We don’t know how the upgraded components in the PS5 will affect how its games look and play compared to the PS4, but game developers have some ideas. We’ve already heard about the benefits it will have for particle effects and ray tracing, but another benefit will be “upscaling” textures.
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In an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine (via TechRadar), Luca Dalco of LKA, the developer behind The Town of Light and the upcoming Martha is Dead, expressed his excitement for this particular PS5 feature.
“It’s one of the most important advances in visual capacity that we were waiting for,” he said. “We worked a lot in order to use the highest-resolution textures as possible also on PS4; nonetheless, PS5 will allow us to use an incredible Texel density, up to 4096px/m – that means the visual will be fully detailed also in higher resolutions.”
To unpack this quote, “texel” is short for texture element or texture pixel, meaning the individual parts that make up a “texture map,” which gives the objects you see in a game its distinct look. The greater number of texels there are, the more detailed these objects can be.
Having the ability to support high-quality textures could be crucial to the PS5’s success. Sony's console is capable of producing 8K resolution gameplay, which would mean at full quality, there would be nowhere for low-quality textures to hide.
