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In addition, IGN has some added details on the added details that Rockstar has been adding to the new version of the game.
Art Director Aaron Garbut on changes to the lighting:
"This will dive a little into the more technical areas, but we have a much improved screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) solution that gives us far more solidity than we had before. Most lights now have dynamic shadows, and there are modelled caustic spread patterns on car headlights and many of our placed lights – basically, this is the effect when light is refracted through another material, like water in a pool or in this case the glass in front of the bulb.
“Shadows now cast through the fog itself, so we see lovely shafts of light. Cutscene lighting and much of the city lighting was entirely redone. We have massively upgraded reflections – it’s especially noticeable with all the neon and building lights reflected in the cars at night.
“We have lots more volumetric fog going on, whether the atmospheric glow of building lights in the sky at night or the way the lights in general dissipate in foggy weather. When it begins to rain, these reflections are more noticeable in the puddles and the rain itself now refracts the light around it."
"This will dive a little into the more technical areas, but we have a much improved screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) solution that gives us far more solidity than we had before. Most lights now have dynamic shadows, and there are modelled caustic spread patterns on car headlights and many of our placed lights – basically, this is the effect when light is refracted through another material, like water in a pool or in this case the glass in front of the bulb.
“Shadows now cast through the fog itself, so we see lovely shafts of light. Cutscene lighting and much of the city lighting was entirely redone. We have massively upgraded reflections – it’s especially noticeable with all the neon and building lights reflected in the cars at night.
“We have lots more volumetric fog going on, whether the atmospheric glow of building lights in the sky at night or the way the lights in general dissipate in foggy weather. When it begins to rain, these reflections are more noticeable in the puddles and the rain itself now refracts the light around it."
The differences don't just stop there. Rockstar has improved vegetation, draw distance, wildlife, texture resolution, and more.
“On the art side we’ve taken another look at every asset in the game,” he continues. “From additional dressing and detailing of the world, to looking at every prop and increasing their resolution, or even starting from scratch where appropriate.”
“The work for first-person pushed this even further, making us address areas we would not normally have reason to address. Every weapon has been entirely redone with far, far more detail. Almost every animation has been redone. Every car has been modelled with a higher level of detail and a full interior and the world as a whole has had much more detail added.”
The layers upon layers of granular detail astonished me in GTA V on PS3 and Xbox 360 – and it still does, considering those devices were conceived at some point in the Bronze Age – but this goes far, far beyond that. The stamped lettering on a rifle. The myriad dials everywhere you look in the cab of a fire engine. The blink of a handbrake warning light in your dash cluster when you tug it to trigger a drift. Step into the dank and grimy Yellow Jack Inn, for instance, on the outskirts of Sandy Shores in first-person and you can now feel the despair.
“The work for first-person pushed this even further, making us address areas we would not normally have reason to address. Every weapon has been entirely redone with far, far more detail. Almost every animation has been redone. Every car has been modelled with a higher level of detail and a full interior and the world as a whole has had much more detail added.”
The layers upon layers of granular detail astonished me in GTA V on PS3 and Xbox 360 – and it still does, considering those devices were conceived at some point in the Bronze Age – but this goes far, far beyond that. The stamped lettering on a rifle. The myriad dials everywhere you look in the cab of a fire engine. The blink of a handbrake warning light in your dash cluster when you tug it to trigger a drift. Step into the dank and grimy Yellow Jack Inn, for instance, on the outskirts of Sandy Shores in first-person and you can now feel the despair.
Garbut says that the team has spent "more man-hours on this than most games get from start to finish." Grand Theft Auto V is due out November 18 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
