'The upgraded PSSR significantly enhances Assassin’s Creed Shadows' — Sony confirms a release date for its next-gen upscaling tech on PS5 Pro

• Sony's new PSSR upscaling tech is coming to Assassin's Creed Shadows on April 7
• The next-gen tech introduces improved image quality, performance, and ray tracing
• The new features will be available across all three PS5 Pro modes

Sony has announced that its upgraded PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) AI upscaling technology will finally be added to Assassin's Creed Shadows this month.

The update will arrive on April 7 alongside the game's version 1.1.9 patch and will introduce improved image quality, smoother performance, and enhanced ray tracing on the PlayStation 5 Pro.

“The upgraded PSSR significantly enhances Assassin’s Creed Shadows by delivering sharper pixel quality and exceptional image stability, effectively eliminating distracting visual artifacts caused by motion and vibration, and creating a smoother, more immersive experience that allows players to stay fully engaged in the world without interruption," said technical art director Robert Foriel in a new PlayStation Blog post.

The enhancements will mean cleaner and more stable environments in Shadows' sprawling open-world, complex rendering of dense vegetation, ray traced lighting, and dynamic effects. It also delivers higher visual fidelity, "reducing the trade-offs between performance and image quality".

Wind whipping through long grass will appear more fluid through Shadow's Atmos system, "resulting in highly complex and natural motion across large environments" and a more realistic atmosphere.

"This kind of dense, thin geometry is especially challenging, with constant motion and frequent visibility changes across frames," said technical architect Nicolas Lopez.

"The upgraded PSSR preserves fine details at close range, allowing individual blades of grass to remain clearly defined even in motion, while also improving crispness at longer distances, with cleaner edges on trees and other distant foliage."

Similarly, PSSR's upgraded real-time ray tracing also handles effects like reflections, ambient occlusion, and dynamic lighting more accurately across complex scenes, reducing the need for manual adjustments and resulting in stable and visually consistent image quality.

All these features will be available across all PS5 Pro graphics modes, Performance, Balanced, and Quality, which all render at different internal resolutions with Dynamic Resolution Scaling.

"Integrating the upgraded PSSR into Assassin’s Creed Shadows was straightforward — the code changes were minimal, almost identical to the original PSSR integration,” added Lopez. "Yet the upgrade brings a noticeable improvement in image quality across the board. It’s rare to get such a significant visual boost with so little tuning required."

Resident Evil Requiem was the first game to receive the latest PSSR update, and it has since rolled out for a collection of games including Silent Hill f, Control, Alan Wake 2, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and more.

The new tech is also expected to be brought to Crimson Desert and Cyberpunk 2077 soon.

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