The official announcement of Unreal Engine 5 dates back to May 2020, and we remember it well thanks to a fabulous demo on the PlayStation 5. Its early access was enabled the following year, but the definitive release for developers happened at the beginning of April, and many experts are already playing with its tools. One of them is artist Lorenzo Drago, who was inspired by a Japanese train station to create a replica with the graphics engine that has left us speechless. This station does not exist, and at times it's hard to believe.
Each new engine carries with it promises of extraordinary graphics, photorealistic environments, high complexity geometry, and much more. In practice, everything depends on the project's characteristics, the time/money available, and developers' familiarity with their tools, but sometimes we find extraordinary examples that definitely catch our attention.
With that in mind, we come to Unreal Engine 5. Demos on YouTube are multiplying thanks to its official release in April, and we must admit that the work of some artists is extraordinary. Don't believe us? In that case, we invite you to watch the short film published by Lorenzo Drago, inspired by a train station in Toyama prefecture in Japan. What the video shows is not a simple recording or a camera trick: the station does not exist.
"Etchū-daimon Station": Stunning Unreal Engine 5 Demo
Obviously, we recommend activating maximum quality on YouTube to appreciate the detail this demo offers, but even in reduced resolution versions we realize it's on a higher level. For a moment I thought the creator was playing a trick on us, however, when night falls in the scene (an absolutely terrifying change, I must add), the engine becomes a bit more evident.
Lorenzo explains that the demo is not real-time, but rather a high-resolution render with an average framerate of 7 FPS. The day version can run in real time at 1440p playing between 30 and 50 FPS, but the quality loss is much greater. Even so, he admits he didn't focus too much on optimizations, and that there is room to get more performance.
His hardware is based on a Ryzen 7 3700X processor, with an Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics card. The camera and flashlight effect was achieved using a virtual reality controller to track movement. Lighting is handled by Lumen, but Lorenzo decided not to apply Nanite for geometry, and followed the low-poly workflow.
In total, the project took Lorenzo a month of work, and without a doubt it's the best Unreal Engine 5 I've seen so far. There are already more than a dozen games confirmed that will use UE5, including franchises like BioShock, The Witcher, and Tomb Raider, the second part of Hellblade, and of course, Fortnite.
Lorenzo Drago on ArtStation: Click here
