Hayassam Keilany, best known to the modding scene as the iCE Laglace, has released new screenshots for the upcoming beta of iCEnhancer 2.5 for Grand Theft Auto IV on PC. Even though he's achieving realism with path-tracing in the Brigade Engine, Keilany is still pouring his love into making GTA IV look better than any game currently on the market.
DSO Gaming managed to get their hands on the newest bit of screenshots which showcase deferred bokeh depth of field effects, diffused reflections across various surfaces and enhanced blur effects.
Keilany has actually managed to make GTA IV look better than the unreleased GTA V, and the fidelity of his mods has basically reached a point where I'm curious if the PS4 and Xbox 720 (or Infinity) will even be able to match up against the heavily modded GTA IV at this point? Especially considering that running the game in 1080p at 60 frames per second puts the modded game on a whole other level than what the next-generation consoles will be capable of (as we know, Thief will be relegated to 30 frames per second to accommodate a lot of gameplay physics mechanics).
Nevertheless, I'm extremely impressed with Rockstar's Advanced Game Engine for the amount of scalability it affords, and equally impressed with Keilany for continuing to show just how far advanced the technology can be taken with modded shaders.
While it's unlikely we'll ever see this kind of graphics fidelity on next-gen consoles running at consistent frames in high resolution, it's at least cool to note that the software technology is already capable of such feats. You can check out the screenshots for iCEnhancer 2.5 below.
