Night City has looked great for years. Tomorrow, it looks better than it ever has on a console.
CD PROJEKT RED VP and Global Art Director Kuba Knapik took to the PlayStation Blog on April 7 to break down exactly what PS5 Pro owners can expect from the free Cyberpunk 2077 update dropping April 8. The short version: three graphics modes, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and frame rates that push well past what the base PS5 could manage.
What PSSR actually does for Night City
The headline tech here is PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), Sony's AI-powered upscaling solution. PSSR processes the image pixel by pixel, using machine learning to reconstruct fine detail at 4K output. According to Knapik, the result is visible across everything from individual characters to vehicle surfaces, with the Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X specifically called out as a beneficiary of the improved lighting fidelity.
The other major technical addition is BVH8 support, which stands for 8-way Bounding Volume Hierarchy. That is the underlying acceleration structure that makes real-time ray tracing faster and more detailed. With BVH8, the update adds ray-traced reflections, ambient occlusion, skylight, shadows, and emissive lighting to a game that was already known for its moody, neon-drenched visual identity.
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The PS5 Pro update is free for all existing owners. Cyberpunk 2077 is also currently available through the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Games Catalog at no additional cost.
Three modes, three very different priorities
Here is where it gets interesting for players who care about the frame rate versus fidelity trade-off. CD PROJEKT RED built three distinct modes rather than a single fixed configuration.
Ray Tracing Pro is the full package: every available ray tracing enhancement running simultaneously, targeting 40 frames per second on VRR-enabled displays or 30fps without VRR. Ray Tracing mode splits the difference, keeping 60fps locked while still applying a meaningful subset of the lighting improvements. Performance mode drops most of the ray tracing work to chase raw frame rate, and on a VRR display it can reach up to 90fps.
For a game where you spend a lot of time driving through Night City at speed, 90fps is going to feel noticeably different.
The PS Plus angle worth knowing
CD PROJEKT RED is clearly thinking about new players here too. With Cyberpunk 2077 sitting in the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Games Catalog right now, any PS5 Pro owner subscribed at those tiers can jump into the enhanced version without spending anything extra. Five years after launch, that is a meaningful on-ramp for people who never got around to it.
Knapik's post frames the update as a direct response to community requests that have been building for some time. The PS5 Pro has been out since late 2024, and Cyberpunk 2077 players have been watching other titles receive PSSR upgrades while waiting for their turn.
For the full technical breakdown direct from the studio, the official Cyberpunk 2077 news page will have everything you need once the update goes live. Keep an eye on your PS5 update queue on April 8. Make sure to check out more:
