Astro Bot has received a patch for PS5 Pro, version 1.012, promising “an improved version” of the game on the console at “a constant best resolution” at 60fps – but what does it actually do? That was what we wanted to answer on this week’s DF Direct, and the explanation is a little more complex than than the tweak to dynamic resolution than we expected.
In short, the game now looks to be using PSSR, PlayStation Spectral Resolution. This upscaler replaces the previous TAA and delivers better image quality in most – but not all – scenarios by targeting a 4K output resolution. That mix of fortunes is more or less par for the course when it comes to PS5 Pro upgrades, with some titles and scenes particularly suiting the technique (eg Final Fantasy Rebirth) and others not so much (eg Star Wars Jedi: Survivor).
Aliasing here tends to be improved in still shots, and PSSR tends to look sharper in more scenarios – whereas the TAA approach could result in sharper or softer images depending on the complexity of the scene, differences that could occasionally be noticeable.
Screen space reflections (SSR) also look a little worse with the PSSR approach, likely down to PSSR’s somewhat less elegant approach to denoising, though there’s not a huge margin between the two patch versions.
Ultimately, the new version with PSSR does look better most of the time, with less aliasing and a sharper resolve, with the noise that we spotted in some scenes being somewhat hard to make out a traditional TV viewing distance.
That’s despite the new approach resulting in lower internal resolutions, with testing of three shots showing drops from 1872p to 1368p and 2160p to 1872p on the new patch. The PSSR technique has an additional cost versus standard TAA, so this accounts for the difference in resolution. Performance remains at a locked 60fps, so there’s no change there.
| Shot 1 | Shot 2 | Shot 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PS5 Pro Patch 1.011 | 1872p | 2160p | 2160p |
| PS5 Pro Patch 1.012 | 1368p | 1872p | 1872p |
Finally, we did see some changes in how distance shadow maps were sometimes presented on the new patch. This could be due to a difference in filtering or resolution, with the results in the new patch tending to look softer but less aliased relative to the prior patch.
Beyond the technical changes, the update also adds a new galaxy and a new challenge level, with the plan being for further four challenge levels to be added to the game over the next few weeks. Of course, these are not exclusive to PS5 Pro – they’re just part of the continued roll-out of new content.
Overall, it’s great to see that Astro Bot continues to receive attention post-launch, and of course the addition of PSSR makes a lot of sense given that this is one of the biggest selling points of the PlayStation 5 Professional.
