Digital Foundry conducted a technical analysis of the gameplay demo shown for Grand Theft Auto 6. The game will release on November 19th for Xbox Series X | S and Playstation 5, and the gameplay footage in the trailer was captured from Sony’s current base console. Tech experts analyzed it and compared it to the maxed-out version of GTA 5 now available on PC. Not everything will be improved for players.
How GTA 6 is better than GTA 5 at max settings
Digital Foundry identified the following points where GTA 6’s graphics performance is significantly better than GTA 5:
- Characters – main characters and side characters. Plus, the tech expert raved about the hair details:
GTA 6 delivers significantly improved character rendering and superior skins that exhibit correct diffuse and specular response in a variety of lighting conditions. Facial expressions become more expressive and detailed. Character costumes are made from high-quality materials based on physically based rendering and are noticeably more independent from the character’s body.
[…] The hair appears to be based on individual strands, with long hairstyles moving better and showing excellent secondary animation. Hair lighting has also taken a big step forward, with light realistically diffusing through the edges of tangled and curled hair, creating real lighting depth for a variety of hairstyles.
- Ray tracing benefits significantly in Grand Theft Auto VI thanks to high-quality materials from previous installments in the series, and many of the original models were still created for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions:
The biggest limitation of ray traced reflections in GTA 5 is that the game’s original assets were not originally designed with ray traced lighting in mind. […] GTA 6 overcomes these issues with advanced materials based on physical rendering, ensuring materials react correctly to lighting.
- Environment details and the overall appearance of the world around you:
GTA 5 looks pretty good for a game of its age, but in close-ups it tends to look angular and blocky, with most of the surface detail coming from simple texture work. RTGI greatly improves the look of this world, but believable lighting doesn’t create the density needed for compelling modern games, and GTA 6 is very dense indeed. In this preview, I had a hard time noticing polygon edges or anything that would give away the technical limitations of the model’s complexity.
How is GTA 6 different from the highest settings version of GTA 5 on PC?
Digital Foundry noted that Rockstar had to make a number of compromises to ensure the game would run on current consoles and not just be capped at 30 FPS. Tech experts noticed that in the proposed demo, some graphical components in GTA 5 looked better than in GTA 6 at the PC’s maximum settings.
The most notable compromise of this kind is the quality of reflection:
The reflection quality of GTA 6 on the Playstation 5 has dropped a bit in terms of overall sharpness, and we can see this in a few frames. The resolution may be down a bit here, especially compared to GTA 5 at maximum settings, but relatively distant detail is still visible in reflections. When it comes to achieving industry-leading graphics on the Playstation 5, compromise is key.
Another compromise solution is to use shadow maps instead of ray tracing:
Interestingly, GTA 6 appears to have restored shadow maps in most cases, with jagged edges clearly visible in some frames, as well as some evidence of cascading. However, these are very high quality shadow maps, with variable penumbras and high resolution.
Digital Foundry believes that GTA 6’s graphics have been significantly “optimized” for current generation consoles, and that even more visually impressive items await players on PC. However, Rockstar has not yet announced the PC version and does not know when it will be released.
