GTA 5 Vs GTA 4: Graphics Engine Side-By-Side Video Comparison

NowGamer: How far has Rockstar's GTA game engine come?

[Feckles]

Wow, how things have changed. I still consider GTA IV to be a great looking game, but this really demonstrates how much V has improved upon things.

On PC at any rate...

[WANNAGETHIGH]

Who cares about graphics... If Gta5 is as boring as Gta4 then they can go to hell.I'll stick wiv SaintRow3.

[Venjense]

GTIV was a great game at the time IMO.

[omi25p]

i finished SR3 an hour ago. Its garabage, The story sucks, The kill of the main characters to quickly and sure there is a lots to do but almost all the things you can do arent that great because of the adverage gameplay

[irepbtown]

And this is just the trailer. Imagine the finished game :O

Cant wait :D

[Getowned]

GTA4 wasn't boring but it wasn't as great as SA or Vice city.Still I got a lot of enjoyment from GTA4.

-off topic-
Is saints row really that bad I was going to pick up saints row 2 and 3 for christmas they look like games I would enjoy and i seem to be seeing a lot of like it or hate it opinions.-note- I never played SR games before.

[HSx9]

I hope you people understand rockstar didn't just record GTAV gameplay and show a trailer of it... No, it went through many forms of editing and the directors made sure it was perfect, so really there is no reason to compare as of now, until real gameplay is shown.

[Grip]

@omi25p
thank u idiot for ruin the game.. keep up the good work moron

[Mickbelfast]

cheap mans GTA

[RedDevils]

I have played Saint Row before, it was the worst decision I had ever made, it was poor man of GTA even GTA 4 were better and that was the worst GTA, that say a lot about Saint Row, if Mafia 2 had free Roam I bet I would enjoy playing it more than SRW3 imo

[dcortz2027]

I agree, GTA IV had sh*tty graphics and it was boring as f*ck. It didn't deserve the good reviews and scores that it got.Please make GTA fun again Rockstar, please make GTA V like the PS2 GTA's!

[beastgamer]

knowing that gta v will have dogs, make it the best game

[TimmyShire]

Ha, that GTA 4 video is really well done.

[fastrez]

Nice comparison. GTA V is surely going to be ace.

[Shaman]

Thats PC version of GTAIV and I don't think trailer was PC version actually, at least not going by what was said on B3D. There is shimmering and aliasing(post processing, like AC:R) so its doubted that was PC trailer.

[bozebo]

Wouldn't matter. They develop the game for consoles so it only looks slightly better on PC (better level of detail, resolution, AA, some higher quality shaders, higher resolution shadow maps).

Basically why Skyrim on PC is below par for PC games circa 2011 but is extremely good looking for a console game. It's just what happens with multiplats.

GTA is like, the only multiplat I ever get on consoles first. Not sure why, maybe my 360 won't break again if I give it some use. Also the PC ports of GTA are typically horrible.

[dougr]

Wow, I disagree big time. The difference between GTA graphics on my i5 2500k/GTX 580 computer system and my PS3 are night and day. The computer looks 100X's better; nowhere near as blurry and much more detailed. Those differences are hardly considered "slight". Not only that, you can turn up the view distance, detail distance, and traffic density which all add to the much better visuals of the CPU version.

As for what I think you were trying to get at, especially with Skyrim is that I agree. Especially in Skyrim's case I cannot believe they made the detail level distance so small. If you are standing on a mountain and there is water in view, it will likely look like shit. Up close I think things on Skyrim look amazing, but you can definitely tell that the developers didn't go the extra distance much to optimize the pc version of Skyrim.

As for your last comment on GTA not being optimized for pc, GTA was a very weird console port on how it acted for different people. I had a PC that should have played GTA perfectly with AMD parts, but yet I couldn't get the darn thing to run the game at anything above around 20 FPS but my next computer, a model built with Intel and Nvidia runs the game perfectly with no problems. GTA IV is definitely a weird console port but the extreme difference in graphics just makes it impossible to go back to console GTA when you know the grass is much greener on PC.

[bozebo]

"Up close I think things on Skyrim look amazing"
What is this logic?

Things look BAD up close in Skyrim and great from a distance. The textures are silly low resolutions.

[dougr]

I'm not talking about staring at the floor or anything I'm just talking about the look of things in your general area not necessarily focusing right in on textures just overall. If you think Skyrim looks good from a distance though, I don't know what to tell you, because that solid waterfall I'm looking at right now that isn't even a mile away sure doesn't look very good to me.

