Grand Theft Auto 6 has finally had its first big gameplay reveal, giving us our first real look at Rockstar’s massive open-world and the amount of detail it holds. It’s one that might be the most visually-impressive game we’ve ever seen, according to the experts at Digital Foundry.
Digital Foundry’s Oliver Mackenzie and Richard Leadbetter have praised GTA 6’s visual presentation, with Mackenzie specifically going as far to call it the “most impressive example of real-time game rendering” he’s ever seen. The pair praised a slew of details showcased in the gameplay, including standout character rendering, especially the hair physics and skin details across not just the game’s protagonist, but many NPCs too.
Ray tracing use was also praised, with the pair pointing out how Rockstar has delicately implemented it in the right places for the biggest impact, and is leaning on older conventional methods in the pursuit for a better balance between fidelity and performance.
Performance was a big talking point too, especially so given how poorly GTA 5 performed on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 when it initially launched. Rockstar has always seemingly favored the best looking image quality over the smoothest, but that seems to have changed with GTA 6. Digital Foundry noted that while the game was rendering at 30 frames per second, that target seems to be consistently hit, with the team rarely finding dips during its analysis of all 48,242 frames.
According to Digital Foundry’s calculations, the gameplay preview of GTA 6 was rendering at a native 1440p and then upscaled to 4K without using a modern upscaling technique, leading to a slightly soft image that can hopefully be improved before launch. The team also reaffirmed its prediction for several months ago, saying that it doesn’t expect Rockstar to release a 60fps performance mode for GTA 6 on this generation of consoles, even with significant compromises to the outstanding visual presentation on offer.
It expects the PlayStation 5 Pro to offer better examples of ray-traced effects or potentially higher resolution targets, but the CPU remains the biggest bottleneck in a world with so much simulation that would make halving the rendering time nigh impossible without a significantly more capable processor. That’s something that a PC release in the future might showcase.
There are so many details packed into the Grand Theft Auto 6 showcase that you might have missed, so make sure to check out our biggest takeways from the presentation, including the return of a six-star wanted level, how you can pet (and scold) dogs around the city, some of the references fans are already picking up, and how you won’t need to engage with the game’s love story if you don’t want to.