Rockstar Advanced Game Engine

Early history

Angel Studios previously used the game engine Angel Real Time Simulation (ARTS) for Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. (1998) and Midtown Madness (1999).[2][3] The following year, Angel Studios developed Midtown Madness 2 (2000), the first title to use the new Angel Game Engine (AGE).[4] In 2002, Angel Studios was sold to Take-Two Interactive, moved under Rockstar Games, and rebranded Rockstar San Diego. This sale also included AGE, later renamed the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE).[5]

Development

Prior to developing RAGE, Rockstar Games mostly used Criterion Games's RenderWare engine to develop games for PlayStation 2, Windows, and Xbox, such as the early 3D installments in the Grand Theft Auto franchise.[6] In 2004, Criterion Games was acquired by Electronic Arts, which led Rockstar Games to switch from RenderWare and open RAGE Technology Group as a division of Rockstar San Diego.[7] RAGE Technology Group started developing what would later become RAGE, based on Rockstar San Diego's AGE.[8] The engine would facilitate game development on Windows and seventh generation consoles.[9][10] The first game to use the engine was Rockstar San Diego's Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, released for Xbox 360 on May 23, 2006[11] and ported to the Wii more than a year later. Since then, RAGE integrates the third-party middleware components Euphoria[12] and Bullet, as character animation engine and physics engine, respectively.[13][14]

On PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, RAGE often saw a disparity in the optimization on the hardware: major titles on PlayStation 3 usually had lower resolution and minor graphic effects, as in Grand Theft Auto IV (720p vs. 640p),[15][16] in Midnight Club: Los Angeles (1280×720p vs. 960×720p)[17] and in Red Dead Redemption (720p vs. 640p).[18] Despite its problems in optimization equality, in July 2009, Chris Stead of IGN voted RAGE as one of the "10 Best Game Engines of [the 7th] Generation", saying: "RAGE's strengths are many. Its ability to handle large streaming worlds, complex A.I. arrangements, weather effects, fast network code and a multitude of gameplay styles will be obvious to anyone who has played GTA IV."[19]

Since the release of Max Payne 3, the engine supports DirectX 11 and stereoscopic 3D rendering for personal computers.[20] Max Payne 3 also marked the first time in which RAGE was capable of rendering the same 720p resolution on a game, both on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.[15] This benefit has been achieved also in Grand Theft Auto V, which renders at a 720p resolution on both consoles.[21]

For the remastered versions of Grand Theft Auto V, RAGE was reworked for the eighth generation of video game consoles, with 1080p resolution support for both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.[22] The PC version of the game, released in 2015, showed RAGE supporting 4K resolution and frame rates at 60 frames per second, as well as more powerful draw distances, texture filtering, and improved shadow mapping and tessellation quality.[23]

RAGE would later be further refined with the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, supporting physically based rendering, volumetric clouds and fog values, pre-calculated global illumination[24][25] as well as a Vulkan renderer in the Windows version in addition to DirectX 12.[26] The Euphoria engine was overhauled to create advanced AI as well as enhanced physics and animations for the game.[27][28] HDR support was added in May 2019.[29][30][31] Support for Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) were added in July 2021 and September 2022 respectively.[32][33][34][35][36]

The 2022 release of Grand Theft Auto V for the ninth generation of video game consoles introduced several enhancements, incorporating features from later RAGE titles. Raytraced reflections and shadows, native 4K resolution on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, upscaled 4K on the Xbox Series S, as well as HDR support were added.[37][38][39] In 2025 these features were extended further with the release of Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced on PC which introduced real-time raytraced global illumination and raytraced ambient occlusion, as well as support for DLSS and FSR.[40][41][42][43]