Judging from the Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar Games may be heavily leaning into ray tracing with the next entry in the series.
A new analysis shared by the tech experts at Digital Foundry highlights how ray-traced global illumination and ray-traced reflections can be clearly spotted in the game's reveal trailer in the internal scenes with strong exterior light sources, where light bounce looks realistic and in the car sequence where the wing mirror reflection shows detail that is not present in the screen space. Rockstar Games may also be using a hybrid solution combining both software and hardware ray tracing, as highlighted by some of these sequences in the trailer.
What Rockstar Games seems to be ditching in Grand Theft Auto VI over the current-generation update for GTA V are ray-traced shadows, which look to be absent from the reveal trailer. Ray-traced global illumination and reflections may be pushing the ray tracing capabilities of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X to the limits, so it wouldn't be surprising for Rockstar to do away with some ray tracing features to achieve the visual goals they have in mind for their game.
Grand Theft Auto VI launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S sometime in 2025. We will keep you updated on the game as soon as more come in in it, so stay tuned for all the latest news.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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