Grand Theft Auto VI already looks like one of the best games ever made, but its showcase had one soft spot, literally. On a base PS5, the image came off a little blurry. This was consistently pointed out by Digital Foundry in their analysis videos and now DF thinks that Sony has a tool that could fix the issue called QSSR, though whether it ends up in the game is entirely on Rockstar Games.
You see, the way consoles work is that they rarely render games at a true 4K. Instead, they render at a lower resolution, then upscale the image to fill a 4K screen. They've gotten so good at pulling this off that the result is clean and sharp images that are less taxing on gaming hardware to generate. It isn't perfect though and sometimes the picture can go soft and such is the case with GTA 6.
In its deep analysis of GTA 6: An Extended Look, Digital Foundry found GTA 6 appears to render internally around 1440p on a base PS5, then upscale to 4K with a fairly basic method. Everything else, the lighting, the density, the character work, is among the most impressive they have ever seen. The final image is just softer and more shimmery than necessary, which, as we've already mentioned, Digital Foundry believes QSSR can fix.
What QSSR could do for GTA 6
The issue | The potential fix |
|---|---|
GTA 6 renders around 1440p on base PS5 | QSSR is a cleaner way to scale that up to 4K |
A basic upscale leaves the image soft | QSSR sharpened Marvel's Wolverine a lot in testing |
It is the one real knock on the visuals | It would not need a full engine overhaul |
Base PS5 is what most people will play on | But adopting it is entirely Rockstar's call |
Digital Foundry sees QSSR as a plausible upgrade path.
QSSR is a streamlined version of Sony's PSSR upscaling tech currently exclusive on the PlayStation 5 Pro, built to run on the base PS5. Digital Foundry tested it in Marvel's Wolverine and called the results extraordinary, pointing out to a clear jump in sharpness on edges, hair, foliage and water compared to the game's old upscaler. It is not quite full PSSR quality and it carries a small performance cost, but it is a real step up and competitive with or better than the alternatives.
This is where GTA 6 comes in. The game currently looks like it uses the older, softer kind of upscaling, which is exactly what QSSR is designed to clean up. Dropping in a modern temporal upscaler could sharpen the base PS5 version noticeably without rebuilding the engine. If Rockstar ships GTA 6 with high-quality upscaling on base PS5, Digital Foundry calls that a potential game-changer for how the console handles such an ambitious title.
The catch is an obvious one. None of this is confirmed and the implementation is completely up to Rockstar. Digital Foundry is careful to note it may not be simple, since Rockstar's current image pipeline is tightly woven into its ray-tracing and anti-aliasing work, so bolting on a new upscaler could mean trade-offs. Rockstar may not have the necessary resources to make the feature work on GTA 6, at least in lead up to the game's release, but post-launch implementation is definitely not off the table. Of course, there's no word from Rockstar either way, so we'll have to wait and see.
With that said, GTA 6 runs at a locked 30 fps on consoles and most players will experience it on a base PS5, not a PS5 Pro. A sharper base image would narrow the gap to the pricier PS5 Pro version, which feeds right into the question a lot of people are weighing, whether GTA 6 is worth buying a PS5 Pro for at all.
So one of the few asterisks on GTA 6's visuals now has a possible answer and it came from Sony rather than Rockstar. QSSR is the clearest path to cleaning up the game on the console most people own.
Whether Rockstar implements it is the open question, but these two companies have a close enough partnership that it's possible they have an internal arrangement sorted out already. If not, then it'll be interesting to see how GTA 6 will look after Rockstar is finished putting on the final touches on November 19.