Perhaps inevitably, Digital Foundry Direct Weekly returns once again with a new episode and it’s fair to say that we have an exceptional line-up of topics and supporter questions this week. We’ve already posted an article about path-traced lighting coming to Skyrim, but what stood out to me this week was news about the discovery of a new exploit for PlayStation 5 – and it’s already delivering 60fps upgrades for PS4 titles that never received any kind of official patch.
Console exploits aren’t talked about much because of their piracy-adjacent nature, but the scale and scope of the ‘PS5 Hack’ is limited by a number of factors, not least that the exploits have already been patched by Sony. To use an exploit on the PS5 means you can’t run any new games and you can’t go online. It then becomes more of a technical curiosity, and one of those curiosities is that a range of frame-rate unlocking patches that only work on exploited PS4 and PS4 Pro consoles can now be adapted to run on PlayStation 5, with most of the patching work being carried out by an individual known as Illusion.
Their YouTube channel is a treasure trove of data, showing a range of games previously locked to 30fps running unlocked – and it’s interesting that it’s rare to see too many titles delivering that much of a performance upgrade once the 30fps cap is removed. Red Dead Redemption 2, DriveClub, Batman Arkham Knight… these and many others have been patched, but whether it’s CPU or GPU limitations, 60fps is understandably elusive. Illusion even has 720p resolution patches for some PS4 games, which highlight that even if the GPU were stronger, the lacklustre Jaguar CPU cores would still be problematic in sustaining 60 frames per second.
00:00:00 Introduction00:00:56 News 01: Jedi: Survivor coming to last-gen consoles00:21:17 News 02: Skyrim modded with path-traced lighting00:29:29 News 03: PS5 exploit allows modded PS4 games to run00:39:58 News 04: Beta PS5 firmware features Dolby Atmos support00:48:36 News 05: Switch 2 to launch in 2H 2024?00:56:57 News 06: The Last Hope removed from Nintendo eShop01:05:28 Supporter Q1: Doesn’t targeting 8K with a hypothetical PS5 Pro benefit 4K displays through downsampling?01:10:49 Supporter Q2: What could the PS5 Pro’s rumoured AI acceleration enhancements mean?01:18:12 Supporter Q3: Mark Cerny suggested that the PS5 could load in high quality assets as the player moved the camera viewport. Will this actually be implemented?01:21:27 Supporter Q4: Is it time for Microsoft to let developers skip certain features on Series S?01:28:39 Supporter Q5: With Sony aggressively discounting the PS5, are they trying to bury Microsoft’s ninth-gen console hopes?
Everything changes now with those patches ported to PlayStation 5. In the DF Direct this week we see some clean footage of Gravity Rush running its 4K PS4 Pro mode effortlessly running on PlayStation 5. Many other ‘left behind’ unpatched games are slowly seeing their patches ported too: Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Colossus and even Bloodborne are now seen running at 60fps (the latter being a port of Lance McDonald’s existing work).