I'm not someone who will get caught up in textures and what not, but I believe that Skyrim looks pretty nice especially inside cities, sure it isn't Battlefield 3 quality, but I still enjoy the look of the game big time.

[T900]

GTA on PC even though a bad port was still far superior to the console version.

The reason PC gamers whined about it is because they have high standards. What console gamers dont understand is, even when PC gamers are whining the version they are playing is still leagues ahead of the console version most of the time.

GTA 4 on consoles wasnt even HD, the PS3 version specially looked very blurry in the distance. On PC the best way to optimise the game was keep shadows on medium everything else maxed out, and keep the draw distances around 22 (console draw distance was 12 or so). Anyways, with those settings PC version ran flawlessly on any quad core cpu and moderate GPU around 1080p with 50-60fps.

[Bolts]

Skyrim is the best looking open world RPG on the PC. You won't find anything better. Plus any complaints about low res is completely pointless seeing how you can mod anything in Skyrim to be as detailed and high res as you want.

[bozebo]

"Plus any complaints about low res is completely pointless seeing how you can mod anything in Skyrim to be as detailed and high res as you want. "

Can I? I am not a texture artist. The high res source textures sitting on HDDs at Bethesda's office (do you think artists work with 512x512 lulztextures?) would be nice though if they bothered to consider that the PC version could use them.

Also, the open-worldness has almost no effect on graphical potential these days. Skyrim handles the distant mountains and forets without any problems and the textures + poly counts are certainly to a high standard considering the screen-space that they will consume.

It's just things in towns, the interiors, the rock textures, the pentagonal fence polls etc. that are very out of place. And a lot of the armour and weapons have extremely low resolution, blurry, textures. Again, it's about how much screen-space and player focus the objects attain. Some assets are beautiful then others are blurry, low-poly and consuming loads of the scene.

[galgor]

Have to be honest, when I first saw the trailer for V I didn't think the leap was that great, but after watching this video it's definitely a vast improvement.

Alls we need now is a release date!

[skyfire420]

the game is nowhere near finished and will probably look alot better then that video they released and your already ready doing a stupid comparison?

[Sharingan_no_Kakashi]

Obvious improvement.

[MizTv]

i hope this is more fun than 4.cant make my self finish it got it day one. but yes it does look good

[coojo]

meh come back rockstar when it looks like ICEnhancer mod for gta 4.

[EazyC]

Lol at how a windmill is the equivelant of the Statue of Happiness (liberty)

Excellent vid though, it's amazing what R* have done technology-wise, I thought IV was stretching the limits, and boy does this prove how wrong i was!

[Yukicore]

That is some excellent comparison! It's truly like "Side by Side Comparison" should be.

Speaking of GTA:V... You can't deny that every game Rockstar releases is well made, another masterpiece and art. I love this company!!!

[YodaCracker]

I totally agree. Rockstar publishes such high quality games. They have easily got one of the best track records in the industry. GTA IV is still a technical marvel to this day. Red Dead Redemption is truly a work of art. L.A. Noire is very technically impressive as well. And GTA V looks to push the boundaries of what is possible in an open world game even further. The level of detail in the environments is incredible, especially taking into account the size and scope of the world.

And until the other day, Max Payne 3 wasn't even on my radar. Until I saw this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Rockstar is breaking new ground with almost every one of their releases, which is why they are my favorite developer.

[Pwnage18202]

Wow good comparison!! GTA IV was awesome and GTA V will be even better!!! GO ROCKSTAR NORTH

[phinch]

untill watching it side by side i didnt think it was going to be different, but it was quite the imporvment, cant wait to hear more

[-Ghost]

The NPC's definitely have more life in them which is great.

[Mickbelfast]

didnt take much comments until skyrim was mentioned zzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Errod88]

here is the video they used
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[DAS692]

Yeahhh It's better.

[zero_cool]

GTA V is gonna need more then realism & pretty graphics to hold it's own against the content variety & gameplay depth that saints row the third brought to the table because we all know fun is equally has important as the rest of the stuff!

Cheers Gamers & Happy Gaming!

[Ezio2048]

looks amazing....O_o

[maxmill]

Yea i guarantee this game will blow just like GTA4, Saints row is way funner

[tee_bag242]

GTA was a step back from San Andrea in every area except graphics. There was many fun things to do in comparison.