According to Automaton reports, “REAL MOON” is now available on Steam for free. This is a realistic lunar exploration simulation game jointly created by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and game developer historia using the Unreal 5 engine. Currently only Japanese and English are supported.
According to reports, the game uses real scientific research results and data, including the lunar terrain, crater and rock distribution, as well as the relative positional relationship between the sun, the earth and the moon, thereby restoring a lunar environment that is highly realistic and can be freely explored.
Although the core gameplay process only takes about 15 to 30 minutes, "REAL MOON" also provides a "free mode". In this mode, players can freely control the flow of time and place objects such as rockets, flags, spheres, lights, etc. At the same time, you can also casually walk on the surface of the moon, watch the sun set on the horizon, observe the change of light and shadow over time, and take photos.
The development team stated: "We have built a highly complete lunar simulation environment, reproduced a large range of lunar landforms with extremely high accuracy, and added physical simulations. In the future, we hope to apply this environment to more fields, such as lunar rover operation simulation. (...) Through this research cooperation, we are advancing the framework construction of space environment reproduction technology, with a view to contributing to the development of the aerospace industry."
It is also worth mentioning that in a 2006 report, JAXA disclosed some of their moon landing plans, which also mentioned that Japan’s moon landing plan was stimulated by the U.S. Apollo moon landing program and the needs of space development. It has been promoted since 1999 and plans to establish a moon base in 2025. Relevant reports can still be found online.
