While she was expected “in the coming months”, PS5 compatibility with variable refresh rate (VRR) screens will finally arrive as early as this week. A first list of “officially” compatible games is known.
The “some months” mentioned by Sony at the end of March will ultimately have been only one. It is indeed from the last week of April 2022 that the manufacturer will deploy the update of the PS5, finally making it compatible with screens with variable refresh rate (Variable Refresh Rate, or VRR). Long promised on the console, even before its release in November 2020, VRR is one of the key features of the HDMI 2.1 standard for video games. With this update, the PS5 finally aligns itself with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and S, which have offered VRR since their first day of availability.
On the occasion of this announcement, Sony also unveils a first list of games officially supporting VRR on the platform:
- Astro’s Playroom
- Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
- Destiny 2
- Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition
- DIRT 5
- Godfall
- Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
- Resident Evil Village
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Tribes of Midgard
Insomniac Games first in class in its implementations
By “official” support, it must be understood on the one hand that the game works in VRR without any display bug or other problem, on the other hand that said game is “aware” that it is running on a connected console to a VRR screen or not, and that it can adapt its behavior and technical optimization accordingly.
A first example of such an implementation is given by the Insomniac Games studio, always exemplary in the monitoring of its games, and whose three existing PS5 titles (Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Spider-Man Remastered and Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart) will receive a VRR update from day one. From then on, the games will benefit from the following changes:
- On a VRR screen at 60 Hz, the dynamic definition of the rendering becomes less aggressive and therefore a little higher. Therefore, the frame rate adheres a little less well to its target frame rate (60 fps in performance modes, 30 fps in fidelity mode), but a priori without any impact on playing comfort: the few drops caused should be made imperceptible thanks to the VRR.
- On a VRR screen at 120 Hz, the rendering definition is unchanged, but the frame rate is unlocked. From then on, the game is free, depending on the complexity of the scene displayed, to reach a frame rate that can exceed the initial target “by 50% or more“, according to the developer, and this without causing any feeling of irregularity in the animation, again by the magic of VRR.
VRR can be forced on “non-compatible” games
Remember also that the PS5 will also offer the user the possibility of “forcing” the VRR even for games that do not formally support it, but without certainty that this will be done smoothly. The functionality could however be beneficial on games which in the current state do not offer a frame rate perfectly stable.
First and foremost, of course, we think of Elden Ring, a game whose immense playful and artistic qualities are unfortunately matched only by its technical mediocrity. By the magic of the VRR, its regular drops of frame rate around 50 fps could suddenly be made relatively benign. The same goes with Death Stranding Director’s Cut in its “quality” display mode in native 4K. Hopefully these games, like others, will handle VRR without a hitch.