Rockstar Games offers a brief look at the impressive array of graphical options and settings included on Grand Theft Auto V‘s PC version.

Thanks to the platform’s raw power and functionality, GTA V on PC is largely seen as the definitive flavor, featuring a huge range of visual and performance upgrades that soar past consoles.

Today Rockstar delivered a brief Tweet that shows off some of the exclusive higher end options that PC users will get to play with to test the mettle of their rigs.

One of these settings lets you play a god of sorts, giving players direct control the visual fidelity of Los Santos’ environments and population. The graphics tab includes slider bars for population density in any given area–that is to say how many NPC’s are on-screen–as well population variety, ensuring seldom repeated characters.

Other visual options include your basic textures and shadow quality presets, along with tampering with the pristine sheen on reflective surfaces like water and glass, water quality (which is pretty important when you’re boating or jet-skiing across the waves on Vespucci Beach).

You’ll be able to adjust “high detail streaming” while doing barrel rolls and soaring the skies, which might have something to do with the streamers left by the planes in the air. Other advanced options include high-resolution shadows and extended shadow and distance scaling.

The advanced graphics tab even has a benchmark tester, just in case you need to gauge how good your hardware is while in-game.

Below is a full list of GTA V on PC’s graphical settings (thanks, PC Gamer):

Graphics Tab

• Video memory slider: shows you how much video memory is being used in MB
• DirectX Version Output monitor: 1-3
• Anti-aliasing: FXAA, MSAA and Nvidia TXAA supported
• Pause game on focus loss
• Texture quality: Normal – Very High
• Shader quality: Normal – Very High
• Shadow quality: Normal – Very High
• Reflection quality: Normal – Very High
• Reflection MSAA
• Water quality: Normal – Very High
• Particles quality: Normal – Very High
• Grass quality: Normal – Very High
• Soft shadows options: softer, softest, AMD CHS, Nvidia PCSS
• Post FX options: Normal – Ultra
• Motion blur strength
• In-game depth of field effects
• Anisotropic filtering: Up to x16
• Ambient occlusion Options
• Tesellation Options

Advanced Graphics Tab

• Long shadows: On/Off
• High resolution shadows: On/Off
• High detail streaming while flying: On/Off
• Extended distance scaling bar
• Extended shadow distance bar
• Benchmark testing

As far as controls, it looks like Rockstar might have ensured the game can be comfortably played with a keyboard and mouse as well as a gamepad.

Players can customize their keyboard and mouse combinations with specific key-bindings and map their own control schemes, and adjust various sensitivities and auto-centering features across vehicles and on-foot.

Basically Rockstar gives PC gamers expansive control over the entirety of their experience in Los Santos, letting them tweak a vast assortment of options to ensure optimum performance.

Grand Theft Auto V‘s highly anticipated PC version launches just next week on April 14, 2015.

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It looks like Rockstar’s highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V on PC will be a whopping seven discs, according to recent reports.

The news was originally found on a Reddit post that depicts what appears to be an early shipped physical copy of the game across seven DVD discs. For comparison’s sake the Xbox 360 flavor of the game weighs in at just two DVD discs, whereas the PS4 and Xbox One variants are a single Blu-ray disc.

But why go with DVD instead of Blu-Ray, when the latter can hold so much more space?

It looks like Rockstar went with the more accessible option. Not everyone has Blu-ray drives and the studio wanted to make GTA V as compatible as possible, even if if the game has high recommended specs.

Digital downloads of GTA V require at least 65 GB of free space, and doing a little bit of match, the physical version seems to be around ~63 GB (7 discs multiplied by the max 9GB capacity of dual-layer DVD’s).

Since GTA V on PC is markedly different than its console predecessors, it’s easy to see why the game needs so much space.

Harnessing the extensive power of the PC platform affords amenities like consistent 60fps frame-rates for fluid gameplay, not to mention dazzling 4K-ready resolution.

Adaptive Sync is yet another PC-only utility that improves performance. Using Nvidia’s G-Sync and AMD’s FreeSync PC gamers can ensure optimum graphical fidelity and refresh rates between monitors and GPUs.

It looks like GTA V might require a 58mb day one update, which is paltry compared to the mandatory 8-16GB day one updates required by some console games.

GTA V on PC also requires a 58mb day-one update, says Twitter user Funmw4, who actually was able to snag the update while pre-loading his copy.

