Some don't wait for Rockstar and update the graphics of Grand Theft Auto 4 themselves.
Recently, an enthusiast nicknamed The Wil introduced a large-scale modification for Grand Theft Auto 4, designed to improve the game's graphics.
He replaced all the city's textures with improved ones using AI tools. In the process, he encountered the fact that during the development of the game's levels, "not much attention was paid to choosing the texture resolution according to the scale of the corresponding asset."
As an example, he cited doors: most of them "have textures 512 pixels high; however, some two-story buildings also had textures 512 pixels high. The result is a blurry building with a high-quality door."
Because of this, The Wil had to "...manually select texture after texture. It was a painstaking process of determining the ideal resolution and AI method for each texture replacement. Other mods available in the community upscale all textures equally, regardless of the size of the associated asset or the need for it. They even double the resolution of normal and specular maps, causing the game to overload without achieving any visual improvements."
In the process, he was constrained by the limitations of the game engine: "Replacing so many textures with high-resolution models can lead to glitches. Most glitches can be fixed by simply adhering to the size limit of each package in .img files."
The "HQ Vanilla City Textures Revitalization" mod is distributed free of charge via Nexus Mods.
There are technical nuances: some users experienced glitches and the map disappeared; performance drops can also sometimes be observed.
