Quote Originally Posted by Wildheaven182 View Post
It was never a graphics *upgrade*. It is a compatibility update for xbox and ps3 performance for the changes they want to make to environmental lighting and shadows to make the game look brighter and more lighthearted in the new expansion after how intense Endwalker was.
PS3 support was removed with Shadowbringers. The PS4 and PS5 are functionally identical and you just get a resolution nerf for the PS4. I don't know if the console versions have access to the high resolution textures or not.

Like the focus I've largely seen is on the character faces and the fabrics of the clothing (not all clothing actually looks better, some gear just looks the same probably because it was already higher resolution in the first place, like the Shisui sets.) It's very likely gear released during endwalker was already higher resolution, but not all the textures were exported as such during endwalker, like the crafted gear.

At any rate what they did to the faces was very much a shader code thing, but it also still has the problem of dark characters (eg Erenville) basically having no visible features unless standing directly in the light.