Apart from the update, Funmw4 also confirmed that a Rockstar Club account is 100% required to play the game, which is a bit curious. In the console flavors signing up wasn’t mandatory, but offered extra features like sharing in-game pictures across social media streams and forums.

Digital pre-loading for GTA V has since gone live, allowing gamers to secure their copies before Rockstar officially launches it next Tuesday.

t’s also worth noting that the day-one update might be a an anti-piracy measure of some sort, perhaps even a safeguard against cracked versions.

It’ll be interesting to see if the game is in fact seven DVD discs or not, but judging how long the downloads are taking so far, this might be the best option.

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The rumor mill has recently been busy belting out the latest bit of video games industry speculation: Call of Duty publisher Activision (NASDAQ: ATVI) might be planning to buy Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO).

The rumors have tapered off over the last few days, but the supposed acquisition caused a surge in Take-Two Interactive’s stock.

The publisher’s shares went up 4.14 percent (at a high of $23.66) in afternoon trades following the rumors. This is just short of its six-year high of $23.67 back in June.

At time of press Take-Two’s shares are currently at $23.47 (down by 0.8%).

According to Benchmark Analyst Mike Hickey, Activision buying out Take-Two would be a “no brainer“:

“For Activision, acquiring Take-Two Interactive would be a no brainer, in our view, circling some of the strongest development talent and owned IP in the world, within a Company that has nearly $1 billion in cash and trades at a comparably lower multiple.”

Take-Two owns Rockstar Games, a leading developer of successful hits like Red Dead Redemption and the mega-popular GTA franchise.

Take-Two is responsible for some of the most popular blockbuster franchises in the games industry, including Borderlands, BioShock and the grand-daddy of open-world vice Grand Theft Auto. These games are some of the most lucrative titles on the market–with GTA V alone raking in $1 billion in sales in its first three days–so it’s not difficult to see the upside for Activision.

Interestingly enough, back in 2012 Wedbush Securities Analyst Michael Pachter predicted that Activision would go after Take-Two.

“I think the first thing Activision buys is Take-Two, because that fits in very nicely,” Pachter began. “Take-Two doesn’t make very much money but they have really great assets, so I think they remain attractive.”

But the publisher’s possible interest isn’t all about the games.

Hickey goes on to disclose that Take-Two “admires Activision’s deep connections in Hollywood”, and that these ties could very well facilitate movie adaptations of their catalog of AAA games.

This isn’t the first time that Take-Two has been eyed; back in 2008, Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) offered to buy out the company for $2 billion. Naturally Take-Two rejected, and it’s interesting to note that Grand Theft Auto V has almost sold enough copies to fund that very acquisition.

“With the acquisition of Take-Two Interactive, Activision would have arguably the three strongest development studios in the world with Rockstar Games, Bungie and Blizzard,” Hickey said.

The flip side of the coin would be that Activision would have a very clear monopolized hold on intellectual properties in the gaming industry. While the companies would most likely stay in their current forms and act subsidiaries of Activision, the Call of Duty publisher would no-doubt shift its business model and belt out more annual games.

This could mean gamers would be swarmed with yearly Grand Theft Auto iterations, effectively watering down the dynamism of the series, and in turn alienating its constituency.

Back in 2010, Activision signed a 10-year partnership with Halo-developer Bungie. The fruits of that partnership have culminated in Destiny, one of the most anticipated games in years, and Activision’s next “billion dollar franchise“.

Call of Duty is Activision’s cash crop, but how much longer can it maintain churning out sequels?

With the revenue brought in by World of Warcraft subscribers, annual Call of Duty releases, and now Bungie’s new sci-fantasy shooter Destiny, Activision is in pretty good shape as they are.

Buying out Take-Two would definitely help their cause and solidify a more colorful catalog of IP’s, but it’d cause quite a bit of backlash from a community who already sees the company as a sort of giant that consumes and absorbs its competition.

The release of Grand Theft Auto V on next-gen consoles and PC will make Take-Two even more appealing. It appears that some online retailers have listed GTA V for a November release.

In any case, neither Take-Two or Activision have stepped up to confirm the acquisition. At this point it all has to be chalked up to rumor, but the surge in Take-Two’s stock is a great indicator in how speculation can be quite advantageous–even if it’s predicated on fabrications.

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