Resident Evil Requiem has an instant hit and the game is likely to stay in the conversation later this year when game of the year campaigns begin. The game is visually stunning across platforms, but PS5 Pro owners have a chance to reap the rewards of some extra work from the Capcom technical team.
How Capcom Leveraged The Ps5 PRo Resources for Resident Evil Requiem
VICE recently had the chance to chat with one of the technical expert’s from Capcom about what opportunities arose as the team was optimizing Requiem for PS5 and PS5 Pro. During the interview we talked with Masaru Ijuin who serves works in the Engine Development Support Section, R&D Foundational Technology Department at Capcom.
VICE: How has RE Engine evolved for Resident Evil Requiem compared to previous titles like Resident Evil Village on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro?
Ijuin: Rendering for characters as a whole—including skin, hair, eyes, and teeth—has been significantly improved. We’ve enhanced subsurface scattering and introduced a Visibility Buffer to improve polygon density, achieving both higher frame rates and reduced memory usage. In addition, we’ve implemented area-based texture streaming, as well as new simulation techniques for effects such as water surfaces.
VICE: For PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, what aspects of Requiem’s visuals or performance best demonstrate the hardware’s tech?
Ijuin: In Resident Evil Requiem, we placed a strong emphasis on performance stability. On PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro hardware in particular, we’ve been able to achieve very stable frame rates. We also prioritize image quality in motion, not just still-frame resolution. For that reason, we deliberately moved away from the checkerboard rendering used in previous titles and instead adopted FSR1, as it provides more stable image quality during motion.
However, on PS5 Pro, we have adopted the new updated PSSR due to its high level of both image quality and stability. From a performance standpoint, AMD’s RDNA architecture offers excellent performance for rendering hair. Because the hardware supports 64-bit atomic operations within group shared memory, it can achieve faster performance compared to PC in certain cases.
VICE: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) is often discussed in terms of final image quality, but how has it changed the internal development workflow for Capcom? With PSSR handling the heavy lifting of upscaling, did the technical team find they could reallocate the ‘saved’ GPU cycles toward more complex AI routines or more nuanced global illumination that simply wouldn’t have fit in the budget otherwise?
Ijuin: PSSR is used as a tool to reduce GPU processing time required for high-resolution output. The GPU resources freed up through this, combined with the relatively high GPU performance, have allowed us to improve global illumination quality and make greater use of optimized ray tracing features.
VICE: With the PS5 and PS5 Pro’s enhanced hardware, has the foundational physics engine within RE Engine been upgraded? Are we seeing more persistent environmental damage or more complex routines that the engine’s previous iterations simply didn’t have the overhead to process in real-time?
Ijuin: With improvements in GPU processing performance, it is now possible to simulate hair at the strand level directly on the GPU, enabling more precise and realistic hair simulation. However, simulating tens of thousands of individual strands remains too computationally expensive, so hair is grouped into bundles and processed collectively.
Even with PS5 and PS5 Pro hardware, the number of strands actively simulated is on the order of several hundred. That said, careful tuning ensures that this optimization does not compromise visual fidelity, allowing long hair to move more naturally without revealing the underlying reduction in computational complexity.
–
Now that rumors are swirling about the first major DLC content for Resident Evil Requiem, it will be very exciting to find out in the near future what is next for Resident Evil and what other sorts of visual spectacle players on high-end PCs and the PS5 Pro are in for.
Be sure to check back soon for more news and updates on all things Resident Evil.
Resident Evil Requiem is available now on PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series consoles.
The post This is Why Hair in Resident Evil Requiem Looked So Real on PS5 Pro appeared first on VICE.
