Fortnite on PS5 Pro: Epic deploys dramatically improved, hardware-accelerated ray tracing

Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro is the most capable console money can buy right now, so it’s only right that we should see Epic’s Fortnite receive a substantial upgrade. The Pro’s extra rasterisation performance is put to good use in delivering higher resolutions up against the standard model, but that’s not really the game-changing difference. Instead, Epic deploys its higher end hardware ray tracing features to the 60fps mode of the game, offering a much improved level of global illumination and reflections – and it does so while maintaining its nigh-on flawless performance level. It’s also interesting to note that one of Sony’s ‘big three’ enhancements used. Epic prefers its own Temporal Super Resolution technology (TSR) instead of the Pro’s machine learning-based PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR).

This is quite an interesting decision and I think it highlights some important aspects about how PSSR can, should and likely be deployed in UE5 games. Epic has been working for a long time on TSR – four years, if not longer – and through its research and version updates, it has improved its quality while also reducing its cost via optimisations with minimal impact to overall quality. TSR is tailored to the needs of Epic’s engine and is fully integrated and responsively developed with all the other techniques in the engine. TSR works as harmoniously as possible with the engine’s particular quirks leading to generally competent image quality.

Epic avoiding PSSR for Fortnite makes sense. For one, PSSR will be more expensive from a computational perspective and in a world where this game doggedly runs at 60fps or 120fps, every millisecond counts. Secondly, TSR avoids issues that PSSR has – as seen recently in Silent Hill 2 on PS5 Pro. I imagine this will be something we commonly see in the near future for titles using Unreal Engine 5 until PSSR has proven itself as a viable alternative. In effect, with Epic sticking with TSR for its showcase game, a message is being sent from the engine’s creators to its many licensees.

So, TSR stays and resolution increases. At one point I measured a 1080p internal resolution with Fortnite running on PS5, up against 1350p on Pro in the exact same scene. That’s a 25 percent increase to axis resolution but more in the order of a 50 percent increase in overall pixel count. That is quite the resolution bump, which does not align with the spec differentials between PS5 and PS5 Pro, but it’s worth pointing out that for energy saving reasons, the console versions of Fortnite pare back the dynamic resolution scaling solution’s upper bounds… and it’s uncertain if a similar limitation is enforced at all on PS5 Pro. In practice though, the difference is surprisingly minor due to TSR applying to both, despite a seemingly vast gulf in resolution. Pixel counts are not the story here.