‘According to Steam, I have around 10,000 hours logged,’ says the modder who’s spent a decade turning GTA 5 into a photo realistic wonderland

When those first bars of Tom Petty’s Love Is a Long Road rang out against a sun-kissed cityscape in late December 2023, the world changed for GTA 6 anticipators. For those keen and waiting fans, the first trailer for the next long-awaited entry in Rockstar’s crime simulator series offered a glimpse of what lay ahead. Finally, it was real, thereafter fueling reams of speculation about its characters, its setting, its mission structure and its inevitable deluge of unscrupulous side quests that will define our return to Vice City.

And then nothing. Radio silence for close to a year-and-a-half, before the powers that be poked their heads above the parapet to postpone our faux-Miami reunion until May 26, 2026 (on consoles, PC release is still TBC), before teasing more of Jason and Lucia’s tale with ‘Trailer 2’ days later.

Patience has characterised the long road to GTA 6 just as much as hype or pretty visuals, then, and so it seems fitting that long-rolling projects such as Razed’s NaturalVision series—an evolving modding venture now years in continuous development that’s widely considered the best-looking Grand Theft Auto visual overhaul mod of all time—stand to plug the gap in GTA 5.

For Razed, patience has been crucial in growing NaturalVision, which has been blessed with yet another big update, NaturalVision Enhanced.

“According to Steam, I have around 10,000 hours logged in GTA 5,” says Razed. “I’d estimate that around 80% of that time was dedicated to developing and testing this project over the years. Other team members have also contributed hundreds, if not thousands, of hours towards developing the mod.”

A long, long road

NaturalVision Enhanced must be seen to be believed. Razed and his team’s work in overhauling Los Santos and Blaine County really is spectacular, leveraging the ray tracing features introduced in GTA 5 Enhanced Edition (which landed on PC earlier this year) to improve lighting, shadows and colours in both interior and exterior settings across the San Andreas sprawl.

With a host of props and high-quality textures ported over from NaturalVision’s previous endeavour, NaturalVision Evolved, Razed has been able to weave a unique tapestry that feels seamless, with everything from garden hedges to the composition of asphalt on the highway having been tweaked to galvanise the illusion of realism.

Sure, there are loads of other visual overhauls among the best GTA 5 mods today, but none that look as good as NaturalVision.

“Maintaining subtly in this work is extremely important when you look at the bigger picture,” Razed adds. “Games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are packed with subtle details that many players might overlook at first, but it’s those small touches that shape the atmosphere and make the world feel more alive and believable.

“For example, I’ve been having a lot of fun messing around with the lighting and testing out some of the new tech in GTA 5 Enhanced for NaturalVision Enhanced. There were always things I wanted to do in older versions of NaturalVision that just didn’t work right until now. I’m really liking how the exposure and light adaptation turned out, and have also had fun recently working on volumetric cloud reflections with our lead shader dev for NaturalVision Evolved.”

Ever humble, Razed says he’s been thrilled by the constant support he and his team have received for their modding efforts over the years, and reckons if their initial goal was to create something players would enjoy for years to come then they’ve achieved that. For a game now closing in on 12 years old, 10 on PC, Razed is surprised by how far NaturalVision has been able to push the GTA 5 sandbox in visual terms, tipping his hat to community creators who’ve helped add new layers of realism through custom shaders such as volumetric clouds.

Again, it’s this web of subtle nips and tucks that allow NaturalVision to create its illusion of realism. Well, this and 10,000+ hours of blood, sweat and tears toiling in front of a PC.

Razed adds: “I truly believe it’s all been worth it in the end. Though I admit there was a time when I had doubts. In the beginning, people around me told me that modding GTA 5 was a waste of time. It wasn’t easy to ignore that but I kept going, driven by resilience and a deep passion to create something great.

“Along the way I’ve picked up on several skills and met some incredibly talented people. Additionally I found a community that genuinely supports what I do. Thanks to platforms like Patreon and Discord, I’ve been able to turn this passion into a living. And in return, I’ve been able to give back by hiring others within the GTA 5 modding community and helping create opportunities for them as well. I hope those people feel like it’s been worth it on their end as well.”

The time Razed and the team has put into it has also made later iterations slightly easier to develop. “Over the years we’ve developed a list of custom tools designed to reduce development time and make certain tasks easier. One of the most impactful has been a set of hot reloading utilities for both GTA 5 Legacy and GTA 5 Enhanced, enabling near real-time editing of game assets, such as shaders, textures, and configuration files—without requiring a full game restart.

“This significantly speeds up testing and fine-tuning. We also use tools like Miro to keep track of tasks, stay organised, and make sure everyone on the team is on the same page.”

Under construction

In the short-term, NaturalVision Enhanced stands to wow players all over again in the same way its previous iterations have over the last decade. By virtue of GTA Online, many GTA 5 mod users know the Los Santos and Blaine County playground inside out—which only makes NaturalVision feel even more impressive given its scope to surprise and excite within a sandbox so familiar to so many.

In the long-term, however, the NaturalVision project has allowed an A-team of Grand Theft Auto modders to flourish, perfecting a game that once pushed the bar in visual terms. GTA 6, from the little we’ve actually seen, looks to do the same and so what teams like Razed’s might be able to achieve whenever the game lands on PC is exciting.

“I think modding is going to be bigger than ever once GTA 6 eventually drops on PC,” says Razed. “I’m hopeful Rockstar will give players official tools to mod the game, especially with the direction they’re heading with FiveM.”

Razed has also been looking at how other developers have supported modding and hopes to see Rockstar do the same.

“There’s a ton of potential here. Imagine if they took a page out of Bethesda’s playbook and introduced a proper marketplace for user-generated content. It could benefit both mod creators and Rockstar in a big way. I’d like to see something like that happen.

“I’d love to create mods for GTA 6, but it still feels a little too early to get into the specifics of what that might look like. Honestly, I don’t think visual overhaul mods will be in high demand this time around. The game already looks incredible. If anything, I think I’d really enjoy making content for people to use on their custom servers, like exterior map packs or custom interiors.”

Razed adds: “I’d love to see someone take the Vice City part of the map and completely rework it into a full-on 1980s Miami vibe. It would require a major overhaul of the landscape, but the end result could be something incredible. I bet a lot of players would be into it, especially for an ’80s themed roleplay server.”

Given the prestige and standards to which NaturalVision is executed, surely Razed and his team would be well-placed to take something like that on, right? No pressure, guys. But, as has been the throughline for GTA 6, and indeed Razed and his team’s ever-impressive work, patience is once again required with the end of this long road now just about in sight.

NaturalVision Enhanced is out now.