GTA5 looks awesome and epic. I've spent many hours just walking/driving around Liberty City/ San Andreas/ Vice City. Many. Even on the old gen consoles Rockstar really knew how to capture an environment and make it feel alive. However, one big annoying "glitch" if you will that always disrupts the flow of being in a GTA game is the magic reappearing cars... You know what I mean. You look one way to cross the street, then the other, then start walking and BAM. Car hits you. Out of nowhere. WTF? LOL. I really hope Rockstar can figure out the math/algorithm or whatever to finally fix this issue.
I have a bad feeling it's deeply rooted in the main way the GTA games just "work" though. How they are inherently designed maybe. I'm assuming this as it's been in every GTA game. Not sure about the top down ones though.
I dunno but never really knowing where any cars are randomly breaks the flow of being totally submerged in the game sometimes. Now I don't think this has anything to do with draw distance because I've experienced this issue running SA on a maxed out PC and yes you can see further but look one way then back again and the cars, they still magically appear.