Update August 23, 2016: The creator of Grand Theft Auto V – Redux has had to delay the release of the ambitious mod, thanks to hackers.
Josh Romito, the mod’s creator, released a new trailer, confirming a revised release date of September 16 – a few weeks after the planned original release date.
If you enjoy the freeform destruction of GTA V, you’ll love our list of PC’s best sandbox games.
A hack that compromised the mod was the cause of the delay.
“Last week my home network and computer was hacked, and Redux compromised,” Romito said, via Eurogamer. “Everything has been secured, although some data has been lost in the process.”
One good thing came out of this whole situation, however – we got a brand new trailer:
Update July 11, 2016:A new trailer has just released for Grand Theft Auto V – Redux, revealing the reworked Los Santos and a release date for the mod.
The new trailer looks just as lovely as the last one, but this one is cut together in a much more cinematic way and it’s just stunning. You’ll be able to download the mod from August 26.
Here’s that new trailer for you to drool over:
Original Story July 7, 2016: It’s not even just a graphics mod, really. Grand Theft Auto V – Redux tweaks almost every aspect of the game, adding not only an extra layer of polish, but also making a myriad of major and minor gameplay tweaks. Of course, the fact that it looks amazing will be what draws you in
Gta V Better Graphics Mod
GTA V – Redux isn’t just a reshade mod, though it is that too. This mod reworks all of the Los Santos road textures, replaces all billboards, increases the density of the city’s debris – cans, paper scraps, leaves, etc – changes blood textures and physics, and makes water look even more lovely.
Even the weather system has been overhauled, with more weather types that are promised to blend together naturally. Fog will hang over the mountains, the sunset haze will illuminate skyscrapers and everything will just look that little bit nicer thanks to simulated global illumination.
As for features – every single vehicle and weapon has been tweaked so they closer match their real-life counterparts. For the full, massive list of new features, check out the mod’s site. Or you can just watch this impressive gameplay trailer:
GTA V – Redux is getting a release date soon and we’ll update when it does. Buy Now
The PC version of Grand Theft Auto V offers many advantages over the console release. Better graphics, improved multiplayer, and support for higher resolutions are among them. Yet all of these pale in comparison to the most important advantage of all: Modifications.
An open-world game like GTA V begs to be modded, and on PC, that’s possible. Naturally, it has led to plenty of insanity that can multiply the game’s fun factor or increase its longevity. Here are the 20 must-have mods every player needs to install.
Script Hook V and Native Trainer
If you’re going to download any mods, download this first. Script Hook V makes the game’s scripts available to others, and so is a requirement for some GTA V mods (often, they’ll bundle the scripthook .dll just to be sure). This mod also gives you access to a feature-rich trainer that can turn you into a virtual god.
Complex Control
Grand Theft Auto V might be the most successful video game of all time, but Epic Games’ Fortnite is the biggest game in the world at the moment, so it only makes sense to combine the two! The Complex Control mod is a single-player “royale-lite” that spawns your character in a random location on the game’s enormous map, and you win if you’re able to stay in the last designated zone for four seconds. Though you won’t be able to play an actual battle royale match against other people, the proof-of-concept offered in Complex Control has us hoping for a full-on battle royale mode in the next Grand Theft Auto game.
Euphoria Ragdoll Overhaul
Sometimes, you don’t need a fancy armor suit or a new mission to get the most out of Grand Theft Auto V. With the Euphoria Ragdoll Overhaul mod, the ragdoll physics in the game are improved significantly, with characters behaving more realistically after they’re damaged and before collapsing to the ground. Headshots will instantly send a person to the ground as a ragdoll, and civilians will react to nearby explosions by covering their heads.
Super Mario Plumbers
“It’s a-me, get out of the car before I shoot you!” No one should be surprised that Mario and his pals made their way into Grand Theft Auto V, but we’re still impressed by what Super Mario Plumbers offers. Complete with classic Super Mario Bros. sound effects, you’re free to explore Los Santos as the classic mustachioed plumber, beat up random pedestrians, speed along the streets, and get into far more trouble than the Mushroom Kingdom would ever allow. If you get sick of Mario, the mod also includes other favorites like Luigi, Wario, and — of course — Waluigi.
Iron Man Mark 50
If the rocket launchers, planes, and explosives already available in Grand Theft Auto V aren’t enough for you, consider installing Iron Man Mark 50. Based on the suit Tony Stark wears in Avengers: Infinity War, it includes enormous wings on the back and transforms you into a walking weapon, capable of hovering in the air while you blast away at oncoming traffic with missiles. We’re not sure if you’ll survive the wrath of Thanos if you happen to run into him on the streets of Los Santos, but you’ll be able to cause quite a bit of chaos beforehand.
Psychokinetic
Ever since the film Chronicle released, we’ve wanted to control objects with our minds, and the Psychokinectic mod turns you into a terrifying being with telekinetic abilities. With the mod installed, you’re free to float throughout the city, pick up dozens of cars or people, and send them flying without worrying about whether or not anyone survives or explodes. Dropping trucks into crowded parking lots can result in some huge explosions, and if you run out of vehicles to throw, you can just send fireballs hurling down at your “enemies” instead.
