Modder ‘The Wil’ has released a new HD Texture Pack for Grand Theft Auto 4 that upscales all the city textures. This mod is a must-have for everyone who wants to replay this GTA game. So, let’s take a closer look at it.
To upscale the original textures, the modder used AI tools. As such, the new modded textures retain the art style of the original ones. At the same time, they look way better.
The modder explained that he used different AI methods to improve each type of texture. Normal texture upscaling usually takes about 10 seconds per texture, but the new method can take up to 15 minutes for just one texture. This means it requires many hours of GPU power every day.
The extra time and effort make the textures look much better while keeping the same resolution. However, the new AI method doesn’t work well for everything. For example, it makes natural things like soil, rocks, and stones look a bit fake. Because of this, the modder still used the old method for some textures.
It’s also worth noting that the modder made improvements based on the needs of each texture type in the game. Some textures were upscaled to 4X, 2X, and several to 1X.
To showcase how good these new textures look, The Wil released the following comparison screenshots. And, as you will see, the new textures look absolutely insane. This is easily one of the best HD Texture Packs I’ve ever seen.
Furthermore, this pack is compatible with the FusionFix Mod for GTA 4. As such, you can combine them to get the ultimate “remaster” experience on PC.
You can go ahead and download the mod from this link. From what I’ve seen, it comes in three main parts. In total, you’re looking at a 9GB HD Texture Pack.
You can also find AI-enhanced texture packs for many more games. For instance, we have packs for Far Cry 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Blood 2, Dark Souls 2, FEAR, and Batman: Arkham Asylum have also received their own. And then we have those for Resident Evil: Revelations, Revelations 2, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Resident Evil 7, and Tomb Raider: Legend. Let’s also not forget this one for Palworld and this one for Thief 2014. A few days ago, we also shared one for Fallout: New Vegas. On top of that, you can find similar mods for Baldur’s Gate 3 and BioShock Infinite.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Those look so good
Definitely AI. They look fairly good regardless, and only have minor issues that wouldn't be too noticeable during gameplay.
"To upscale the original textures, the modder used AI tools."
Obviously!
Last time i tried one of these mods i got horrible texture loading issues, thanks for this game being 32 bit. Will test this and report later.
Use Large Adresse Aware to patch executables when you're modding x86 games
The 4gb patch? I think i did, but didn't solve it.
SSD ?
Yes.
Weird, the loading times sure get a bit longer but only by a small margin, keep in mind that i use the latest version of the game from Steam and not 1.0.4.0 with FusionFix + DXVK + Better City Textures + DTK70 Textures.
Give it another try someday, perhaps something went wrong last time
The author aknowledge streaming issues may occur, he said this: "With all the care I took in developing this mod, I can assure you that I was able to greatly reduce the occurrence of rendering bugs. To avoid this type of issue, I recommend using FusionFix and running the game on an SSD. Additionally, modify the pc/stream.ini file parameters to
virtual 409600
physical 409600
virtual_optimised 409600
physical_optimised 409600"
Some guy commenting on the mod also said this: "I'd recommend the max value for View and Detail Distance to 70. Anything above makes the texture streaming issues much worse."
I tried with other mod wich gave me issues. Maybe this one is better, let's hope.
Thanks for the information, will try that later
I tried the mod but i’m not sure it worked. I barely recognize any difference except the road delay the streams quickly which is always a bad sign. I’ll probably revert.
Such a bummer, the textures look good, better give it a chance later as the devs stated he’s still working on it.
That's still a bit of a kluge because you can still only address 4 GB of TOTAL RAM (system RAM + VRAM) at the same time. What it does is use memory bank switching. If all the textures happen to be in the same memory bank it works great but when textures are split between 2 or 3 different memory banks then you start having texture streaming and other problems.
This is the main reason Nvidia decided to EoL 32 bit PhysX, it just wasn't worth it anymore and took up die space on the GPU chip with no real advantage for 99.9% of users
32 Bits PhysX worked decently on most games and works flawlessly if you have a dedicated GPU for it, ending its support is just a big middle finger to a lot of people who bought NVIDIA cards in the past and to preservation in general, i hope people can come up with a solution for that because as it is right now it has a countdown and 32 Bits PhysX would definitely die with the end of driver support for RTX 4000.
With the last version of FusionFix + DXVK, this game only lacked a faithful HD textures pack, here it is
I wish we could get some mods from past versions of GTA4.
The header image is misleading, that's Icenhancer and it doesn't work with the complete edition. Sloppy John being Sloppy.
It's actually "Natural & Realistic ENB" by Vosswar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o-ojTM6tCE
This along with FusionFix looks really nice! I just tried it, and the game looks sharp…
I now see this game as a home alone movie. It's cozy to look and everytime you play it again it just feels better. Thanks to all modders
You can play online on pc using the GTA Connected client! It's awesome! Did you know about it? : )
Wow! didn't know about that. Thanks! I rarely play online though, due to time limitations, but will try sometime I guess.
yeah, the new textures look perfect. good work.
To me looks like nothing you could not do with reshade Clarity Clarity 2 Smart Sharpe
Link? Never heard of this and my searches are pulling a blank.
Wonderful!
There's a lot of textures that don't load in Broker. The block with TW@ is completely broken. When it works it looks amazing tho.