Releasing just prior to the PlayStation 5 Pro hardware launch, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 features a set of unique enhancements over base PS5 – where we have equally unique insights thanks to a recent trip to meet the series’ Principal Rendering Engineer, Michal Drobot, and the talented team at Infinity Ward Poland. Black Ops 6 is developed by multiple studios – chiefly Treyarch and Raven Software – but at IW’s Poland office I was able to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the tools used to make the game. So in essence, this piece serves two purposes: to discuss the Pro upgrades with input from the developers – and to talk about some of the wider enhancements made to the engine.
PlayStation 5 Pro’s update has been out in the wild for a good month already, and it’s clear that Black Ops 6’s upgrades run deeper than most. Some tweaks are subtle, while others make a more evident difference to frame-rate performance. In summary, PS5 Pro users get improved visual settings while running at 60Hz, plus the adoption of PSSR to boost image quality with 4K as the target output. An anti-lag VRR feature is also added only on PS5 Pro – letting us run at above 60fps while using that default graphics mode. Beyond that, there’s a broad performance boost with the 120Hz mode enabled, where PS5 Pro reverts to base PS5 visual settings to deliver a higher frame-rate.
Starting with the 60Hz mode, there are four improved visual settings, starting with a 2-4x increase in shadow resolution, depending on the shadow type and your distance to it. This primarily affects environmental shadow maps, where quality is boosted across near and far shadows streaking across walls. The improvement is a subtle, but often welcome reduction in stair-stepping across hard shadow lines. Next along, and more remarkably, there’s the improved global illumination. Specifically, a screen-space GI method is added just for PS5 Pro, simulating light bounce between surfaces. Again it’s subtle in some areas – and demands switching between base PS5 and Pro in full screen to truly appreciate – but the pay-off is a much more accurate light interaction between a character and nearby, brightly lit surface.
This SSGI setting is something the team is especially proud of, as a rasterised technique that attempts to mimic the quality of path tracing. It’s calibrated to create as comparable a result to the team’s internal, path traced reference, though obviously at a fraction of the cost. This also extends to the way ambient shade is implemented. With the improved SSAO on Pro, there’s a richer bed of shade added to the scene – and most interior shots like the headquarters – creating a more life-like final frame.
Screen-space reflections – SSR – are also improved pm Pro, where the ambition is to once again match the team’s internal, path-traced reference as closely as possible. In comparing it with base PS5, the main difference on Pro is in the accuracy of how reflections are occluded by objects in the scene. Switching back and forth on the Skyline map, PS5 Pro greatly reduces the ‘light leak’ around geometry – walls, tables – thanks to the updated SSGI, all of which has a domino effect in the accuracy of the reflection as well. Everything combined, we get a change that might not scream at you in the heat of Black Ops 6’s rapid action, but it does make a sensible use of Sony’s mid-gen machine to refine the game’s visuals.
The other big change for PS5 Pro is the move to its native upscaler: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. PSSR only engages in the default 60fps mode, and in terms of the raw metrics, runs at 2560×1440 internally, before being upscaled to 4K. This is a dynamic resolution too, with adjustments made horizontally to 1280×1440 lowest in more extreme cases, to keep a stable frame-rate. In terms of the perceptual pay-off, the result is a clean one, but also at times more artefact-prone than engine’s own custom TAA – as still used on base PS5. There are teething issues, where PSSR introduces white, flickering pixels in very specific scenes. This noise tends to appear more-so in darkened, shaded areas. And in comparing the presentation of ultra fine detail – like cloth – there is also a slight smearing to the result next to the TAA on base PS5.
Speaking to Michal Drobot directly, he confirms a fix is already in the pipeline for these PSSR artefacts – one that should roll out soon once the relevant patch passes through QA. The cause, it turns out, is simply down to PSSR not being fine-tuned for denoising the image in its current state. The team’s own TAA still has its advantages here: it’s substantially faster for a start. Plus, the team’s own TAA is custom-tailored for denoising the specific type of output this engine generates. PSSR, it seems, works well in anti-aliasing the image, but less so in denoising the flicker created by the game’s shadows, variable rate shading, and especially its SSR.
Thankfully PSSR still works well in most scenes with the software-based variable rate shading in place. For every group of pixels the game can render at full, half, a third, or quarter resolution. Edges or hard points in geometry are rendered at full res, for example. A form of foveated rendering is in place here too, putting a priority on details at the screen’s centre, while there is a fall-off in quality towards the edges, or flatter, simpler surfaces. VRS only just made the cut five days before Black Ops 6 released, I’m told, and it does ultimately help squeeze the best results from each frame – while boosting performance.
Speaking of which, in terms of frame-rate testing on Pro hardware, the result is a good one. Black Ops 6 already ran optimally at 60fps on base PS5 in the campaign mode, and despite PS5 Pro’s visual upgrades to SSGI, SSR, AO and shadows – and the taxing PSSR upscale – we maintain a 60fps lock here. The good news is, no mission goes below the mark based on my testing. That being said, there’s one way to stress test base PS5 – to force a repeatable drop – in the form of its split-screen mode. Using the Derelict multiplayer map, and fixing a second player’s viewpoint across the action, base PS5 suffers constant drops to the 50fps line. Switching to PS5 Pro in the same spot, though – and keeping that second player view in the same position – we’re now almost entirely at the 60fps line, barring a few single dropped frames. In other words, we get the visual improvements, and where the GPU is stressed, Pro is also able to hand in better performance.
There’s one other technical advance for PS5 Pro, in the form of an ‘anti-lag’ VRR technology on this 60fps mode. This engages so long as you have a 120Hz VRR display connected, but specifically keep the 120Hz mode disabled in the game menu. Developed in conjunction with Sony, an extra API call is made on PS5 Pro this way, to predict the upcoming frame-time. In this case, rather than VRR being used to hide drops under 60fps – as is common in so many games – Black Ops 6’s VRR is instead used to render frames faster, and go above 60fps where there’s budget for it. This is achieved through logical prediction. Based on multiple previous frames, the engine is essentially able to recognise where there’s ‘slop’ – or, a dependable chunk of frame-time that is repeatedly not being used within a 16.7ms budget for 60fps. And by using that slop, it’s able to generate a frame earlier, decreasing latency in the process, from the controller input to a displayed frame.
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Another highlight of recent games is the handling of terrain, which breaks down into multiple layers. First we have the virtual texturing system – or ‘super terrain’. This was debuted in Warzone, and fine tuned in 2021’s Vanguard, allowing a giant, detailed texture map to be generated procedurally ahead of the player. We’re talking virtual acres of landscape that adjusts its detail based on proximity and player view. This is helpfully put in example using the dev tools, which show how the overall texture map is filled out in tiles – crucially helping to manage system memory.
Next, running on top of that, is the grass. For Call of Duty, the presentation of grass across multiple consoles is carefully balanced – to ensure visibility stays the same for online, cross-gen matchmaking. Density and draw distance are matched to avoid a competitive advantage for any player – and, you’ll notice, rather than grass blades popping in abruptly, they are in fact simply lowered beneath the ground to ease the transition.
Rounding out, there’s the deformable terrain. The campaign modes of recent Call of Duty titles include clutter, or deformable grass, which leaves a trail as you crawl through. It’s perhaps best shown off in the white room footage, in a unique ‘vertex deform’ area that lets the player paint their route through a small garden patch. Likewise, we have deformable snow for levels that need it – achieved via tessellation.