Marlowe Valley Safehouse
The Marlowe Valley Safehouse mod turns Marlowe Valley into a luxurious safehouse that also happens to have an airport and adjacent runway. With garages — including a tuning garage — and parking spaces to store more than 50 cars, Marlowe Valley becomes a hideout fit for a high roller. There’s even a military bunker, apartment, and a garden area designed for festivities. You’ll need the Menyoo mod to make it work.
Liberty City
The Liberty City mod turns the world of GTA V into GTA IV, resetting the game map as Grand Theft Auto IV’s Liberty City. The mod is currently in Alpha and thus has some kinks that need to be worked out. It’s an interesting experiment that is certainly worth checking out for those interested in returning to the iconic Liberty City. There’s also a different Liberty City mod on the horizon to look out for.
World Improvement
GTA V already looks phenomenal, and even functions as somewhat of a moving portrait when you aren’t around, but World Improvement mod boosts the realism. It focuses on small details, like additional trees in places like Rockford Hills. It also adds new characters, and AI routines, such as police searches through Paleto Forest and car crashes around Los Santos. The best part about this mod? It receives new updates to introduce tiny — but profound — details regularly, so Los Santos will evolve, just like a real city would.
Superhot
The Superhot mod transplants Superhot’s innovative time-stopping mechanics into GTA V. When you stop moving, time stands still. While it seems like an odd choice for an open-world game like GTA V, the Superhot mod feels right at home when in close quarters combat. When back in the long game, you can toggle the mod off with the press of a button and resume normal play.
GTA RPG
GTA V has a rich, open-world narrative, but it remains relatively linear throughout. The GTA V RPG mod adds a non-linear story and skill progression system that makes it feel closer to Fallout than Grand Theft Auto. For starters, you can choose between three character classes. As you progress through missions using the mod’s quest system, you use skill trees to upgrade your character and weapons. There are even dialogue trees with NPCs, and randomly-generated loot and items.
The Red House
If you find that replaying single player missions is growing stale, The Red House mod features an abundance of new content to stave off boredom. The mod adds more than 20 missions to the game, including a new heist. Some missions even include NPC bodyguards that assist you in your endeavors. An update, called the “Blue House,” added a set of stealth-oriented missions to the mod. All in all, the mission variety is solid and well worth your time.
Open All Interiors
Are you tired of not being able to enter the Sandy Shores sheriff department or any other locked building? The Open All Interiors mod gives you a full range of access to those previously off-limits places. What’s most remarkable part is that the mod repopulates all these spaces, even the ones which were removed before launch and never meant to be seen.
Map Editor
Your wish is your command with this GTA Vmap editor. With the use of a free-roaming cam, you can easily place cars, ramps, and even animals throughout Los Santos, then hop in and play with your experiments. It’s a robust tool with a myriad of options, but best of all, it’s intuitive and simple to use.
Endeavor Menu
The Endeavor mod gives you a well-designed debug menu, with the power to summon any asset from the game whenever you want, turning Los Santos into your personal playground. Toggle it on and you can easily make any vehicle, gun, or item materialize in front of your eyes. You can also elevate your character to max stats, and remove police officers from the game. There are some zany aspects of it, too, like granting you the ability to drive across water, or the power to shoot bags of cash from your gun.
Pedestrian Riot
GTA: San Andreas had a cheat that made pedestrians go bonkers. It was hilarious to watch. Predictably, an intrepid modder has gone out of his way to re-create that experience as Pedestrian Riot. With the flip of a switch you can send everyone into insanity, creating chaos wherever you go. The mod gives them weapons, too, so be careful!
Field-of-view mod
For the first time ever in the series, GTA V offers a first-person mode. Far from a tack-on, Rockstar put a lot of effort into making it work just like a real first-person shooter. One thing they missed, though, is dynamic field-of-view adjustment. The default FOV is a bit narrow, which makes some players feel claustrophobic, and others motion sick. With this field-of-view mod, you can change the FOV to whatever setting is comfortable for you.
Bodyguard Menu
Why go it alone, when you can have a team backing you up? This bodyguard mod can spawn a variety of NPCs who will follow you around and assist you in whatever you’re doing. You can command them to do your bidding, or just stand around in formation looking tough. Up to seven bodyguards will follow you, but you can still spawn more after that. Creating an army just after you rouse up a 4-star police rating can be a literal riot.
Police Mod
Why does Grand Theft Auto assume you want to be a criminal? With this police mod, you can act as the long arm of the law. It lets you skin yourself as a cop, spawn a partner, choose a police vehicle, and listen to a police scanner. You can’t pull over vehicles or go on missions just yet. Hopefully, that will be possible in future versions.
Heist Vehicles Spawn Naturally
Heists are a popular feature in GTA V’s online mode. Many of them include unique vehicles. But what if you’re not interested in online play, and still want to use the vehicles? The Heist Vehicles Spawn Naturally mod lets you do just that. It doesn’t just give them to you off the bat, though; they spawn in certain areas for you to discover. Or if you just want to jump in, you can view the modder’s list of locations.
