So just to be clear, if you are using a PS5 system on a 1080p screen, some PS4 games (those that are Pro enhanced) will not run in their high res mode for supersampling. They’ll run at base PS4 settings when connected to a 1080p screen. That could even mean a sub-1080p resolution.
In fact, that even happens if there is a PS5 patch of certain PS4 games (like rocket league).
Frankly, that sucks. PS4 Pro super samples it’s enhanced games, PS5 games on a 1080p are also super sampled from what I can tell. So the hardware is definitely capable of it.
They just haven’t enabled the setting in the firmware for some strange reason. It’s a huge omission for us lowly 1080p users.
TLDR: if you have a 1080p screen and want to run the PS4 library at its best, you still need a PS4 Pro. PS5 will run those games at base PS4 settings on your display.
PS: this is different from how Series X handles it. Everything runs at max settings available on a per title basis and super samples accordingly.
I guess they’re just living in 4K land now and don’t care.
Reminds me of when I had 360/PS3 on a CRT via component, and text in some games was unreadable because it was just missing lines of data on screens under 720p
I mean, it kind of makes sense that the expectation is if you can afford a PS5, you probably already have a 4K TV given the reasonable prices on those these days.
That said, I can understand the frustration. The Xbox method is the preferred one, but as we all know, legacy decisions by development whether at Sony or at the third parties often clouds the ease of implementation of these seemingly trivial things.
It’s kind of a cop out though. For various personal reasons I’ve been doing most of my modern gaming on a 1440p monitor. PS5 would not detect that and output 1080p, then have the same restrictions noted above.
Xbox One X onward does natively put out 1440p, and games scale down to that properly
The PS4 Pro didn’t have the feature (which it does)
The PS5 didn’t do proper downscaling of PS5 games (which it does)
XBOX Series X didn’t handle this correctly (which it does)
Basically, this is a software solution Sony has already developed and implemented successfully. They even make mention of it on their site for PS4 Pro: PS4 Pro: Supersampling mode (US)
I simply assumed it would be there (because it’s not really logical for it not to be). I understand I’m late to the party on a 4k display but that’s, in part, because I was actually pretty happy with the downsampling image quality on PS4 Pro so I wasn’t in any rush.
I feel like this is simply an issue where they didn’t check a box when making their firmware. It’s free image quality they’re leaving off the table for their users.
That’s even more of an issue than what I’m describing. Lack of 1440p support seems kind of cruel, especially when they can apply a one-size-fits-all super sampling solution.
I don’t think what I’m saying is unreasonable here. It would be one thing if the hardware and firmware didn’t already have supersampling baked into it. But they clearly do. Choosing to run the games at lower settings feels very arbitrary.
I feel like this is simply an issue where they didn’t check a box when making their firmware. It’s free image quality they’re leaving off the table for their users.
Reminiscent of the PS3 features with their poor support. I understand why remote play was pretty primitive and had to be enabled by devs on a per game basis, with CFW forcing the feature is pretty hit or miss. The music playing features at the time though were laughable compared to Xbox 360 which could stream music from a local servee simultaneously while playing any game, meanwhile the PS3 had the capability to stream music mid game too albeit I think only from USB or HDD, but again it was up to developers to enable it, so few devs chose not to neglect enabling it, to the point it was pretty much a non-feature, despite afaik there not being a single title that has compatability issues with it. Baffling.
Nintendo’s long overdue rollout of bluetooth audio support. I’d love to hear from the source the real reason for some of these dumb moves.
It seems to depend on the game, select PS4 titles did indeed only run at 1080p when connected to a 1080p display (albeit with better performance than if the console was set to 4K output) until the 5.5 update which enabled supersampling.
But some PS4 titles definitely target 4K even if the display output is set to 1080p. You can tell from screenshots taken. My PS5 is set to 1080p and while games like Blue Reflection and Project Diva X render at 1080p, other games like Project Diva Arcade, Everybody’s Golf and Gravity Rush 2 definitely are rendering in much higher resolutions, with Project Diva Arcade being native 4K. Then there are Tri-Ace’s ports of Star Ocean 4 and Resonance of Fate which just let the user pick the resolution from the options, and you definitely get supersampling when choosing 1440p or 2160p.
I hope they do add the option for supersampling to get those 1080p outputting games at their best. 1080p was a necessarily evil to boost Framerate on Pro, not so much PS5.
