Grand Theft Auto 5 is benefitting from photorealism touchups that utilize AI machine learning and other innovative techniques. Grand Theft Auto 5 launched eight years ago and earned positive reviews for its intertwined story involving the three main protagonists: Franklin, Michael and Trevor. A popular component of the game is the ability to switch between the three characters at will. This feature remains as impressive as ever, even after nearly a decade.
Grand Theft Auto 5 proved to be an immensely popular addition to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. It smashed industry records on its way towards becoming the fastest-selling entertainment product in history at the time. The title generated a mouth-watering $800 million on its first day alone. Three days after its release, the game earned $1 billion. Those are staggering numbers that indicate how popular the Grand Theft Auto series truly is. Rockstar's full slate of games has evolved considerably since 2013. Rockstar has been prioritizing its open-world, nonlinear multiplayer Grand Theft Auto Online for the last several years.
A group of researchers at Intel Labs decided to use Grand Theft Auto 5 to test their latest project. The purpose of the project is to enhance photorealism in games. They used Grand Theft Auto 5 as an example to illustrate their latest photorealism enhancement, and the results are impressive. Each image in the game is adjusted to look more realistic. This action is performed by "a convolutional network that leverages intermediate representations produced by conventional rendering pipelines." In other words, images from the game are translated to a separate dataset, which the researchers call Cityscapes. This enables the researchers to make every image in the game photorealistic. Intel ISL uploaded a video to YouTube outlining the methodology behind its photorealism enhancement. The result is footage that is definitely not as bright as players are used to seeing in the game, but this is amended by the staggering degree of visual realism on display. With the photorealism active, the footage looks like video of actual cars as opposed to gameplay from a video game.
While Grand Theft Auto has justifiably received praise for its immersive narratives and gorgeous West Coast landscapes, the series has also been the recipient of intense backlash and scathing criticism over the years. Its heavy emphasis on drug abuse, drug trafficking and violence has been the driving force behind the controversy. Rockstar's apparent glorification of gangster lifestyles has earned the ire of the entire country at times. Grand Theft Auto 5, in particular, was also criticized for not including any notable female characters.
In fact, rumors have been circulating that Grand Theft Auto 6 may feature a female protagonist. Rockstar has not made any official announcements regarding its latest project but that hasn't stopped fans from suggesting that a confirmation might be arriving soon. In the meantime, initiatives like the photorealism project will generate more excitement for the development of video games in the future. The implications are huge, not just for Grand Theft Auto 5, but for the future of gaming.
Source: Intel ISL