It’s virtual but it looks real: an Italian artist rebuilt a Japanese station using Unreal Engine 5. The result was amazing

The boundary between reality and virtual graphics is gradually becoming more blurred: to give a clear illustration of this demo produced by an Italian artist, which reproduces the Japanese Icho-daemun Station in Toyama Prefecture.

The demo impresses with the extreme realism of breeding, so much so that the first seconds in full light are indistinguishable from reality. But from a video game perspective, the darker clips are more interesting, which show excellent management of lights.

As we can read from the translation of the tweet, Lorenzo Drago, a 3D artist fascinated by the atmosphere at Etchu-Daimon Station in Toyama, took care of the work. Drago took about a month to complete the demo, and the time is split evenly between the real build part and the data acquisition part. In fact, the artist has never set foot in Etchū-Daimon . Station.

The result of the artist’s work was so impressive that it deserves praise from Epic Games, the company that developed the Unreal Engine. Epic shared the demo on its social channels, to prove what the graphics engine has to offer.

Unreal Engine 5 is the graphics engine used in the impressive The Matrix Awakens show

Unreal Engine is a graphics engine developed, as mentioned, by Epic Games. Its name goes back to Unreal shooter, which was released in 1998. The fifth version of the graphics engine, announced in 2020, was released in the final version in April 2022.

Several important studios are already working with Unreal Engine 5, such as CD Projekt, The Coalition, and Crystal Dynamics. The graphics engine has already made headlines thanks to The Matrix Awakens, an interactive demonstration set in a 16 square kilometer city with over 35,000 pedestrians and 45,000 vehicles.