The Touryst might not be the most graphically demanding game on the market but it does act as quite a substantial step for modern-day consoles. In specific, this indie game created by Shin’en Multimedia is the first game to render at 8K on the PS5. Not only is this 8K resolution a new achievement for the hardware but it is also done without any sidelined rendering techniques such as checkerboarding, AI upscaling or temporal supersampling. It simply achieves its 7630×4320 (4320p) on its own.
Keep in mind that the PS5 does not support 8K yet. The HDMI 2.1 features on the console are available but are locked behind Sony releasing a firmware update to enable them. VRR is another feature that HDMI 2.1 promises but can’t be achieved on the console until Sony decides to enable it. Shin’en Multimedia says that once Sony does enable 8K on the PS5, the developer will issue a simple patch that will allow the game to output the full 4320p resolution onto supported 8K TV sets.
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Until that time, The Touryst currently makes use of the 4320p to downsample the image quality down to 4K. This means every pixel on your TV is downsampled in order to deliver a smoother, cleaner experience while playing the game.
Digital Foundry says that PS5 and Xbox Series X owners shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet regarding the possibility of 8K games on the consoles. Firstly, 8K displays and TVs aren’t doing very well at the moment as there’s no need to invest money in them. There’s very little content to watch, GPUs don’t have enough power to output 8K games and even the PS5 and Xbox Series X won’t be able to achieve 4320p in most cases.
The Touryst is a rare exception. The game’s basic geometry and simple environments make it possible to achieve 8K on the PS5. This doesn’t mean every game out there will do the same thing. Already, we have seen a handful of games struggling to achieve 4K on both consoles when pushing game engines to the limit.
Digital Foundry also states that The Touryst is a great way to compare the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s future-proof hardware. For example, the game can only reach 6K on the Xbox Series X in comparison to the 8K on the PS5. This is due to the Xbox Series X’s slower clock speed on the GPU. Shin’en Multimedia also says that the memory set-up on the PS5 also makes a big difference when rendering the game at a higher resolution than the Xbox Series X.
Typically, in the PC space, to get a faster GPU, manufacturers produce ‘wider’ designs that run at the same clocks as less capable parts – or even slower. Xbox Series X follows the same pattern. Its GPU runs at a slower clock, but should be more capable overall as it has many more compute units. Shin’en tells us that in the case of its engine, the increase to clock frequencies and the difference in memory set-up makes the difference. Beyond this, rather than just porting the PS4 version to PS5, Shin’en rewrote the engine to take advantage of PS5’s low-level graphics APIs.
So if you want to play an 8K game (downsampled to 4K) on your PS5, The Touryst is one of the only titles available at the moment. Sure, as time goes by, simpler games may take the same approach but for now, this is it. Check out the video down below where Digital Foundry explains the whole situation.
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Source: YouTube
