Indistinguishable from the Real You must see this Unreal Engine 5 demo

It is no longer a secret that the Unreal Engine can create stunning environments. We always feel like we’re pimping an old game in the engine or seeing fancy tech demos. Ray tracing or path tracing in an expanded form crowns everything. With this and with great attention to detail, almost photorealistic environments can be created.

Prop master and decor artist Daniel Martinger set out to do just that. He created a small, cozy carpentry workshop that is almost indistinguishable from the real one. By his own account, it is a small basement in the Swedish countryside where an old man spends his time carpentry.

The workshop is not based on photo scans of a real setting somewhere in Sweden – it was completely self-built. Only the metal texture and texture of the floor comes from the materials database of the scanning provider Quixel. The venue is based on the artist’s desire to have his own small workshop in the basement. You can see the result of his work here:

However, even this environment is not perfect. In some places you can see a slight flicker of light or on the stone wall. But these are just minor flaws in an overall very successful tech demo.

Unreal Engine Path Tracer makes it possible

A big factor in creating photorealistic environments is lighting. This was created by Daniel Martinger using the Unreal Engine 5 path tracker feature. This is basically an advanced type of ray tracing.

The technology provides physically correct global illumination, reflection and refraction of light in different materials. It is developed for photo-realistic renderings and is less suitable for real-time applications such as games, as it is very hardware-hungry.

Will photorealistic graphics come to games sooner or later? When will we have enough computing power in the living room to make this possible? You can share your ideas below.