Rockstar's latest GTA 5 update upgrades the game's ray-tracing effects on PC

Until GTA 6 arrives on PlayStation and Xbox next year, GTA V will remain one of the most popular games on all platforms. Earlier this year, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto 5: Expanded & Enhanced on PC, introducing several visual improvements to the game that first debuted on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Part of the visual overhaul included the addition of ray-tracing and support for AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution technologies.

2

However, the ray-tracing in the GTA V update was pretty basic. The reflections were console-like and lower quality than other RT-heavy PC games, and the ray-traced global illumination only covered a single 'bounce'. Tracing and calculating multiple light bounces is hardware-intensive, but it is something that modern GeForce RTX GPUs and AMD's new RDNA 4 line-up can handle.

As part of the game's GTAV Title Update 1.71 for the new GTA Online 'Money Fronts' update, the team at Rockstar is improving the Grand Theft Auto 5: Expanded & Enhanced's ray-traced effects.

According to the patch notes, the update will overhaul the game's ray-traced lighting and global illumination.

GTA V Enhanced Lighting Enhancements

• An option to enable high-resolution ray-traced reflections has been added to GTA V Enhanced.
• An option to have a second ray bounce for RTGI has been added to GTA V Enhanced.

High-resolution reflections are self-explanatory, but it also means that the ray-traced reflections in the game will also reflect more detail, including additional objects and elements that weren't being reflected in the previous implementation. Also, adding a second ray bounce will make the RTGI more realistic in the game, with more accurate shadow detail and light bouncing and reflecting from one object to another.

Unfortunately, this update doesn't include the game adding support for AMD or NVIDIA Frame Generation, which can be an invaluable tool for boosting performance once hardware-intensive ray-traced effects are enabled. Of course, GTA V on PC is a modder's dream, so things like frame generation and additional ray-tracing effects can be modded into the game using third-party tools.