Shadows in general are 120% improved from GTA IV

[RatedRviper]

I mean,just look at shadows in GTA IV(consoles),they look blurry,pixelated and in general very bad....especially that part in front of Niko's first safehouse(under the train road)

Look at these:

 

and after you have seen these pictures,watch TRAILER 2 in 1080p on HDTV.....

Difference is ENORMOUS!!

 

You can clearly see they fixed ugly shadows from IV,they're SHARP now in every scene(just like in RDR)

 

IV looked very nice,except for shadows.....annoyed the hell out of me!!

 

Now when that's eventually fixed,I cannot wait for this MASTERPIECE of a game!

 

Discuss,I want to hear your opinions.

 

Cheers!

[wwinterj]

The trailers for GTA V do not equal how the game will look once you play it so we can't compare them with GTA IV gameplay at this point.

[C4RR4NZ4]

The trailers for GTA V do not equal how the game will look once you play it so we can't compare them with GTA IV gameplay at this point.

[TripleRob]

Yea the shadows were bad in 4, hurts the eyes.

[RatedRviper]

So what do you think now that we seen actual gameplay? IMO it's huge improvement over GTA IV.....shadows now are sharp like in Red Dead

[d3ex2]

Never had a problem with shadows in GTA IV. Why's that? Don't care about graphics.

[MikeyB]

There was some tearing on the edges of shadows in IV, but they were good enough.

 

If better shadows meant lower FPS then I would prefer to keep the poorer shadows.

 

The hardware is the same and I think the way shadows are calculated is probably the same (nothing new has come to light about shadows) so I don't see how they can be better in V.

 

The trailer is probably rendered, although the gameplay is supposed not to be. I never really noticed shadows in the gameplay.

 

 

[Freezer89]

and after you have seen these pictures,watch TRAILER 2 in 1080p on HDTV.....

You mean 720p.. there is no 1080p material of the trailers or screenshots (yet).

[Irish Thunder Baby]

I play GTA IV occasionally and the lighting and shadows still impress me. The physics also. GTA IV is amazing. But GTA V just looks to be 100x better. San Andreas has so many cool features, and planes but playing it now. It just feels clunky and ugly. Still a good game. But GTA V is my dream. A HD San Andreas

[Red XIII]

Those shadows like its before any of the patches.

 

Look at the trailer for GTAIV with the time lapse, shadows looked awesome but turned out to be quite shoddy.

[TakinThyBacon]

Really we need shadows like these

 

 

[Supercrammer]

When IV came out it blew our mind because it looked more detailed and sharper since the only thing we had to compare it to was San Andreas so naturally, it should make sense that V will look much much better than IV. It would be a shame if there weren't any significant improvements over IV.... it would show Rockstar is simply giving up.

[truthful]

I play GTA IV occasionally and the lighting and shadows still impress me. The physics also. GTA IV is amazing. But GTA V just looks to be 100x better. San Andreas has so many cool features, and planes but playing it now. It just feels clunky and ugly. Still a good game. But GTA V is my dream. A HD San Andreas

agreed. I am replaying SA and got to San Fierro so far.

I never realized how frustrating that game was after IV.

The targetting is rubbish.

Car deformation is non-existent.

I think the game is TOO big, since there is no fast travel.

Some chases are too long.

 

People here worship SA, but do not realize that it ain't perfect, IV perfected many things, looking beautiful to boot.

 

anyways that off topic. The shadows do look better in V, but are still impressive in IV, as dated as that game has become.

[DaRkL3AD3R]

GTA 4 already has the shadow technique used in 5 and Red Dead Redemption, it's called PC. The patch that changed shadow rendering brought it up to par with the others. It just isn't as well optimized as it will be in 5.

 

 

Here, just took this screenshot in game. That's what shadows look like on PC now. And GTA V's shadows will be very similar to this. They got rid of those ugly pixelated shadows years ago. They must have done some serious optimizing on the cascades to make it run on consoles.

Edited July 25, 2013 by DaRkL3AD3R

[Gigabomber]

Have to say, for all SA's problems, just played through it again and IV on xbox, and IV is really a forgettable game outside of the physics and I did note that the shadows are HORRIBLE.

[Andreas]

The shadows looked awful in IV, especially on the consoles and on PC if you don't have installed any patches. It was perhaps okay back in 2008 and 2009, but seeing it today, it doesn't look really good. If you take a

, then you can see that the shadows looked slightly better in the pre-release time. And the same goes with the screenshots. Though, the difference between beta and final version became smaller the more time went by. That's not a surprise though, because IV was the first HD openworld title from Rockstar, and they had no experience with the engine, hence why. The shadows in Red Dead Redemption were a significant improvement, and it's safe to assume that V will look as good, if not even better.

