GTA 5 'next-gen' upgrade is the absolute best build, but could have been done better - Benchmarking
– Reviews News
Grand Theft Auto 5 arrived this week with a new update specifically designed to take advantage of the capabilities of next-gen consoles. This is an almost unprecedented event, given that we are talking about a title launched in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360, which then had already been updated once to adapt to the next generation (PS4 and Xbox One) and PC. With the arrival of this new premium edition, Rockstar's bestseller then arrives on its third generation of consoles with three rendering modes, including one designed to take advantage of hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
We'll be covering the platform comparison in a separate article (we only got the code a few days before release and it's time-consuming work) so today we're going to focus on what the new version compared to those already on the market. If you're coming from last-gen consoles, what kinds of upgrades will you get? And if you've been playing the heavily upgradable PC version for a long time, how close does this next-gen console version get to the maximum PC experience? For our testing, we focused on the PS5 version, and found the new hardware offered a much improved experience before we even started playing.
We are not only talking about downloads but also about installation. After downloading GTA5 on PS5, we found that there was an extra wait for installation, which took over an hour! On PS5 all this is just a bad memory: just press 'play' and you are directed to an introductory video, and from there to the menus at 60fps. Menus at 60fps might not seem like a lot, but contextualizing the fact that they run at 30fps on last-gen consoles as well as PC changes the story. It takes an extra step to access Rockstar Social Club (avoidable if you're not interested in multiplayer), but to jump from menu to story mode takes about 20 seconds, when the same process takes two minutes on PC. that we use for testing, and much more on PS4.
Digital Foundry's technical video review of Grand Theft Auto 5's new "next-gen" upgrade, tested here on PS5.
Three different rendering modes are offered: fidelity at 4K30, performance at 1440p60 and performance RT (also at 1440p60). These high frame rate modes represent another palpable improvement over last-gen versions, which were limited to 30 frames per second. Of course, there are also graphical upgrades, but doubling the frame rate puts an end to one of GTA5's long-standing problems, namely its very high input lag. This is indeed unacceptable these days and barely bearable at 60fps.
Rockstar has also improved the implementation to 60fps over what's available on PC. On this last platform it is indeed possible to play at 60fps and beyond, but there is a problem: the character animations did not run at the same refresh rate. An improvement then, but still not perfect as clothing effects and other animations still work at a lower frame rate. Despite these flaws, we are faced with a good upgrade on the PC and a day-to-day change on the latest generation consoles.
In addition to the increased fluidity, there are also changes in the rendering of images. On the last gen, motion blur was based on camera movement, while in the new version, per-object motion blur is applied throughout the game. It's more noticeable at 30 fps than at 60 fps, and in fact it's a change that makes the same 30 fps refresh of the last generation versions seem more fluid.
Another aspect of that smooth feel is due to improvements in image quality. On PS4, the game ran at 1080p with a simple FXAA effect, which was typical of releases from that era as it had low resource impact, but in turn caused dithering, shimmering and general stability artifacts. The PC version had introduced the more advanced MSAA and a TXAA timing solution for Nvidia GPUs, but FXAA remained available as an option. Thus, the user was able to improve the quality compared to the console versions, but the performance impact was significant. The PS5 version introduces a temporal anti-aliasing solution in line with today's technology, similar to that used in Red Dead Redemption 2. Thanks to this technical choice, artifacts and noise are almost completely eliminated, to the point that the 5p PS1440 version of GTA5 looks better than the native 4K PC.
So which of the three rendering modes to choose? This fidelity is compromised by the higher input lag, while we recommend ray tracing between the two performance modes. This implementation only hardware-accelerates shadows, especially shadows generated by the sun (those in internal environments are standard shadow maps, although they are high quality and with decent filtering). Ray-traced shadows also significantly reduce the artifacts generated by standard shadows, to the point that high-quality waterfall shadows look much worse than RT waterfalls when viewed from a distance. The shadows of small objects are also reproduced correctly, while they often disappear with shadow maps, an effect called "Peter Pan" in the jargon. This term describes how light penetrates between objects but the contact area cannot be rendered correctly.
Ray-traced shadows don't have this problem and reproduce shadow smoothing correctly: the farther a shadow is from the object causing it, the more diffuse the effect becomes. The PC version offers Nvidia PCSS technology, an attempt to simulate this effect, but it's exactly an attempt rather than an effective method. For its time it was very advanced, but compared to the RT the difference in shadow realism is obvious. RT shadows are therefore valid but are not rendered at full resolution.
So far, the new GTA5 release surprises on different levels, but there are several aspects of the presentation that are children of two generations old nature that we would like to see improved. Starting with the anisotropic filtering, which does not seem to have improved compared to that of the previous generation. Then there is the general level of detail level and the render distance. We well remember the talk surrounding grass density being better on PS4 than Xbox One, with the PC version taking that to the next level. Well, in all 60fps modes, the PS5 version of GTA5 has the same weedy quality as the PS4 version, considerably lower than the PC version with high or ultra presets. Sure, grass is a notoriously resource-intensive effect, but we wouldn't expect that in an enhanced port of a game two generations ago.
A little short, but the launch trailer for the new version of GTA5 is very spectacular!
Polygon complexity sees no improvement over the PS4 version, while the PC game features much more detailed remote elements and a much richer and denser open world. The only way to increase the level of detail is to play in fidelity mode, which however runs at 30fps. Grass is boosted here but distant detail levels are not upgraded. Apart from these mentioned aspects, there are no major technical differences with the last-gen version, apart from a few small refinements such as the depth of field at a distance, but these are marginal things that are not noticeable. without looking for them.
The PlayStation 5 version offers entry level upgrades using DualSense, but we won't describe them as essential. These include driving vehicles, with the triggers governing the brake and throttle providing varying degrees of resistance, and the haptic feedback generating different vibrations depending on the road surface. These are mostly small changes that make the experience more enjoyable but little noticed after the first game sessions.
From a purely technical standpoint, we think the new Grand Theft Auto 5 is the best version of the game: it's a big upgrade over last-gen versions, and in some ways even better than the pc game. The addition of motion blur that increases the feeling of smoothness and polished cinematic footage, coupled with new temporal anti-aliasing techniques, resolves many of the historical issues that have plagued the game since its release on PS360. And while it's true that the PC version is capable of even more quality, with the exception of LOD, these are rarely noticeable in the frenzy of gameplay. However, the feeling remains that Rockstar could have dared more. Basically, don't expect a Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition entity upgrade at all. In practice, as a next-gen upgrade, we only get 60fps, a bit of ray tracing, and some general improvements.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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