MiniExpBounder has updated a recreation of Minas Tirith, Pelennor Fields and Osgiliath to UE5

[Polymachos]

This video is currently making the rounds on Belegaer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRKtcDYdFk

Really worth a look. In the comments, they said that they somehow rummaged through the data of Lotro, to create a nearly exact copy of said area. Maybe they should get a job at SSG


Greetings, Polymachos

[TesalionLortus]

Wooow. This is a wonder to behold, they've outdone themselves this time and it would be a sin to claim it's NOT captivating.

However - with no offence to MiniExpbounder and the amazing work they've put into it - switching the engine wouldn't be an ultimate solution here. Well, firstly because they don't have resources for it, technically, so we're just theorizing anyway, but to make my point - it's undeniable that most of the vistas on the Unreal presentation are really captivating and structures gain a lot of depth, same for grasses, mountain peaks and rocks, some of the trees. On the other hand, mostly anything viewed up-close is not overall such a big improvement, plus the game loses some of its unique art style charm that makes it feel more like a painting - some of these regular trees are particularly generic and not exactly captivating, whereas in the game engine they would be more colorful and stylistic, especially if you have some reshade at play, I would even say the same about grasses (even though their animation in Unreal is certainly such a wonder). Overall, the Unreal take also emits this vibe of being stuck between the next fancy MMO out of Japan and something else that's not exactly well-defined, with a hyper photo-realistic model feel but not exactly an alive world. Granted, it's not a fully functional game with environmental effects of course, just a presentation.

Now, lightning, immersive colorful fires, view distance, more detail, more color at places, more depth (due to how lightning and details work), working shadows that don't actually flicker all the time when you move around... all of these things could work pretty well, with significant overall improvements for the game's graphics, if they were actually implemented in the vanilla game engine. That's why I say engine transition wouldn't be generally an ultimate and the only solution to actually improve the game's graphics in a way that matters. I guess you could achieve major improvements just be tweaking the internal shaders and introducing shader improvements to the actual game engine (but then you also get to keep its unique charm).

Oh, but I do enjoy this wonderful reconstruction nonetheless, amazing work sir! It does show how much more immersive things could have been if we could see distant mountains of Mordor, for example. But if they were ever to do that, increase a view distance, they would need to do that in chosen places with chosen things - I don't want to see Minas Morgul from Minas Tirith or Edoras/Isengard from Helm's Deep, that would be silly and immersion-breaking.

[MiniExpBounder]

[...] switching the engine wouldn't be an ultimate solution here. Well, firstly because they don't have resources for it, technically, so we're just theorizing anyway, but to make my point - it's undeniable that most of the vistas on the Unreal presentation are really captivating and structures gain a lot of depth, same for grasses, mountain peaks and rocks, some of the trees. On the other hand, mostly anything viewed up-close is not overall such a big improvement, plus the game loses some of its unique art style charm that makes it feel more like a painting - some of these regular trees are particularly generic and not exactly captivating, whereas in the game engine they would be more colorful and stylistic, especially if you have some reshade at play, I would even say the same about grasses (even though their animation in Unreal is certainly such a wonder). Overall, the Unreal take also emits this vibe of being stuck between the next fancy MMO out of Japan and something else that's not exactly well-defined, with a hyper photo-realistic model feel but not exactly an alive world. Granted, it's not a fully functional game with environmental effects of course, just a presentation.

Now, lightning, immersive colorful fires, view distance, more detail, more color at places, more depth (due to how lightning and details work), working shadows that don't actually flicker all the time when you move around... all of these things could work pretty well, with significant overall improvements for the game's graphics, if they were actually implemented in the vanilla game engine. That's why I say engine transition wouldn't be generally an ultimate and the only solution to actually improve the game's graphics in a way that matters. I guess you could achieve major improvements just be tweaking the internal shaders and introducing shader improvements to the actual game engine (but then you also get to keep its unique charm).

Oh, but I do enjoy this wonderful reconstruction nonetheless, amazing work sir! It does show how much more immersive things could have been if we could see distant mountains of Mordor, for example. But if they were ever to do that, increase a view distance, they would need to do that in chosen places with chosen things - I don't want to see Minas Morgul from Minas Tirith or Edoras/Isengard from Helm's Deep, that would be silly and immersion-breaking.

I agree with your examination, should you want to put my video directly in relation with LotRO.

Note that the aim of the discussed project is NOT to Remake LotRO, but to show some 3D Open Space in which I spend my free time creating an idea of "Pelennor Fields", and the LotRO concepts were the ones I liked the most overall.
To put it simple, it is more "LotR" related than "LotRO" related.

We can discuss anyway how much more detail I should have put into the project to make it feel more alive, like more tree variations at proper places, water behaving properly or making the low³ poly models and their textures blend better when put side-by-side with the photorealistic stuff.

LotRO most detailed models are usually in the range of 1500-2000 vertices, where 30% to 50% of these are useless, overlapping and duplicated points, and Remastering them by boosting their polycount would mean fixing by hand all of the textures' UV at proper coordinates.


Thanks for the appreciation! My goal is to pay homage to Tolkien with my efforts, and contribute in creating something for His Legacy.