The Grand Theft Auto IV path tracing mod is now available to download for free.
Modder xoxor4d first made this mod public around one month ago, as part of the Nvidia RTX Remix project. To access it then, you had to sign up to his Patreon, which had a minimum tier at $ 10 a month.
For many Grand Theft Auto modders, they like to set up their releases with a paid/free model. So under this arrangement, you can just wait for the free releases, but paying subscribers get early access to the latest builds.
Just like how Doom used the shareware model in the 1990s, this setup allows mods to earn some goodwill and make some money for their work. In some cases, these arrangements are so successful that they can focus on their mods full time.
Videotechuk shared the news on Twitter:
You can now officially download the new path-tracing mod for Grand Theft Auto: IV for free.
Every part of the game is all path-traced and tries to stick to the original look and feel.
Developers are hard at work creating new assets for the game with new PBR texturing thanks to the mod utilising RTX Remix.
You can get the public release on xoxor4d’s Github here.
Should Rockstar Work On Official RTX Support?
This is definitely a cool fan project, but it does raise a project that we think more fans should be asking. Which is why doesn’t Rockstar work to make path tracing support official?
It’s true that this will only be available on PC. Both Sony and Microsoft chose to work with AMD.
Nvidia is supplying the Nintendo Switch 2’s processor, but that processor is only powerful enough to support ray tracing, not full on path tracing.
This may all change in the future, particularly when Nintendo gets that more powerful processor for the Switch 3. Or perhaps technology gets cheaper at a faster rate so that path tracing becomes more accessible to mid-range Nvidia PCs before that.
Maybe this is something that Rockstar is working on right now, but for Grand Theft Auto 6, and other potential future games. If that includes a remake of Grand Theft Auto IV, or for that matter, Red Dead Redemption 2, we could be up for Rockstar’s most visually striking games to date.
Here and now, if you have a computer with an Nvidia GPU, and your build is powerful enough to run path tracing, you can try out this mod right now.
