I'm a sucker for Grand Theft Auto 5 visual overhaul mods, and none have captured my heart more than Jamal Rashid's Natural Vision Remastered. The result of several thousand hours of work, each update hits new levels of realism—and its latest, due to launch on Wednesday, is quite remarkable.
"My main focus in the newest NaturalVision Remastered update was to overhaul the Cloudy weather," Rashid, aka Razed, tells me via email. "I knew that editing this particular weather would be a massive undertaking which is why I left it alone until the very end. I took it upon myself to rework each hour of the day and balance it across the timecycle."
The results are wonderful:
Razed tells me the mod's new Cloudy weather purposefully leans into the incoming Red Dead Redemption 2's visual style, and he says he's pleased to finish the mod's latest update now so that "PC gamers around the world will have something to enjoy while everyone else is busy fiddling with their consoles" later this week.
He adds: "Usually the timecycle is divided into two regions (City and Countryside) so you can do more specific edits, but the file that controls cloud colors/cloud lighting is universal across both regions. As a result, I ran into some issues, but thankfully everything balanced out in the end.
"I also edited the cloud textures with some help from a friend in order to give the edges a softer look. A lot of this was inspired by the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2 which I think looks absolutely stunning. I'm hoping that game comes out on PC next year because I'd love to mod it."
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Aside from these tweaks, Razed says he's made several improvements to other weather conditions, and has fixed a host of bugs. At this point, Razed has spent a whopping 4,548 hours playing GTA 5—"the majority of those were spent modding." He tells me he's a bit burnt out on Los Santos, and that this update will be NaturalVision Remastered's last.
Razed says he's now ready to move on to something new, and I for one can't wait to see where he lands.
NaturalVision Remastered's latest update is due on Wednesday, October 24. Check out its GTA5 Mods page for more information.
Razed clearly has a good eye for GTA mod projects, and would like to point our attention to Bison Sales' GTA 4 Visual/Texture Overhaul, Orangebrains' Graphics Project, and Vosswar's 4K Roads and Graphics.
Ready for a joyride? Here's our guide on how to install GTA 5 mods on PC.