[DaRkL3AD3R]

 

The shadows looked awful in IV, especially on the consoles and on PC if you don't have installed any patches. It was perhaps okay back in 2008 and 2009, but seeing it today, it doesn't look really good. If you take a

, then you can see that the shadows looked slightly better in the pre-release time. And the same goes with the screenshots. Though, the difference between beta and final version became smaller the more time went by. That's not a surprise though, because IV was the first HD openworld title from Rockstar, and they had no experience with the engine, hence why. The shadows in Red Dead Redemption were a significant improvement, and it's safe to assume that V will look as good, if not even better.

Did you not see my post and screenshot right above you?

 

IV's shadows are fine, assuming you have a PC. They patched in the new shadows years ago. And just to be clear I do NOT mod my game. I prefer vanilla over hacked up pile of crap by some 12 year old.

[Andreas]

 

Did you not see my post and screenshot right above you?

I could ask you the same. Let me quote a part of my post...

 

 

The shadows looked awful in IV, especially on the consoles and on PC if you don't have installed any patches.

Patch 1.0.4.0 already looked better than the original game, but the shadows were still slightly grainy. And patch 1.0.6.0 improved it further, the shadows look a lot better and they are sharp, just like in the screenshot you have provided.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian

[RatedRviper]

Exactly DaRkL3AD3R,you proved my point. They are even better in GTA 5 than RDR imo.

[M4 carbine]

Not trying to be an ass but why do people care about shadows so much?

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Not trying to be an ass but why do people care about shadows so much?

Shadows (and lighting) are a major part of advancing the visual quality of real time graphics. If you take away dynamic lighting and shadowing from games like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, all of a sudden the game just doesn't work the same. And in GTA 5 stealth is going to play a very important role and I have a feeling shadows will be a part of it. Not to mention dynamic shadows look gorgeous and games lacking real dynamic shadows are just fail in my opinion.

 

 

I could ask you the same. Let me quote a part of my post...

 

 

The shadows looked awful in IV, especially on the consoles and on PC if you don't have installed any patches.

Patch 1.0.4.0 already looked better than the original game, but the shadows were still slightly grainy. And patch 1.0.6.0 improved it further, the shadows look a lot better and they are sharp, just like in the screenshot you have provided.

 

And who among us PC players says "here's this patch that makes the game better and more stable, and I'm not going to install it?" Come on man. It's 2013, Steam itself makes the game auto patch to the latest version. You have to WORK to downgrade. Only ENBad morons will do that.

[DAWeeE1]

Never had a problem with shadows in GTA IV. Why's that? Don't care about graphics.

Yes, you do.

[Miss Darko]

It's not really a graphics snob thing to care about the shadows. The blurry shadows of IV contributed to the overall blurry look of the game, along with the overzealous bloom and that blur filter. Soft-focus looking graphics were kind of the big thing in the early current gen games, but they overdid it. But basically yeah: if you don't care about aliasing, texture resolution, all that jazz, you probably do still prefer a sharp image over a blurry one. And GTA V looks sharp, like RDR. Shadows are also a fundamental aspect of visuals, the way the play of light and shadow works is probably the most elemental aspect of a graphics engine.

 

But anyway, I'm really glad. It's one of the more obvious improvements over the previous iteration. I also love how driving under a street lamp actually causes your vehicle to cast shadows realistically as well, which wasn't the case in the console version of IV (I think you had to bump shadows up pretty high in the PC version, too). That's one that will make the night time in the game look a lot better. I'm not a graphics snob, really (you'll find I roll my eyes a bit when things start to get really technical and petty), but I do care about graphics because, other than sound, it's the whole representation of the game. I'd probably be a bit disappointed if V looked exactly like IV because I know R* could do better. And boy, they did.

[Kwandilibro]

Shadows in IV were disgusting. As were the trees (don't understand how they've never improved on this). The shadows in IV were like taking a picture with one of the cameras used to film NFL games, but having shadows from a little sh*tty 1 mp camera phone back when they first started getting "cameras". I could've taken better pictures with the hole in my wall.

 

Jesus, please resize that image stretching out my page.

[Gutslab]

The shadows in IV were like taking a picture with one of the cameras used to film NFL games, but having shadows from a little sh*tty 1 mp camera phone back when they first started getting "cameras". I could've taken better pictures with the hole in my wall.

 

wtf kind of analogy is that. i mean, it makes no sense.

[Raavi]

 

The trailers for GTA V do not equal how the game will look once you play it so we can't compare them with GTA IV gameplay at this point.

Yeah, no. The gameplay trailer does.

[theworldfamous]

let's not go overboard here.. IV is from an era where shadows in large games were generally terrible. Good shadows are resource hogs... so it was either have sh*tty shadows or downgrade the whole game graphically for a sharper look. Personally I would've gone for the last option, but that's just me. They're now finding better techniques to do better looking shadows with less rendertime and V obviously benefits.. but if you look around the trailers and shots they're still far from perfect soft shadows.

[bweez]

I play GTA IV occasionally and the lighting and shadows still impress me. The physics also. GTA IV is amazing. But GTA V just looks to be 100x better. San Andreas has so many cool features, and planes but playing it now. It just feels clunky and ugly. Still a good game. But GTA V is my dream. A HD San Andreas

I've never heard wiser words in my life.