I have a Roland LX708 [1] that gets a lot of this right, like sympathetic resonance, and all the other artefacts of a real piano. It’s pretty damn good and it’s clear that modelling has come a long way, but still not as ‘rich’ as a real piano.
I wonder what the last mile is or whether acoustic modeling will always be stuck in a kind of ‘uncanny valley for sound’.
I assume in company it is close (enough), but Piano alone can sometimes live from exactly the non-musical effects. I spontaneously remembered listening to Hania Rani with good headphones [0].
You might like Nils Frahm, a master of the prepared piano [1].
He had a new piano made together with piano maker David Klavins, with a matching VST from Native Instruments [2]. It supports being "prepared" out of the box.
Other fantastic pianist in the same space: Clem Leek ("America") and Dustin O'Halloran ("Vorleben").
I wonder what the last mile is or whether acoustic modeling will always be stuck in a kind of ‘uncanny valley for sound’.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j9PDMdxm7Uo