what has improved a lot recently is the physically based rendering - specifically, the lighting. Looking at the steam page, this train game has that type of lighting.
Not to dismiss the effort by dev, but all Unreal engine games look photoreal these days. My point is that photorealism does not show effort these days.
Most of the review is about the art assets, and I doubt the big ones (e.g. the trains themselves) are off-the-rack Unreal assets. An engine like Unreal 5 will cast your assets in harsh relief. Which is to say, if your game's assets look custom and look good in Unreal 5, it does indeed demonstrate effort and skill.
It's the lighting etc that provide photo realism with Unreal. Even the demo that comes with Unreal where a robot is running around cubes on a small plain looks photoreal.
> It looks practically photorealistic.
what has improved a lot recently is the physically based rendering - specifically, the lighting. Looking at the steam page, this train game has that type of lighting.
Another game that uses similarly realistic lighting is https://store.steampowered.com/app/2406770/Bodycam/
When the dev for BodyCam posted his initial streams, I thought it was fake. Also was a solo dev though I think he either has a partner or a team now
Not to dismiss the effort by dev, but all Unreal engine games look photoreal these days. My point is that photorealism does not show effort these days.
Most of the review is about the art assets, and I doubt the big ones (e.g. the trains themselves) are off-the-rack Unreal assets. An engine like Unreal 5 will cast your assets in harsh relief. Which is to say, if your game's assets look custom and look good in Unreal 5, it does indeed demonstrate effort and skill.
It's the lighting etc that provide photo realism with Unreal. Even the demo that comes with Unreal where a robot is running around cubes on a small plain looks photoreal.
No engine in the world can make bad assets look good.
Are we talking about train engines or games engines:)
Eskil Steenberg's LOVE has entered the chat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-A8xvFKaRA
His Behind the Scenes video for LOVE is one of my favorite developer vids ever.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f90R2taD1WQ
Oh wow, I didn't know engines provided that much functionality. Thank you.