Editors' Recommendations
Jamal Rashid's ambitious GTA 5 visual overhaul mod NaturalVision Remastered first caught my eye last year. At the time, it was the result of 1,200 hours of work (now a whopping 3,600)—including over 40 hours of video, photograph, and Google Street Map research—and provided a gorgeous reworking of Los Santos and beyond.
Now, several months on, its latest update not only looks even prettier—it expands its scope beyond superficial aesthetics.
'With the newest update, I've transformed NaturalVision Remastered from a simple graphics overhaul to something much bigger,' Rashid tells me via email. 'Now it includes a few gameplay changes, weapon changes, vehicle tweaks and much more. I have a relaxed schedule for the time being, which allows me to sit here and mod this game. As I add more content, the amount of time between each update goes up. As a result, there is increased pressure from the audience. I've learned that it's okay to take as much time as needed if you plan on delivering quality content.'
Rashid explains that making roads look wet in 'Extrasunny' weather became this update's biggest challenge, and that making environments look cooler during morning and afternoon times—'where the sun is closer to the horizon and shines on the roads'—was tricky.
'I enabled rain and disabled all the rain particles for this specific weather, but I was left with noise from the invisible rain and puddles that continued to form on the ground,' says Rashid. 'I gave up on this task months ago, but recently I ended up finding a hidden timecycle variable within the Halloween weather which completely disables any noise from the rain and prevents puddles from forming. It's exactly what I wanted. Now I had slightly shiny roads in Extrasunny weather with invisible rain falling at all times and no puddles.'
Rashid continues: 'But wait—this change caused the pedestrians to start walking away because the AI thinks it's raining. Next I spent hours trying to find a workaround. Part of this included driving up and down a virtual street dozens of times and restarting my game after each tweak in order to observe how the pedestrians behave in different weather conditions. I ended up swapping the 'Rain' parameters with 'Snow' in some of the AI files and enabled invisible snow particles in Rain, Thunder and Clearing weathers. This finally fixed everything that I wanted.'
Rashid says his favourite part of the update process is getting feedback from his close circle of beta testers, and that down the line he may rework 'Cloudy' and 'Smog' weather from scratch to match his increasingly high standards.
Here's a gallery of screens from NVR's latest update, with some interesting coinciding commentary from its creator (click the top right for expanded images).
'I increased the procedural grass density beyond the normal limit. My game settings are fully maxed out in the 'Before' image. Increasing the grass density only causes an FPS loss of 1 or 2 frames. I think it's totally worth it for the result you're seeing here.'
'I increased the amount of litter/trash spawned around certain parts of the city. I felt as if this gave the city a little more life to it. Think of it as background noise.'
NaturalVision Remastered's latest update is out now. More information, including installation instructions, can be found overhere.
Kingdom come deliverance light armor building. GTA 5 Redux, the impressive Grand Theft Auto V mod that overhauls numerous aspects of the game's PC version, is at long last available for download.
The ambitious mod, created by Josh Romito, enhances the game's visuals, adding a new weather system, 4K textures, visual effects, and more. You can check out some screenshots in the gallery below.
Redux is much more than just a graphics-enhancing mod, though, as it also modifies numerous other areas of the game: it adjusts the wanted system, tweaks the way weapons work, changes vehicle handling, introduces new wrinkles to the way police and pedestrians operate, and a whole lot else.
The video below from YouTube channel Ocean Powell serves as a launch trailer for the mod and runs down a lot of what it offers. You can also see a full feature list on the mod's official website. Needless to say, it's incredibly impressive.
With GTA V not officially supporting mods, the process for installing Redux is, unfortunately, not as easy as it could be. Before starting the process, you'll need to make sure you have a clean install with no existing mods. With that done, you'll need to follow the instructions outlined on this page to get Redux working. There's also a tutorial video you can watch here if you want a visual walkthrough.
Redux has been a long time coming. It was meant to launch sooner, but was postponed at the last minute when its creator was hacked in August. You can download the mod for yourself here, though as always, be careful about doing so from sources you don't completely trust.
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Grand Theft Auto V is still selling extremely well, but its age is starting to show. Although it still looks pretty good, any four-year-old game's graphics aren't going to be able to compete with brand-new AAA releases. Luckily, GTA V has a robust modding community, and one new mod is designed to overhaul and update the game's graphical fidelity.
The NaturalVision Remastered mod, as it's called, is a redone version of an earlier graphics overhaul for the game. The new mod, however, boasts improved weather, lighting, colors, and tone mapping. As creator Razed described it, it's meant to 'blur the line between fantasy and reality.' You can see it in action below.
Razed stated on the mod's GTA5-Mods page that they viewed over 40 hours of footage, hundreds of photos, and hours spent in Google Street View to better understand Southern California landscape and cities. The mod apparently took 1,200 hours to finish. You can download the mod here.
In other GTA V news, the game continues to support parent company Take-Two. In a recent earnings call, the company stated that GTA Online still brings in a lot of money. The game is one of the best-selling titles ever, with over 80 million copies sold.
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