Can we please have this Draw Distance in GTA VI?

[DODI3OG]

This is IMO, the best example of a good Draw Distance. Aviation hazards, such as those electric towers and windmills are still visible from around 100m. Just enough to make the immediate area look isolated, while at the same time letting us see hazards in the environment.

 

Spoiler

The Vinewood sign is still visible from afar, even though there's a thick fog. This even makes it look like Los Santos is much larger than it really is!

 

Spoiler

In this shot, building silhouettes from afar are almost invisible, but we can still see details such as the artificial lights.

 

Spoiler

In this shot, Mt. Josiah isn't visible even though I'm on its foot. Personally, I think the Draw Distance is too low this way, unless, of course, there's fog, but it does a good job of isolating Fort Zancudo to the rest of the map.

[DODI3OG]

Just to add. Los Santos and Blaine county is really large. To be fair, if we're gonna compare Blaine County to Red County in GTA SA, the latter would be dwarfed in every scenario. From the size of hills and mountains, to the size of towns.

 

The thing is that it looks really small. The smog effect makes the map look even larger, but I think putting more fog and only letting us see the silhouettes from afar would make it even feel more so.

 

We have several isolated places in this map, such as Palomino Highlands, Land Act Dam, Tongva Valley, and so on, but they don't feel isolated because you get to see halfway through the map on these places! But, when the snow dropped, I had the feeling that the map is much larger than reality.

 

There were times I thought the Paleto Sawmill was way deeper into the woods, only to realize I was only meters away from the highway, which was barely visible. Same for Raton Canyon, when I had to rescue that client. I just couldn't tell I was just surrounded by civilization behind the fog.

[SM00V 0PERAT0R]

Wut? GTA V has so many issues with pop-ins... Especially shadows. It was a port for the xbox 360 and ps3... It better not be anything close to that. LOD issues are a game ruining experience. Draw distance should be much more than it would be IRL because it's a 3rd person game. Miles, not meters. There should be no "isolation" in a game like this. The whole point of a 3rd person open world game is visibility and having 10x the perspective you would IRL. Not saying they didn't do a good job for GTA V, but the draw distance, LOD, and pop-in issue should be a priority for this game. There is no reason PC's should have this issue let alone modern consoles. Fog of war to limit visibility, hopefully, does not exist. Just think how far you can see from a drone on a clear day and replicate that.

Edited January 10 by SM00V 0PERAT0R

[DODI3OG]

5 hours ago, SM00V 0PERAT0R said:

Wut? GTA V has so many issues with pop-ins... Especially shadows. It was a port for the xbox 360 and ps3... It better not be anything close to that. LOD issues are a game ruining experience. Draw distance should be much more than it would be IRL because it's a 3rd person game. Miles, not meters. There should be no "isolation" in a game like this. The whole point of a 3rd person open world game is visibility and having 10x the perspective you would IRL. Not saying they didn't do a good job for GTA V, but the draw distance, LOD, and pop-in issue should be a priority for this game. There is no reason PC's should have this issue let alone modern consoles. Fog of war to limit visibility, hopefully, does not exist. Just think how far you can see from a drone on a clear day and replicate that.

You say GTA V has many issues with pop-ins, yet you want to have high draw distance. But, speaking for myself, I didn't experience these pop-ins and I use choppers a lot. Although, I have an issue with snow having white trees for LOD that turn green, but I wouldn't call them pop-in.

[Kid Named Finger]

I think Red dead 2's draw distance was perfect. It was pretty much like real life, you could see massive chunks of the map atop mountains but you couldn't see everything at once. Pretty much like real life.

 

Improving the feel of scope is pretty tough taking planes into account though. Just cause 2 does this very well, it feels fast but it still takes a long time to travel across the map, but that's because the map is 400sq miles. In comparison gta 5 is 30sq miles and gta 6 on release could be around 80sq miles (judging from the leak coordinates). It would take like 6mins to fly across the map.

[Paper Mario]

I'm sure Rockstar will nail it. I just hope we won't see pop-ins that make me frickin' crash my chopper or plane into a tree or electricity tower..

[DODI3OG]

On 1/11/2023 at 3:29 PM, Paper Mario said:

I'm sure Rockstar will nail it. I just hope we won't see pop-ins that make me frickin' crash my chopper or plane into a tree or electricity tower..

The problem why we have pop-ins in GTA V/Online is not mainly because of the Draw Distance. It's the Render Distance.

