GTA IV with path tracing: the RTX Remix mod that transforms Liberty City
A free mod lets you play GTA IV with full path tracing through NVIDIA’s RTX Remix: real lighting, rain, volumetric clouds and DLSS. What it does and what PC you need.
GTA IV has never had a remaster, but visually it now has something pretty close. On November 27, 2025, modder xoxor4d made their RTX Remix compatibility mod freely available. RTX Remix is NVIDIA's toolkit for running older games with path tracing, meaning all lighting is simulated the way real light behaves. Until then, the mod had been limited to Patreon supporters.
What it is (and isn't)
The project page is upfront about it: this is not a remaster. It's a mod that makes GTA IV compatible with RTX Remix, no small feat for a 2008 game running on an engine as complex as RAGE. It works with GTA IV: The Complete Edition (version 1.2.0.59) on PC and ships with its own version of FusionFix, the community patch, tailored to RTX Remix.
What changes
- Every light in the game, the sun included, becomes a path-traced light.
- Cars finally get two real headlights and two tail lights instead of a single centered one.
- Emissive surfaces work: windows, shops and vehicle lights light up their surroundings.
- Dynamic wetness that only affects outdoor surfaces, plus raindrops on cars and clothing.
- An atmospheric sky with volumetric clouds, contributed by the Remix community.
- Support for DLSS 4.5 with Ray Reconstruction, and DLSS 5 if you provide the required library.
- Vehicle dirt and liveries still work, and so does the phone.
What PC you need
Here's the catch. Path tracing demands a powerful RTX card, and GTA IV adds another problem: it draws so many objects that the CPU often becomes the bottleneck. According to published tests, even an RTX 5080 sits around 40 fps at 4K with DLSS Performance. The project also warns that some interiors can look too dark if you turn off the original game's fill lights.
A mod that keeps growing
Since launch, it's been updated constantly: version 1.1.0 (December 10, 2025) improved emissive surfaces and effects, 1.1.5 (December 30, 2025) brought better rain, asset fixes and an updated installer, 1.1.8 added horizon fog and a phone fix, and 1.5.2 (August 31, 2026) is the latest release so far.
And because it works at the GTA IV engine level, the same work has also enabled path tracing in Vice City Nextgen Edition, the fan project that moved Vice City onto that engine.
Our take
This is probably the best way to revisit Liberty City today, if you have the hardware to run it. It also highlights Rockstar's biggest gap: GTA IV still has no official current-gen console version or remaster, and it's modders who keep it alive and looking its best. GTA House doesn't link to downloads.
