Sony Interactive Entertainment and Insomniac Games’ upcoming superhero title, Marvel’s Wolverine, is rumored to feature AI upscaling, possibly powered by dedicated hardware in the PS5 Pro.
According to a presentation slide that has presumably been extracted from the stolen data obtained from Insomniac Games by ransomware hackers, Marvel’s Wolverine will feature Machine Learning based AI upscaling to enhance image quality, suggesting that there may be dedicated silicon inside the rumored PS5 Pro to facilitate it. A rumored specs leak for the console had stated that it will feature an XDNA2 NPU for the purpose of accelerating Sony’s bespoke temporal Machine Learning upscaling technique.
The aforementioned bullet point slide allegedly found among stolen Insomniac Games documents can be seen below.
As per the information available on the slide, Marvel’s Wolverine will not only feature AI upscaling via Machine Learning, but several other new technical features, including film quality facial animation, muscle and cloth simulation, hierarchical destruction, real-time damage and regeneration, real-time global illumination, dynamic weather and foliage, photogrammetry pipeline, deformable surfaces (snow and mud), and Motion Matching for improved locomotion. In addition, fluid dynamics will also be investigated.
The leaked side also mentions 60 fps as the base frame rate in Performance mode with Ray Tracing features enabled. The mention of “base frame rate” suggests that the game will also run at a higher frame rate, with Variable Refresh Rate enabled and 120 fps as the target frame rate, much like in Marvel’s Spider-Man 1 and 2 as well as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. If the PS5 Pro is indeed real and set for launch prior to the release of Marvel’s Wolverine, the more capable hardware should be able to deliver a stable frame rate of 120 fps, especially coupled with AI upscaling.
Previously, it was reported that a fully playable PC developmental build of Marvel’s Wolverine had been leaked, and was making the rounds on the internet. Footage showed debug code running alongside the playable build.