The Enhanced and Expanded ray tracing update for GTA V is now available on PC, and we can now do a comparison with the vanilla version of the game.
GTA V’s latest update adds ray traced shadows, ray traced reflections, ray traced global illumination, and ray traced ambient occlusion to the PC version, improving its visuals in noticeable ways. As we’ve already seen ray traced shadows and ray traced reflections in the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game, the focus of this comparison will be ray traced global illumination.
GTA V PC Vanilla vs Enhanced Ray Traced Global Illumination
A screenshot comparison showing the lighting in the vanilla version (top) of GTA V and in the Enhanced and Expanded version with ray tracing enabled (bottom) can be seen below.
As seen in the screenshots above, the environments in GTA V Enhanced and Expanded are lit in a more accurate and physically correct manner with ray traced global illumination enabled compared to the lighting in the vanilla version. The dispersion of light is more realistic. For example, in the second comparison, light spreads out more realistically across the wall and ceiling with ray traced global illumination enabled.
The current-gen console versions feature ray traced shadows and ray-traced reflections in their Fidelity mode, but only ray traced shadows in their Performance RT mode. The updated PC version adds ray traced global illumination and ray traced ambient occlusion, and the above screenshot shows improvements in terms of lighting and AO that aren’t present in the console versions. As for whether these PC-specific improvements will find their way to the PS5 Pro version of GTA V remains to be seen. Though, given how GTA VI is scheduled for release by the end of 2025, it’s likely that Rockstar Games will focus on completing the development of the upcoming title.
