shimmering effect becomes immediately apparent, especially on puddles and trees.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: PSSR's Impact

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor also appears to be a victim of PSSR. Digital Foundry published a video claiming that the PS5 Pro version has "severe image quality problems." By showing a side-by-side video of the game running in Performance mode on both the PS5 and PS5 Pro, it's clear that the latter has a distinct shimmering issue. Oliver Mackenzie from Digital Foundry notes in the video, "If you look at this side-by-side, you can see just how unstable the game appears now with PSSR in the Performance mode. I would personally go as far as to say it looks dramatically worse than the old Performance mode here." Jedi: Survivor had numerous patches before the release of the PS5 Pro, and it had reached a point where its Performance mode was "not that offensive looking – it was basically not too bad, it was basically okay, especially from a normal viewing distance on a large television."

The Underlying Issue: PSSR and Image Details

Mackenzie suggests that the issue is likely due to the way PSSR upscales the image. Like other upscaling algorithms, PSSR takes a game's existing rendered image and uses machine learning to fill in missing details and present the game at a higher resolution. But if the rendered image has a low level of detail or contains intricate, non-repeating patterns like a road surface or foliage, the upscaled results can vary from frame to frame, resulting in the shimmering effect.

The Lack of Communication and Patches

It's not yet clear whether these issues will be addressed through patches or if they need to be fixed at a game or system level. Silent Hill 2 players on the game's Reddit page are growing impatient as there seems to be a lack of acknowledgement from Konami or Sony. User Time-did-Reverse wrote, "I am totally fine if a patch or fix for the extremely obvious Pro issues is not ready, or is perhaps weeks away even. I’m not unreasonable and expecting immediate fixes on a new console. But I think what is reasonable to be irked about is the total lack of communication from both Sony and Bloober Team regarding 1) Acknowledgment of issues, 2) Acknowledgment that said issues are being reviewed / addressed, 3) If known, some form of ETA on addressing the issues and 4) Making it clear whether this game is currently 'PS5 Pro Enhanced' as the tag says on the store."