How The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is Creating its Hyperrealistic Environments

As games become more and more advanced in terms of graphics, game developers are finding new ways to deliver startling realism to their titles. The developer of the upcoming horror exploration game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter posted a lengthy write-up on the methods they are using to craft hyper-realistic environments for the game.

The blog post details how The Astronauts are using photogrammetry to capture scenery for the game. In case you don’t know what that means, photogrammetry refers to the construction of 3D spaces based on 2D images.

"With photogrammetry, we no longer create worlds while isolated from the world, surrounded by walls and screens," wrote The Astronauts' Andrzej Poznanski.

"We get up, go out there and shot photos, lots of photos. And then some. Afterwards, a specialized software — we are using Photoscan from Agisoft — looks at these photos, and stares at them until it can finally match every discernible detail from one photo to same exact feature in other photos taken from different angles.

"This results in a cloud of points in 3D space, representing real world object. From there, the software connects the dots to create a 3D model, and projects pixels from photographs to create a texture."

You’ll want to head on over to the blog post for a full technical explanation of the methods they’re using to deliver the game’s hyperrealistic environments.