"The Most Photorealistic Game" On PS5 Now Looks Even Better

Running with ray tracing and a reshade preset with photos from real life, Ride 4 looks simply stunning on the PC and offers us a glimpse at what’s possible for the new generation of hardware. 

This is the game running with a Beyond All Limits reshade from Digital Dreams, a digital artist and content creator who develops extremely high quality presets using photos sourced from real life locations. In doing so, the games are elevated to a new level of realism thanks to the grounding that the textures have with their real counterparts. 

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a world away from the art style of Ride 4, yet it's one of our favourite games from this year and takes advantage of the brilliant hardware in the console. Take a look below!

Ride 4 uses CAD data, laser and 3D scanning for every single asset used in the game, so there’s already a solid foundation for the reshade to work with. Plus, there’s a dynamic weather and lighting system that plays off of these environments “Are you sure it's not from a goPro?” asked one commenter on YouTube. “It's so realistic that it's making me sick on the bends,” said another. 

My take? While I know that it’s not a video of a real road and a real motorcycle, it fooled my brain and caused my heart to skip when the player comes too close to the opposing wall and wobbles like the rider might lose control. It’s the smooth 60 frames per second that tips me off though, as it just looks a little too good, as well as the lack of reflections on the front of the motorcycle in the sunny conditions.

Still, we’re getting into the weeds of it now — it’s awesome to see the game and the hardware being utilised for its full capability and I imagine the video will go down well with gamers and petrolheads alike. Sometimes, it is possible to tread into uncanny valley territory with all this talk of realism, though. Realistic versions of stylised characters, like Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, are strange to see, and Epic Games is hoping that its Metahumans shaves off development time for games in providing highly believable characters without the need for expensive photogrammetry or motion-capture. 

Topics: PC, PlayStation 5