DIY piano model: commendable extreme case of doing one's research

I found this video recently and the attitude of this guy (Lucas Pelszynski, forum username detomastah) fills me with admiration. He liked Pianoteq when he first heard it, but instead of buying it he had a go at making his own piano model. He spent a year on it before buying Pianoteq. He demos the result of his efforts along with the same piece played on Pianoteq 5.1 D4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4I9SPCZIk4

I realise this video has been posted on the forum once before by Lucas himself, but it's buried in the 2014 video contest thread, where no one took much notice of it.

Some may consider Lucas' approach unreasonable, even arrogant, but I think it's wonderful someone would be inspired to go to that much effort. And I'm sure he would have learnt a lot in the process and probably appreciates what Modartt created at a deeper level than many of us.