Red Dead Redemption 2 Has Never Looked Better With Incredible 8K Raytracing Mod


Even two and half years on, Red Dead Redemption 2‘s graphics are arguably some of the best out there. The team at Rockstar really outdid themselves by bringing the world of the wild west to life in the most realistic way possible.

Arthur Morgan looking towards the camera
Credit: Rockstar Games

One budding modder with an absurdly kitted out PC has managed to take Red Dead Redemption 2’s stunning graphics to the next level. YouTube user Digital Dreams recently published an 8K video showcasing Red Dead Redemption 2 with modded visuals. That’s right – Eight. K.

The way they’ve achieved this is by whacking all of the native video options in Red Dead Redemption 2 onto the maximum setting. From there, they’ve installed a ‘reshade tool’ that hooks into the game files and modifies how the game is lit. The biggest change of all is that raytracing is added to the game which drastically improves lighting and reflections.

Give it a watch for yourself!

YouTube video

You’ll need a beastly PC to run Red Dead 2 like this!

It all combines to create an incredible-looking image that’s perfectly playable at 8K resolutions. That’s if you have the PC horsepower to run it. For Digital Extremes to maintain a steady frame rate, their PC is kitted out with an RTX 3090 graphics card, an AMD Ryzen 3900x, paired with 32GB of RAM.

Altogether, that’s a PC worth upwards of £2,500, not even including the case or peripherals. 8K requires so much horsepower that most machines will even struggle to playback the 8K YouTube video at a full 60 frames per second.

Safe to say, the results that Digital Dreams have achieved are a stunning showcase of what games are capable of. It’s unlikely that many people will be able to play through all of Red Dead 2 this way, but it’d sure be nice if we could.

Masked cowboy aiming gun
Credit: Rockstar Games

With the incredible power of the new-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X, raytracing in titles is becoming more commonplace. Demon’s Souls, Miles Morales, and The Medium all look stunning in their new-gen counterparts. Here’s hoping we start to see more stunning looking games on the horizon!

Fans of Red Dead Redemption 2 recently started a petition for Rockstar to release single-player DLC. Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing more of Arthur Morgan or John Marston anytime soon.

Two cowboys riding off into the sunset on horseback
Credit: Rockstar Games

What do you think of the realistic Red Dead Redemption 2 graphics? Let us know across our social channels.

[Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games ]

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