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Unreal Engine 5 scary demo. etchū-daimon station - 越中大門駅 by a solo dev

kingfey

Banned


IGN article


A solo game developer has created an incredibly realistic (and slightly creepy) train station scene in Unreal Engine 5.

In a three-minute video shared on YouTube, as well as various screenshots (below), Lorenzo Drago shares footage of his Unreal Engine 5 demo, based on the real-life Etchū-Daimon Station train station in Toyama, Japan.

Drago, a 3D environment/prop artist, says they "worked on all modeling, texturing, lighting and animation" aside from the foliage, which comes Quixel Megascans. The video uses Unreal's Lumen lighting system, but doesn't use its Nanite geometry system. The result is pretty incredible.



Using VR control to simulate a handheld camera's movement (and later a flashlight), the scene initially looks almost indistinguishable from real video footage – but if the lack of people doesn't give it away, the sky instantly turning pitch black halfway through the video should.

It goes from being a very relaxing and beautiful looking summer's day to almost a horror game immediately, as the torch is turned on and Drago's character begins to walk up the train station steps.

While there are no jump scares or any real spooks, it's hard not to think about the horrors players will be subjected to when developers start releasing games in Unreal Engine 5.

It's not the only recent demo to show off the capabilities of the new engine, that was only released last month, as a Superman-style flight experience and Spider-Man demo also show off its incredible graphics.

Several game studios have also confirmed they're now developing games using Unreal Engine 5, including the new Tomb Raider game from Crystal Dynamics and the new game in the Witcher saga from CD Projekt Red.
 
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KàIRóS

Member
It's probably just a small scenario made for portfolio.

Now with that said I haven't been in touch with UE5 but the lightning and textures blew my mind, realistic AF, true next gen games are going to be sick in the graphics department, hopefully we'll get a taste of those babies next year.
 

CamHostage

Member
Shame that UE5 (Lumen and Nanite) doesn't support VR and probably never will. Would be incredible to play a walking sim or horror game with this level of fidelity. Ironic they have to use VR controllers to achieve the camera realism.

Agreed that this kind of experience would be killer in VR. It's kind of important that it has that handicam feel, so maybe it's not really the right thing, but "photorealistic" environments (especially ones that change in subtle or extreme ways) would be something even in small doses like this.

VR is on the roadmap, sort of, for the topline UE5 features of Nanite and Lumen. (Developers are welcome to use most everything else of UE5 already, I believe, though I know UE5 Early Access didn't have the VR implementation and I'm not 100% if that is delivered yet?) Notably, PSVR2 was included in the UE5 onboard companies list (albeit not a company) so there will certainly be UE5 action in the virtual space through that and more.

It's apparently a ways away though, as you say. Lumen is hard, as it's made to run in that 30/60 FPS range and would kind of defeat itself when pushed into the 90+ of VR; it also supposedly doesn't scale to stereoscopic images with much savings. Nanite, I'm not quite sure why it's out of the picture? You'd think it'd help VR since it is optimizing the scene for the needs of the frame, but apparently with all the tricks like foveated rendering needed to make VR fluid trip up Nanite, which is already pegging the needle in performance anyway.

 
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Raploz

Member
I thought it was a real video. This is insane. I guess we've truly reached the peak in terms of graphics. Now all we need is ways for developers to make games that look like that without spending hundreds of millions and years of development. AI driven tools that automate most of the development process can't come soon enough.
 
iu
 

yurinka

Member
The first half of the video, during daytime is super realistic. Literally seems a real life video.
We've seen these demos for years, for both Unreal and Unity, yet nothing comes to fruition when it comes to actual videogames
This type of demos are to showcase the engine and the skill of the dev/artist, who maybe isn't even insterested in games, could be someone who works in tv ads, cg movies or architecture.

Maybe isn't even running in real time and very likely isn't optimized to run in low end PCs or even in consoles.
 
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Shmunter

Member
Very nice. Lets hope for games looking this good soon. I can see myself running and gunning around this environment COD style.
 

Reallink

Member
VR is on the way for ue5

As far as I've seen Epic have never made a concrete commitment to it, just offhanded references to an implicit "back burnered" roadmap, that may or may not be exploring it. Unfortunately not surprising given the Still Born status of PCVR, PS5 having no prayer of running it at playable resolutions or framerates, and >90% of the VR market being represented by a phone SoC from 2019 that couldn't even run a UE5 menu screen.
 
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kraspkibble

Permabanned.
we're getting to a point where this can be used for all the wrong reasons. that looks incredibly realistic. if that's the work of one person imagine what a small team of people could do. it might not fool everyone but plenty of people would think that's real footage. i could imagine footage like that being made and being spread around the internet as misinformation/propaganda.
 
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Sophist

Member
We've seen these demos for years, for both Unreal and Unity, yet nothing comes to fruition when it comes to actual videogames
Yeah, this unreal engine 4 demo is four years old now. The leap between the two engines is not as far as people may think. It's just that we went from 8 tflops to 25 tflops to soon 100 tflops GPU in short time, giving amateurs access to computer power that were once reserved to render farms.

 

Kikorin

Member
I was not able to distinguish it from real life in first half, impressive for sure. Usually these kind of "demoes" are super low res to make it looks like more realistic, but this is at full res and still deliver.
 

.Pennywise

Banned
The first half of the video, during daytime is super realistic. Literally seems a real life video.

This type of demos are to showcase the engine and the skill of the dev/artist, who maybe isn't even insterested in games, could be someone who works in tv ads, cg movies or architecture.

Maybe isn't even running in real time and very likely isn't optimized to run in low end PCs or even in consoles.
Yeah the little detail is that, we actually are in a gaming forum...
 
I thought it was a real video. This is insane. I guess we've truly reached the peak in terms of graphics. Now all we need is ways for developers to make games that look like that without spending hundreds of millions and years of development. AI driven tools that automate most of the development process can't come soon enough.
No we haven't, not even close to realising a game that looks like real life. These are amazing graphics and UE5 and other engines will produce incredible graphics, I'm excited.
 
No but close. It renders at 7fps.
Gah so it'll be another generation before we see this level of fidelity in most games. Damn I was looking forward to this kinda jump.

Maybe it was the effect of watching on my phone but there was no point in the video when I thought this was a game. I thought it was some kind of hoax. It was only the 2nd time around on the computer that I could see the seams.
 

Hugare

Member
Remember Samaritan Demo?

11514-animated_gifchat8etf.gif
Arkham Knight was able to pull off similar/even better graphics 4 years later on UE 3

UE 5 is so impressive, goddamn

I love Digital Foundry, but them dismissing the engine because "oh but it can't render trees right now", fuck trees. Look at this shit.
 
Cmon ppl, it takes like 5 seconds to read the description of the video

FAQ - Is it real time? No, it's a high-res render (around 7 frames per second). I can run it in real time (30-50 fps 1440p for daytime), but image quality is worse. It's not particularly optimized anyway, you could get better performance with a little more work

You'll never see actual games looking like this, not now at least. Maybe in the next 3 to 4 years.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Tomorrow's IGN headline:

A solo game painter has created an incredibly realistic (and slightly creepy) painting of your mom.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Self taught.
Solo artist.

Damn dudes pretty hectic.
He'll be hired in no time assuming his topology and workflow is actually good.
Considering he wasnt using Nanite i going to assume his models must be pretty good.
 

kingfey

Banned
Cmon ppl, it takes like 5 seconds to read the description of the video



You'll never see actual games looking like this, not now at least. Maybe in the next 3 to 4 years.
This is only amateur work.
Some one like Coalition would make a solid game out of that.

The real question is, would the consoles be able to handle that?
 
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