Remedy has revealed PS5 Pro improvements for Alan Wake 2.
In the fresh one blog postthe developer has confirmed that it will “take full advantage” of the recently announced PS5 Pro console to further enhance its 2023 horror game.
For starters Alan Wake 2Quality and performance modes will be improved for mid-generation consoles and will utilize Sony’s PlayStation Spectral Super resolution (PSSR) scaling method.
The PS5 Pro’s quality mode will run at 30 frames per second and feature ray-traced reflections, as well as 4K output resolution.
Meanwhile, Performance Mode will not support ray tracing, but will allow for 60 frames per second and 4K output resolution, and will have approximately the same image quality (rendering) settings as Quality Mode on the base PS5.
“Performance Mode on PS5 Pro offers significantly higher output resolution and more visual detail compared to the base PS5,” Remedy said. “The Pro model has improved overall image stability, fog, volumetric lighting and shadow accuracy.”
Remed has shared its update process Alan Wake 2 for PS5 Pro, explaining that increasing the rendering resolution is one of the easiest ways to improve image quality. It also experimented by upgrading the 60fps performance mode output from 1440p to 4k and adding PSSR, which “positively affected image sharpness and stability in motion.”
“Increasing the internal rendering resolution uses a lot of processing power, no matter how powerful your hardware is,” the team explained. “However, in our experiments, even adding all the power to the increased rendering resolution provided a barely noticeable difference in the output image or image quality. Adding more pixels to achieve visual quality is not straightforward with new AI-based scaling methods.”
The studio has since said so Alan Wake 2 is “visually incredibly detailed and rich”, “difficult to lend itself to ray tracing, especially compared to our previous game”, Control“.
Still, the studio welcomed the challenge of updating the game on PS5 Pro, saying: “Ray tracing effects bring the world to life in great detail.” Alan Wake 2 you can observe even more precisely than before on the console, and the image is more stable in complex lighting situations.”
“We’ve always wanted to bring cutting-edge visuals to our games, but it’s always about finding a balance between frame rate, image quality, technical and hardware limitations, development resources, and what we want to achieve artistically in the game.” Medicine added.
The team began talking about the benefits of ray tracing, but concluded that it “involves cost” because “each ray must be traced, assessed for impact, and shaded.”
“In a game like Alan Wake 2“its complex light-material interactions and rich environments can make tracing, shading and denoising even a single ray tracing effect too expensive to justify the cost depending on the hardware,” he stated.
“Geometrically Alan Wake 2 it’s a very dense game. The use of a GPU-driven rendering pipeline and fine-grained selection, along with GPU-triggered skinning, enabled the creation of densely populated forest scenes with layers of foliage and trees encountered during Saga gameplay segments set in the lush environments of the Pacific Northwest.”
Alan Wake 2 is one of the best horror games you can currently play on PS5, and its second expansion, titled House by the Lakestarts today.
