GTA 6 'Vampire' Ferris Wheel Sparks Tech Expert Investigation

When Rockstar announced GTA 6 pre-orders would footwear disconnected connected June 25, it did truthful with a short, looping video posted to the authoritative website that offered a caller look astatine Vice City. It’s meant to beryllium viewed arsenic you scroll down, a chill portion of GTA 6 media that sets the code for your acquisition connected the website. But this is GTA 6, and truthful everything is analyzed to wrong an inch of its life.

Look intimately astatine the representation taken from this abbreviated video, below, and you’ll spot a ferris instrumentality successful the background. It’s lit up, arsenic you’d expect it to beryllium fixed this is simply a nighttime clip scene, but dissimilar the buildings astir it, the ferris instrumentality does not person a reflection successful the water. Fans spotted this omission astir immediately, dubbing it GTA 6’s “vampire ferris wheel.” And portion it sparked plentifulness of “literally unplayable” jokes, the tech experts astatine Digital Foundry did their thing, and person travel up with an mentation for what’s going connected here.

A caller look astatine Vice City successful GTA 6. Image credit: Rockstar Games.

DF’s Tom Morgan suggests that the missing reflection is the effect of a “ray tracing related quirk.” As we cognize from the 2 GTA 6 trailers Rockstar has released truthful far, the crippled uses ray traced reflections, and arsenic you'd expect they’re utilized for the reflections we spot successful the h2o here. But for immoderate crushed the ferris instrumentality misses out. That is to say, we should beryllium seeing a reflection for the ferris wheel. As Morgan says: “it's wide that the ray traced reflection connected the h2o present is not close to the lighting oregon shading of the scenery above.”

As for the why, the entity (the ferris wheel) whitethorn person been excluded from ray tracing to prevention connected GPU costs. “This unsocial would explicate the missing Ferris instrumentality reflection,” Morgan suggests. “It's an entity successful akin scope arsenic the surrounding buildings, and yet 1 that's seemingly not flagged to bespeak utilizing the ray tracing approach.”

The camera region whitethorn besides person had an impact, Morgan said, though there’s nary mode to cognize astatine this stage. “It's apt a ray tracing related quirk that, perhaps, volition beryllium tweaked successful the last game,” helium continued.

There’s been a batch of amusive absorption not conscionable to this vampire ferris wheel, but to Digital Foundry doing its happening with it. Some deliberation fussing implicit this benignant of happening is overkill, and of people it is, but this is GTA 6 we’re talking about. Expectations are possibly higher for this crippled than immoderate different successful history, and the exertion underpinning Rockstar’s games is simply a immense portion of the excitement. Just look astatine Red Dead Recemption 2, present 8 years old, and inactive wowing fans with its galore systems, realistic visuals, and tech prowess.

And let’s beryllium honorable here, if we’ve got fans spending months charting the planetary positions for each Rockstar trailer driblet since 2007 to effort to enactment retired the merchandise day for Trailer 3, past analyzing this little browser video for reflections shouldn’t travel arsenic a immense surprise.

We’ve adjacent done a spot of GTA 6 investigation ourselves, taking a adjacent look astatine the precocious revealed authoritative screen art. Not agelong now!

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].