Make Visuals Great Again Vs Natural Vision Vs Visual V (2025)

VIDEO: Encounter NaturalVision Evolved in action, also available on YouTube .

Released in 2013 on consoles, then a year later on PC, GTA v was a stunner, even back and so. Only now it's twice every bit old as my nephew, and folks, that's seven years old. Those sometime textures and lighting systems yet make for a sharp, bright Los Angeles imitation, but expect too close for also long and its age start to bear witness.

Enter the NaturalVision Evolved visual overhaul mod, an ambitious effort to bring GTA v back up to speed with modern hardware and graphics.

NaturalVision Evolved (NVE) is the, well, natural development of NaturalVision Remastered, an ongoing visual overhaul project by renowned GTA 5 modder Jamal Rashid (Razed in modding circles). Making GTA five look closer to Southern California is the goal, and it took some on location enquiry, including "hundreds of photos and hours upon hours of video footage" to get to this point: an early on access release.

I gave NVE a go, only right now it's just accessible via Rashid'southward Patreon. You'll need to select the $10 tier for access today. A free, public release is in the works, so no worries. But hey, modders gotta eat also.

The overhaul includes changes to "the environmental weathers, lighting system, ambient colors, tonemapping, world textures, edifice models and much more." But more concretely, in PC gaming terminology, NVE adds "...Screen-space Raytraced Global Illumination, Skylighting, [and] Rain reflections."

Did you meet it? The big buzzword? No, ray-tracing as we know it today is not part of the NVE overhaul. Full ray-tracing simulates natural light sources to light a scene, both on and off screen. Screen-infinite ray-tracing just reflects elements currently visible, or within the screen space. Total scene ray-tracing would murder GTA 5's performance. It's not a specially well optimized game as is.

But however, screen-space ray-traced illumination adds to the final image. GTA 5's moods are stronger. More light and detail filling every scene ties each scene together like a nice rug might to a living room, and makes information technology easier to ignore the smaller graphical blemishes. Sunny days pop with colour and dissimilarity, the dull grey concrete against the saturated blue sky tied together with the busier ambiance and lengthened that NVE's expanded lighting arrangement affords. Watching the sun set up as its light hits the more than cogitating buildings is pretty damn evocative of the real deal. It looks nice. Legions beyond what I remember GTA 5 looking similar? Nah, simply this is an improvement.

VIDEO: The official trailer is pretty damn impressive.

Things are especially dainty when information technology rains and even improve at nighttime. Puddle reflection might exist the most in-your-face upgrade, especially paired with the more detailed reflections rolling across near every auto. The street becomes a mirror.

Keep in mind, this is an early access release and a visual overhaul by a few people bolted onto 1 of the well-nigh ambitious games ever put together past a squad of hundreds. It's not perfect. We're still waiting on the final weather condition modifications for storms. The lightning cuts chunky lines through the sky—besides thick, honestly. This is some supremely thick lightning. And here and there I noticed some reflections, particularly those in the middle to far distance, would flicker. Little aberrations like that tin pop the illusion balloon pretty easily, but: early admission, and then.

I uninstalled the mod afterwards a few hours to see how performance would meliorate, but also to remember what GTA 5 looked like before. It'south been years since I played. My framerate more than doubled, going from the NVE Ultra High preset'south 40-50 fps to vanilla GTA 5's 110-120 fps. With an i9-9900k and an RTX 2080, a nice 60 fps would be ideal for NVE. It'southward still an early release and there are some lower spec graphical presets to play around with if you want a smaller visual upgrade for a lower performance hit.

If you also haven't played GTA five in a while, the added graphical flourishes might not stand out immediately. Vanilla GTA v definitely looks flatter, virtually blurrier. Without those extra reflections and light rays bouncing effectually the screen, GTA 5 looks closer to a pastel colored drawing. It nevertheless looks great, just goes to evidence how much work lighting does in videogames.

With NVE (and a hefty rig), GTA 5 looks much more in line with modern PC games. It's merely non a nighttime and mean solar day transformation. Give information technology a shot if yous're more into mood and juicing the LA-ness of GTA 5 than keeping the frames per second as high every bit possible.