A Japanese Train Station Looks Uncannily Real with a New Unreal Engine Engine 5 Engine Test
In the past, tech demos were a huge thing. People would refer to things like rubber duckies in a tub or 100 Marios or even the Meat Cube. They weren’t games, but they were visions for the future that would eventually create games. They were able to show technology in a way that was not yet possible, which is a good thing.
The modern tech demos look a bit different. Modern tech demos are a little different. They don’t come from big game companies with many ideas and eventually turn into a full-fledged game. Instead, they come from smaller developers or 3D artists trying to find the next big thing in technology. Lorenzo Drago created this demo of Unreal Engine 5. You can find his ArtStation post. It is based on a real train station in Toyama.
Although I cannot speak for the accuracy of this model to the real thing, I know that I have seen it in real life. However, I know that I’ve seen things like metal in real life. This tech demo certainly makes stairs and metal look right.
Drago writes in an ArtStation post, “For this project, I wanted to get as near to photorealism as you can,” I used camera matching to obtain precise proportions and carefully referenced. “I adjusted the measurements afterward to help with modularity.” I’m not sure what this means, but it sounds pretty fancy.
This is just a small example of what Unreal Engine 5 can do. But video games aren’t made like this. You have to add the many elements that make a game unique, such as character models, interactable objects, and collision data. This is where you begin to use resources that would otherwise be used to create great graphics. This doesn’t mean that UE5 games can’t look photorealistic. The Matrix demo is available on current-gen systems. It gives a great look at what UE5 can do in a real-time environment, which is plenty to be excited about. Even though there is nothing particularly frightening about an empty train station, this video gives me hope for horror games. Probably.
