Water simulation has progressively become one of Rockstar Games' marquee technical showcases, evolving from the largely cosmetic ocean of Grand Theft Auto V (2013) to the highly physicalised lakes, rivers, and swamps of Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) (Rockstar Games, 2018). With Grand Theft Auto VI set within the fictional state of Leonida — a parodic recreation of Florida that prominently features Vice City (Miami), Grassrivers (the Everglades), and the Leonida Keys (the Florida Keys) — water is expected to form a structurally central, rather than peripheral, element of the simulation (Wikipedia, 2026; Collins and Richardson, 2025). The May 2025 second trailer confirmed extensive coverage of oceans, beaches, canals, swamps, and bayous, all rendered on PlayStation 5 hardware (Rockstar Games, 2025). This report synthesises three sources to characterise the state of the art and project the likely water systems in GTA VI.
Grand Theft Auto V shipped with a Gerstner-wave based ocean and pre-baked reflection probes typical of seventh-generation console rendering. Although the Pacific Ocean surrounding Los Santos was visually convincing for its era, physical interaction was limited: vehicles, characters, and props interacted with water at a surface plane with simplified buoyancy, no genuine displacement, and screen-space reflections that broke down near shore (Wikipedia, 2026). Underwater rendering relied on a uniform fog volume and decoupled caustic decals, and Rockstar later enhanced these in the PS4/Xbox One re-release in 2014 and the PS5/Xbox Series version in 2022, adding ray-traced reflections, improved sub-surface scattering on the surface, and higher-resolution caustics (Wikipedia, 2026).
Red Dead Redemption 2 significantly advanced the RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) water system. The Lemoyne region — explicitly modelled on the Louisiana Deep South with bayous and plantations — required convincing swamp water, including murky albedo, refraction, vegetation-occluded reflections, alligator displacement, and dynamic foam (Rockstar Games, 2018; Wikipedia, 2025). Rivers in New Hanover demonstrated flow-mapped currents that influenced horse traversal and the player character's stamina; Arthur Morgan can swim, while John Marston explicitly cannot, a deliberate gameplay-narrative constraint (Wikipedia, 2025). Reflections combined cube-map probes, planar reflections on calm pools, and screen-space reflections (SSR), producing the lake mirror effects that have become reference material for water rendering tutorials. The PC release in November 2019 added higher-quality reflection MSAA and additional water tessellation (Wikipedia, 2025).
Given Leonida's Florida geography, GTA VI faces water simulation requirements unprecedented in the series. Three biomes dominate:
Hurricane and storm-surge weather is strongly implied by the Florida setting and by tonal cues in the trailer, suggesting Rockstar may implement dynamic sea-state changes and flooded streets — a feature unprecedented in series history (Wikipedia, 2026). Ninth-generation hardware permits hardware ray-traced reflections on water, GPU-driven wave compute, and per-droplet rain interaction, all of which are visible in the released footage (Rockstar Games, 2025).
Water will likely function as gameplay surface, not merely set dressing: boating, jet-skis, swimming, fishing, and stealth approaches across swamps are heavily implied by the marketing materials and the Florida setting (Collins and Richardson, 2025). This represents a maturation of the systems first prototyped in RDR2 and a substantial leap beyond GTA V.
Collins, R. and Richardson, T. (2025) What have we learned from Grand Theft Auto 6's second trailer? BBC News, 6 May. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2grmrx4po (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Rockstar Games (2018) Red Dead Redemption 2. New York: Rockstar Games.
Rockstar Games (2025) Grand Theft Auto VI – Trailer 2. New York: Rockstar Games, 6 May.
Wikipedia (2025) Red Dead Redemption 2. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026) Grand Theft Auto VI. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).