GTA 4 looks spectacular recreated with the GTA 5 engine and ray-tracing technique

Grand Theft Auto IV It has never looked better. The team of Digital Dreams has shared a video showing the recreation of the game map with the graphics engine of Grand Theft Auto V, seasoned with Pascal Gilcher shader RayTraced Global Illumination to compose more realistic environments, coupled with the latest version of the mod Awesomekills Graphics, which provides environments that seem like something out of the real world. This is the impressive result:

GTA 4 like we've never seen before

The original Rockstar title debuted on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 last 2008. Thanks to the efforts of Digital Dreams, however, looks like a title meant to be part of the next generation console catalog

. Still, it hides some technical tricks that make the game look like this: Pascal Gilcher's RayTraced Global Illumination shader doesn't really introduce actual ray tracing, but it does have the advantage that can be used with any game and with any GPU. You can find more information about it in his Patreon.

The eternal question of these last months facing the next generation of consoles is: What is ray tracing?

To explain it in a simple way, we can say that it is an algorithm that studies the path of light and the way it impacts on objects; the goal of this technology is offer more realistic images, imitating the way light falls on the real world. In this way, as we can see in the video, light is reflected not only in puddles but also on other surfaces such as buildings and vehicles.

Coming soon in GTA

With the new generation of consoles just around the corner with the arrival of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, many players are wondering what will be the next installment of GTA that we enjoy in this new stage. According to the latest rumors, GTA 6

it would be in an "early" development phase and they aim for its size to be "moderate". One of the first characters that sound for this game is the one baptized as El Mexicano, who appears on the CV of a voice actor.