In a recent article, Digital Foundry analyzed the brief GTA VI clip in which the camera flies over Vice City at night, and they have revealed some key insights.
Rockstar Games’ title does indeed use ray-traced reflections, employing a hybrid approach. Specifically, ray tracing is combined here with Screen Space Reflections (SSR). The latter helps fill in some gaps on the water’s surface.
Ray tracing applies reflections of surrounding buildings to the water, but without accounting for shadows or ambient occlusion. However, a rather surprising detail has been spotted: only the Ferris wheel visible in the far right corner of the footage lacks a reflection. This could be a glitch that will likely be fixed in the final game.
In any case, the overall visuals of GTA VI should be very impressive on PS5 and XBOX Series X. It remains to be seen whether the XBOX Series S will be able to handle the load. It will likely have to sacrifice some visual details.
