Gran Turismo 7 remains one of the best-looking games this generation, with remarkably high-quality materials, lighting and visual design. The original PS5 release had its limitations though, with limited RT deployment and VR relying on asychronous time warp to the detriment of motion clarity. With the PS5 Pro, there’s clearly plenty of potential to deploy the extra horsepower, RT acceleration and PSSR in new and interesting ways. Happily, developer Polyphony Digital has implemented basically everything on our wish list and more in one of the best PS5 Pro patches we’ve seen yet. Buckle up, this is going to be good!
In typical Polyphony style, the new tech has been added as optional features, allowing you a great degree of control over the game’s presentation. At the bottom of options menu, for instance, you’ll spot three new settings: 8K support, VR reprojection and PSSR.
The graphics priority setting is also different, with the “prefer RT/resolution” mode now providing RT during gameplay rather than just in replays and photo mode. That means that car surfaces show self reflections, world reflections, lights and other cars, replacing the earlier (still excellent but limited) cubemaps. Reflections now more accurately correspond to the world around you and update more frequently. There are still a few limitations – trees, for example, look simplified in the game’s BVH structure – but the aggressive roughness cut-off means that even matte surfaces can produce realistic reflections, which makes interiors look incredible.
Gran Turismo 7 also benefits from PSSR, which is an optional setting as mentioned earlier. When used, the internal resolution drops to as low as 1080p with a 4K output resolution, versus a native 4K target with PSSR disabled and the default TAA active. You can use in-game RT with or without PSSR, but RT features in the cockpit view are only active with PSSR enabled.