Photorealistic Unreal Engine 5 demo is so good gamers think it's real-life footage

Sometimes you see something built in Unreal Engine 5 and your first instinct is to think ‘Burn the witch’. Combine talented programmers with amazing software and magical things can be created.

YouTuber and creator, Leo Torres, has made a pact with some celestial being for this talent, surely. The quality of their latest UE5 demo which shows a bamboo forest in the rain, is astonishing. The details captured are wondrous, particularly when we get closer looks at stonework and wooden pathways.

Unreal Engine 5 creators are wizards

There’s a moment in the video where we see a Japanese stone lantern, the fidelity means you can see each eroded pit within the stone, the moss blooming across the face, and raindrops slowly pattering and giving everything that gorgeous gloss. All while a lone leaf sits on the stone, a vibrant green backed by greys and charcoal colouring. It’s just sublime.

The demo is running in realtime in Unreal Engine 5.2, “with a combination of Quixel assets and textures, third-party assets, and custom assets modelled and textured in Blender. Nanite was used for the assets, Lumen for GI and reflections.”

You can see the video for yourself and it’s hard not to be impressed. The sprigs of wood and the puddles of water being disturbed by the rainfall, all of it make me excited about what is possible with this technology, particularly for creating cutscenes in video games. Photorealism seems to be going from strength to strength and creators have the world at their fingers.

The joy being shown by commenters underneath the video is enthusiastic and shows a celebration for what is possible, with one user saying “This is by far the most photoreal ue5 creation I've seen. Absolutely insane, well done.” And another commented, “This is the most photoreal project I have ever seen in UE.”