 

Those things sound and have similar roles, but the Render Distance is responsible for which things are rendered and when they are rendered. GTA renders most of the assets on the fly and the tiny details on a particular radius (that's why the shadows and the snow in GTA O shows up as circular while viewed from the sky loading screen).

 

It's been on the game since day one. Even more noticeable now since we have the sparrow and it's up close on the ground so, it helps us see a lot of the pop-ins.

 

I'm sure 12gb ram would alleviate some of that with more engine optimizations.

On 1/11/2023 at 3:16 PM, Kid Named Finger said:

I think Red dead 2's draw distance was perfect. It was pretty much like real life, you could see massive chunks of the map atop mountains but you couldn't see everything at once. Pretty much like real life.

 

Improving the feel of scope is pretty tough taking planes into account though. Just cause 2 does this very well, it feels fast but it still takes a long time to travel across the map, but that's because the map is 400sq miles. In comparison gta 5 is 30sq miles and gta 6 on release could be around 80sq miles (judging from the leak coordinates). It would take like 6mins to fly across the map.

I really agree 100%. Even though, I think it's still more video-gamey to make the map look larger by applying the fog effect, it still looks better than Southern San Andreas, partly due to the realistic map design.

 

80sqm sounds good to me! That's more than 2x the size of Southern San Andreas. 

[Kid Named Finger]

53 minutes ago, DODI3OG said:

. Even though, I think it's still more video-gamey to make the map look larger by applying the fog effect

I disagree. I live close to a valley in south east asia and how far you can see is pretty close to what's there in rdr2.

 

I still think no game does draw distance as realistically and as well as rdr2 and that's great news for GTA vi.

 

1 hour ago, DODI3OG said:

I'm sure 12gb ram would alleviate some of that with more engine optimizations.

I sure hope so. We haven't seen what a new GTA really looks like in 11 years, that too on 2006 hardware. Rockstar better really "significantly move beyond what we've previously accomplished"

[Jason]

Draw distance is such a non-issue in 2023 lol.

 

A permanent layer of fog would just look... odd. They can, and as proven by RDO, create atmosphere without the needs of any sort of heavy handed fog of war approach, which they only utilised in the past due to hardware limitations.

[Edward RDRIII]

What is this? Blind simulator? Are you really using a snowy environment as an example, which obviously has a reduced visibility, and saying it should also be a thing on a sunny environment? I want RDR2's level of draw distance on GTA 6 at the very least, and based on the leak that's exactly what we are getting.

Edited January 25 by Edward RDRIII

[DODI3OG]

11 hours ago, Kid Named Finger said:

I disagree. I live close to a valley in south east asia and how far you can see is pretty close to what's there in rdr2.

 

I still think no game does draw distance as realistically and as well as rdr2 and that's great news for GTA vi.

 

I sure hope so. We haven't seen what a new GTA really looks like in 11 years, that too on 2006 hardware. Rockstar better really "significantly move beyond what we've previously accomplished"

I live in Southeast Asia, too (Philippines). I don't live in a valley, but we have a few of mountain ranges in my town. It reminds me a lot of GTA V/online and my sister also said the same thing that it looks like "that game" I'm playing. I meant to point out that the game has a little too much of that fogging (which I like) compared to real life. Maybe you're on PC and you increased your Draw Distance? XD

 

There's actually a trick to see the most distant objects and still have vivid details. In PC, you just have to make the mountains and other building spawn from any distance (to make sure they're really visible), and have the fog be thick just enough. I've made a few custom maps in Far Cry, and they have this thing called "Fog Density" and Fog Distance(radius). Basically the thickest value for it would cover everything, which is bad since we need high visibility for nearby objects. What it looks like when done right is that the objects up to a 250m radius are spawned and it's not foggy, but in the distance, the scenery starts to fade.

 

If done right, it will make the map look much bigger than it really is. What R* did in GTA V is very similar to this. They had a gigantic mountain (Chiliad) behind Mt. Vinewood and in addition to the smog, it makes it look like there's actually a lot more outside Los Santos (which is somehow the case if the player appreciates the map).

 

On the other hand, without the smog effect, GTA San Andreas DE lost the map size illusion. In the Original, the fog covers some part of the map and only shows some objects behind vividly like skyscrapers, trees, hills. That's why a lot of people didn't like the "realism" that GTA SA DE added.