PS4 Pro In-Depth Analysis: 4K Gaming For $400?

Two weeks on from the reveal, and with a big bunch of analysis under our belt, here's Rich's take on the PlayStation 4 Pro and what it's capable of.

[terrencecoccoli]

The end of the video is so sad. Terribly sorry for your loss.

[MistahMOB]

High Frame Rates > Resolution beyond 1440p

[samsant]

I don't know who Ozzy is, but that's way too young. Thoughts are with his family and friends.

[DfzHybrid]

Sorry for your loss, may he rest in peace. Taken to young.

[AndyGilleand]

If you're curious how the checkerboard technique works, it's quite impressive. Essentially the base idea is similar to (although way better than) interlacing, in that, if motion is completely still, you actually *do* have a native 4K image. What the engine actually does is render half the pixels on one frame, and the other half the next. Obviously if nothing's moving, the game can simply combine those two renders together to result in a perfect 4K image. However, when things start moving, the engine *isn't* upscaling or interpolating. What it's actually doing is looking at the previous two rendered frames, and reprojecting those pixels forward to "fill in the gaps" in the checkerboard pattern. Every pixel that gets rendered also has motion vector data rendered as well. Essentially, the renderer can say "this pixel is moving 65 degrees at 3 pixels/frame". Then the PS4's scaler chip will reproject that pixel forward by extrapolating where that pixel should be on the current frame. It does this reprojection technique using pixels from the last two frames, which allows the scaler to fill in the gaps in the current frame's checkerboard pattern. This results in an image that is almost a perfect reconstruction of native 4K resolution. The fact that it uses the checkerboard pattern, as well as the two frame reprojection technique, rather than interpolation, makes this about 100x better than any deinterlacer could have ever done on traditionally interlaced content.

The areas where you might see some blurrier edges or textures are when things are either moving very fast, very erratically, or there's just too much parallax going on to reproject accurately. Essentially the way it reconstructs the image is similar to how temporal AA reconstructs near perfect smooth edges. So if you've seen how impressive that technique can be in recent games such as Uncharted 4, the same level of quality at reconstructing 4K will be present in this checkerboard rendering system. Honestly, after seeing some of the games close up on a 4K screen, I wish developers could use this for current PS4 games that run at 900p, as it would likely allow them to render at simulated 1080p instead, and would look better than the native 900p imo.

[ParsianTV]

sorry to hear about your son, may he rest in peace. As always a great analysis.

[tominatorxx]

I think it's weird that Sony and Microsoft are now aiming for 4K with the new consoles. The previous ones had already problems with keeping a steady 60 fps at 1080p.

60 fps is the first thing you should worry about since it affects the gameplay. But apparently a higher resolution is more important than the playability of a game... I hope for the people that will buy these consoles that all developers will include multiple options so that you can turn down the visuals in favour of the framerate.

I mean higher resolutions is good and all but the first thing they should worry about is the framerate.

[DozifJuggles]

Idk who Ozzy is but he looks like he was a lovely friendly guy from those pics so may he rest in piece and my condolences to his family and loved ones.

[underflip]

If sony really wanted to give us a supperior experience they would have focused on 60 fps not resolution

[TrackDayMaker]

I don't know about anyone else, but if Richard is impressed then I am very optimistic.

[nemanjasavic]

If you watched to the end you know the feels hit like a damn freight train.
Sorry for your loss man.

[PSProK]

I'd rather have higher quality assets and 4x MSAA at 1080p than 4K. Hope developers give us this option.

[weses]

I'd just like to say I'm sorry about the loss of Ozzy and I hope you're all doing okay at DF. Thanks for the vid guys

[OutlawFarmersRC]

So lets get this straight. I'm a PS4 owner, what is the list of things I need to just get started in Upscale 4K gaming and watching Movies and 4K streaming content.
1. PS4 Pro
2. LG55UH6150 Ultra HDR Pro 4K TV
3. Ultra 4K blu-Ray player (Xbox One S
4. Playstation
5. Total

This does not include games at $60-80. Plus needing to renew the PSPlus account every year.

[Anonyminder]

Thx Richard good summary, I don't know if Ozzy was your son, but accept my sincere condolences...

[KNSonic]

Sorry for your loss Richard. Life can be so cruel sometimes.

[XxUltimateGodzXx]

basically youre paying $400 for a 1800p resolution checkerboarded up to 4k with all the eye candy but at 30fps with the option to go for a 1080p 60fps with a bit less eye candy maybe one setting down or 1080p 30fps with all eye candy if you cant do 4k, with full HDR support and some ganes running native 4k FOR $400 and a 1tb harddrive witha blue ray player.

This is an amazing deal.




plus they kept 8gb of gddr5 because unlike Microsoft, they will keep parity so no one on the regular one is left behind. With 12 gb on the Scorpio, anymore than 8 and you lose parity for future games.

[Butterlove]

Rest in Peace Ozzy.

I don't know you, but I hope you had a wonderfull time on earth.

[coinsagEm]

@ 8:17 "Even though it's not native 4K, it doesn't need to be..."  THAT'S the problem right there.  Sony is marketing the Pro as a 4K capable machine, but it simply isn't.  Upscaled, super sampled, whatever trickery they use...doesn't make it 4K no matter how they try to spin it.  I don't like to use this term often, but what Sony is doing is a bold-faced LIE.  Just like your TV touting its 120hz refresh rate, when in fact it's 60hz.  All this marketing hype bullshit is really pissing me off.

[XboxNews-DealerGaming]

Welcome to Digital Damage Control lmao