Unreal Engine 5 Hardware Ray Tracing Shows Its Muscles on PlayStation 5 Pro in Fortnite; PSSR Implementation in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is Extremely Disappointing

Nov 30, 2024 at 06:08am EST
PlayStation 5 Pro

Like other popular games, Fortnite was recently updated with a PlayStation 5 Pro patch that introduces some new features that elevate the game's visuals considerably and provide a glimpse at the future of Unreal Engine 5-powered games on the system.

A few hours ago, Digital Foundry shared their analysis of the game's PlayStation 5 Pro patch, showing how the introduced additions make a big difference, as does the absence of PSSR support. Instead of using the AI-powered upscaler, which is producing a variety of issues in several titles, Fortnite on PS5 Pro continues to use TSR, a choice that makes total sense considering it is tailored to Unreal Engine 5 and has less cost on the GPU, allowing the game to run at 60 FPS and higher with fewer issues.

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The most significant addition included in the Fortnite PlayStation 5 Pro patch is the introduction of Unreal Engine 5 Hardware Ray Tracing, making the popular battle royale game one of the few UE5 games to support it on consoles. The difference, as shown in multiple comparisons, is night and day with software ray tracing, as Hardware Ray Tracing is generally more stable and consistent, bringing massive visual improvements and fixing some of the stability issues seen on the base model.

While the Fortnite PlayStation 5 Pro patch showed how the Unreal Engine 5 can take advantage of the system's power to enable features not possible on the base model, other patches show how one of the system's new features, the aforementioned PSSR upscaler, still has a long way to go. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is among the latest games to support the upscaler, but the results are extremely disappointing, as showcased in GamingTech's analysis.

The PlayStation 5 Pro is now available worldwide. You can learn more about the system by checking out our review.

About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.

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