Unrecord dev posts noclip video to prove the realistic bodycam FPS isn't 'fake'

pcgamer.com:

Yesterday, developer Alexandre Spindler and Studio Drama revealed Unrecord, a first-person shooter with a striking bodycam perspective which frequently sells the illusion of being real camera footage.

It's so convincing that some questioned whether they were looking at a pre-rendered, on-rails game, or perhaps actual video footage with some 3D graphics overlayed. A few hours after the announcement, Spindler responded: «It's not a rail shooter or an FMV, it is indeed an FPS and these images are from real-time gameplay, not pre-rendered.»

Today, Spindler went further, uploading video of the game which includes the Unreal Engine user interface. Near the end of the video, embedded above, he frees up the camera, no-clipping through the level to prove that it's genuinely an FPS with free movement. «For those who thought Unrecord was fake or a video, sorry,» he wrote.

A lot contributes to the believability of Unrecord's «bodycam footage,» and it isn't all raw graphical fidelity. The exposure adjustment effect, where the sky transitions from overblown to cloudy, is very effective. The free hand movement is another big part of the illusion: the camera follows the motion of the hands on a delay, as if genuinely responding to movements of the chest.

Beneath all of that is the actual fidelity of the environments, which is remarkable, but not unique. Using photographs to build and texture 3D worlds, called photogrammetry, has been doable in real-time rendering for a number of years. The effect was used in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter(opens in new tab), for instance, and that was almost a decade ago. Combined with the features of Unreal Engine 5, presumably some ray tracing for the reflections, and today's other graphics processing