We know the GTA modding community to be ingenious and dedicated. For their latest trick, Modder DryxioGTA has pulled off one of the strangest GTA mod demonstrations in recent memory, running a fully playable copy of GTA III on a television texture inside GTA: San Andreas. This isn’t a video overlay or a captured window pasted onto a screen prop. GTA III renders directly into the TV’s live GPU texture while sharing the same Direct3D device as San Andreas itself.
In the clip, CJ sits facing a television in his yard while GTA III plays out on the screen in front of him, fully controllable. The player can swap between controlling CJ in the San Andreas world and Claude in GTA III, and the San Andreas world keeps running the whole time rather than pausing or handing off to a full-screen interface. It’s a genuine case of one game engine instance rendering inside another, live, without any external capture software stitching the footage together.
VIEW GALLERY – 4 IMAGES
This is a continuation of an earlier project from Dryxio, released back in February. That mod ported both GTA III (via the re3 project) and GTA Vice City (via reVC) to run as independent engines inside the San Andreas process, each with its own save data, story progress, and settings. Players could technically mod each game separately, since they’re not sharing assets so much as sharing a host process. The mod itself is up on LibertyCity.net for anyone who wants to dig into how the trick works.
Dryxio didn’t stop at one layer of nesting either. A follow-up demo pushes things further by running GTA Vice City on a texture inside GTA III, which is itself running on the television inside San Andreas. That’s three GTA games, with three engines, all live at once inside each other like some kind of GTA-ception.
None of this has any practical use beyond showing off just how flexible these decades-old GTA engines still are in the hands of a determined modder. The classic trilogy has had a rocky few years, between the messy 2021 remaster and its eventual removal from some digital storefronts, but the original PC versions remain a playground for this kind of experimentation precisely because Rockstar never locked them down the way it has with GTA Online.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Question #1
How does Dryxio’s mod render GTA III inside a TV in GTA: San Andreas without using external capture software?
Dryxio runs GTA III as an independent engine inside the San Andreas process and has it render directly into the TV’s live GPU texture while sharing the same Direct3D device as San Andreas. This lets GTA III draw onto the in-game TV texture without any external capture software, with each game engine instance living inside the same host process and retaining separate save data and settings.
Answered
Question #2
Can I control both CJ in San Andreas and Claude in GTA III simultaneously with this mod?
The mod lets the player swap between controlling CJ in San Andreas and Claude in GTA III, with the San Andreas world continuing to run while GTA III plays on the TV texture. The article does not state that you can control both characters at exactly the same time.
Answered
Question #3
Does each nested game (San Andreas, GTA III, Vice City) keep separate save data and settings when using this mod?
Yes. The earlier Dryxio project ported GTA III and Vice City to run as independent engines inside San Andreas, with each having its own save data, story progress, and settings. The article says players could technically mod each game separately since they share a host process but maintain separate data.
Answered
Question #4
Will running multiple GTA engines inside one another affect San Andreas’ performance or cause the host game to pause?
The San Andreas world does not pause or hand off to a full-screen interface when other GTA engines run inside it; the article says San Andreas keeps running the whole time while you can swap control between games. The article does not provide any information about performance impact from running multiple engines inside one another.
Answered
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It’s the same spirit that keeps driving ambitious PC modding projects across other franchises, even as Rockstar’s attention has fully shifted toward GTA 6. For now, Dryxio’s nested GTA setup is a nice little party trick, and a neat reminder of what’s still possible when a 20-year-old engine falls into the right hands.