GTA 6 to Use Advanced Water Rendering Technology?

Easily one of the biggest news stories of 2022 was the “reveal” of GTA 6. By “reveal,” we mean the leak that showed everyone an early game build. The build was incredibly controversial in the minds of some gamers due to how “bland” it looked and the graphics on display. Many felt it looked anything but next-gen, which led to many developers coming to the aid of Rockstar to note that such builds aren’t meant to look pretty but show the game’s potential. With the “fervor” subsiding, fans are now waiting for Rockstar Games to officially unveil the title.

But while they wait, new rumors are coming around. On Twitter, a man named Aleix Venturas made a post for Rockstar Mag and noted that GTA 6 might be using a special kind of water rendering system. It’s similar to NVIDIA Waterworks, meaning we’d get very high-quality and realistic-looking water. But that’s where the “problem” comes in. According to the “contributor,” using this technology is so expensive that Rockstar can’t use it all the time within the game, so they’re going to be building something themselves to fix that. ComicBook.com translated his tweets:

“The objective is therefore to bring together around twenty engineers in the Rockstar San Diego studio division called ‘RAGE Technology Group’ so that they can create a new physics system for water in GTA 6,” claims Venturas. “Current video games use a mesh system (wireframe) to represent water. This gives the impression of a rippling liquid and this system has the advantage of being energy efficient in terms of performance. With RAGE 9, it will be a new system that will allow physically simulated water in real-time. This has existed for years in the cinema or on 3D applications but it is never ‘realtime.’ NVIDIA has already tried the experiment with WaveWorks 1.0 and 2.0 but the realism/performance ratio has never been exploitable.”

There are many ways you can take this. The biggest one is that we’ll get various “water activities” in the game requiring such “advanced water renders.” While this is a rumor, it is oddly specific to post if the person behind it didn’t know it to be true. They could’ve posted about anything to get people’s attention about the title, but they posted about water.

The most important thing to note is that these rumors will continue until Rockstar finally shows off the game. When that is, no one knows.