GTA 6: How does PS5 compare to GTA 5 Enhanced on PC?

Grand Theft Auto VI has wowed the Internet with Rockstar's Extended Look at the game, but what of Grand Theft Auto V: Enhanced Edition on PC, which has all the current-gen console RT features and more? 

An extended comparison by Digital Foundry reveals the compromises made to make Grand Theft Auto VI possible to run on consoles with its thoroughly ray-traced world, and how even some technical limitations can still be overcome with high-quality assets and PBR (physically based rendering) materials.

For example, reflections at first blush may look better on PC's Max settings. They're certainly higher-resolution. However, the simpler nature of Grand Theft Auto V's materials results in these higher-fidelity reflections looking rather unrealistic. Cars are reflective for sure, but not that reflective. Traffic would be even more of a nightmare if every vehicle were polished to a mirror sheen.

But it's not a clean win in Grand Theft Auto V's favor, since Grand Theft Auto VI also exhibits some ray tracing artifacts in select scenes. The most apparent of these is visible in the screenshot above, where the reflection on the van door is highly distorted by fuzzily-rendered offscreen details. RT reflections are far from a perfect science, especially when upscaling is being used. 

With this in mind, GTA VI's decision to also use traditional planar (rendering the scene twice) and screen-space (only what's visible onscreen) reflections in certain areas makes a lot of sense. It's not simply an optimization decision: sometimes, those traditional methods really do look better, especially planar reflections in indoor environments.

Besides materials and texture quality, Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced Edition also falters model density and detail. Simpler geometry does still look a whole lot better with maximum RTGI and ray-traced shadows, but like with, say, Quake II RTX, it doesn't mask the age of the assets.

So for the most part, Grand Theft Auto VI really does seem to be the overall winner to the PC-maxed version of Grand Theft Auto V. That's mainly down to the overall age of its predecessor, though. The effort required to upgrade V to VI's standard would likely be comparable to developing VI itself, or at least a substantial portion of it.

In any case, the full video from Digital Foundry is highly recommended if you want a more detailed look at things.

One small detail they point out is that the in-game TV footage that showcases wildlife within a fast food environment seems to be shot within Red Dead Redemption 2, which has extremely convincing wildlife and foliage but also fundamentally lacks ray tracing engine features. For this reason, that footage isn't reflective of Grand Theft Auto VI, but what we've seen of the newer game's rural environments does rival or exceed the fidelity of Red Dead 2.

Lastly, a detail Digital Foundry didn't mention but that ties into the point above is that the drug compound shown in the Extended Look contains small background details, namely fuzzy black-and-white photographs that are actually screenshots of past games. This lends credence to the idea that TV and photography within Grand Theft Auto VI may intentionally use lower-fidelity assets, but this layer of abstraction can sometimes enhance immersion rather than detract from it.