Intel Makes ‘GTA V’ Appear Even More Realistic With AI
Image via Intel ISL
While gaming graphics have become far more refined over the years, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has always been a trailblazer in this realm. Somehow, a team at Intel Labs has managed to make GTA V look even more realistic, potentially broadening the possibilities for gaming design.
In their paper titled Enhancing Photorealism Enhancement, Intel Labs’ Stephan R. Richter, Hassan Abu Alhaija and Vladlen Kolten described successfully making GTA V scenes appear more polished by feeding a neural network with resources from Cityscapes Dataset, a collection of images captured from car-mounted cameras.
Since the AI was trained with real-world imagery as seen from cars, it was able to add photorealistic details to GTA V scenes, refreshing parched grass and giving it volume, creating reflections on windows, adding shine to the roofs of cars, and more.
As Gizmodo notes, introducing a new artistic style to existing footage could result in some glitching. Thankfully, the team was able to draw from data in GTA V’s own game engine, such as its perception of depth and lighting, allowing for the results to be “geometrically and semantically consistent with the original images.”
The researchers also shared that, at a later stage, if the right hardware is used, the AI could even optimize gaming visuals in real-time.
The end product is captivating and serves as a prelude for all the things the video game industry might accomplish in the future.
To read about the study, as well as check out comparisons between the original GTA V scenes and the AI’s edits, head here.
Can AI make graphics look realistic ? 🚗
— Hassan Abu Alhaija (@Hassanhaija) May 11, 2021
👇Proud to announce a new work with Stephan Richter and Vladlen Koltun.
I worked on this in my internship at Intel but majority of credit is to Stephan who persisted to make it work and work robustly.
full video: https://t.co/q7kPtSTaQK pic.twitter.com/u9IyN1FDR5
[via Pocket-lint and Gizmodo, video and cover image via Intel ISL]
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