The PlayStation 5 Prosparked much debate, with many gamers not feeling particularly excited about dropping $699 without any guarantee that their favorite games would do the more powerful hardware justice.
While the sentiment is understandable, as is the frustration with certain lacklusterPS5 Pro enhancement patches,Call of Duty: Black Ops 6can rest easy.
Thomas Morgan ofDigital Foundrywent on a tour of Infinity Ward Poland anddetailed his experiencefor Eurogamer.
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During the trip, Morgan gota first-hand show of the technology used to makeBlack Ops 6justify its PlayStation 5 Pro update, guided by the game’s Principal Rendering Engineer Michal Drobot.
The PS5 Pro gives players more choices compared to the usual console experience. In games that are properly set up for it, you can pick between the visually-improved version running at 60 FPS, or prioritize performance at 120 FPS.
The main difference between this and the average performance settings on console titles is that the performance option on the Pro version gives you the same graphics as the base PS5 running in quality mode.
Given the level of visual fidelity that many PS5 titles achieve, it is not a bad tradeoff.
The Devil is in the Details
Activision put out the PS5 Pro enhanced patch about a month ago. Although the game was always meant to be optimized for it,Call of Duty: Black Ops 6came out before the console launched, so there was some inevitable lag there.
The PS5 Pro’s visual improvements show themselves in the 60Hz mode.
Shadow resolution jumps two to fourfold when chasing visual quality. Shadows are one of the most noticeable improvements you can make in a game but also a hopeless performance hog unless you have the hardware for it.
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Black Ops 6 uses SSGI (screen space global illumination) to calculate light bounce between surfaces, which shows when someone is standing next to a well-lit object.
When paired with quality SSAO (screen space ambient occlusion), SSGI offers realistic lighting interactions but with less performance loss than other methods like Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen.
Activision also banked on improved SSR (screen space reflections) to cull light leaks around hard edges.
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While PC gamers duke it out over whether DLSS and FSR are the best or worst thing ever introduced, the PS5 Pro version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 adds PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), Sony’s in-house upscaler. This feature is exclusive to the 60Hz mode, as it is redundant when running at 120Hz.
According to Thomas Morgan, the results aregood, but not perfect.Certain scenes introduce flickering white pixels that many will recognize from poorly implemented DLSS on PC titles.
Black Ops 6 rendering director Michal Drobot says a fix has been included in a future patch, to be released once it passes QA.
Another cool feature of the PlayStation 5 Pro version is the engine’s interaction with variable refresh rate (VRR) monitors.
If you are using a 120Hz monitor with VRR but put the game on 60Hz mode, the console sends out an extra API call to read the upcoming frame time.
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Once it recognizes repeated unused frame-time, it uses that ‘extra room’ to get ahead and generate the next frame, which helps decrease input lag and translates into improved frame rates above the target in the settings.
This makes the campaign experience smoother and helps with competitive multiplayer where every millisecond counts.
Despite struggles with anti-cheat and genuinelyconfusing monetization optionswith the upcoming Squid Game collaboration, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has cemented its status as thebest title in the franchisein a long time.
You havea strong campaign, great visuals, and a masterfully crafted backend that makes you play without thinking about whether your frames will tank in the next second.
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