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We're still waiting on the final weather modifications for storms. Keep in mind, this is an early access release and a visual overhaul by a few people bolted onto one of the most ambitious games ever put together by a team of hundreds. Legions beyond what I remember GTA 5 looking like? Nah, but this is an improvement. Watching the sun set as its light hits the more reflective buildings is pretty damn evocative of the real deal. Sunny days pop with color and contrast, the dull grey concrete against the saturated blue sky tied together with the busier ambiance and diffuse that NVE's expanded lighting system affords. More light and detail filling every scene ties each scene together like a nice rug might to a living room, and makes it easier to ignore the smaller graphical blemishes. It's not a particularly well optimized game as is.īut even so, screen-space ray-traced illumination adds to the final image. Full scene ray-tracing would murder GTA 5's performance.
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Screen-space ray-tracing only reflects elements currently visible, or within the screen space. Total ray-tracing simulates natural light sources to light a scene, both on and off screen. The overhaul includes changes to "the environmental weathers, lighting system, ambient colors, tonemapping, world textures, building models and much more." But more concretely, in PC gaming terminology, NVE adds ".Screen-space Raytraced Global Illumination, Skylighting, Rain reflections."ĭid you see it? The big buzzword? No, ray-tracing as we know it today is not part of the NVE overhaul.
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