also @ TechSpot: Cookie-blocking browser plugin Ghostery feeds data to the ad industry

Next-gen engine from Square Enix shows what future games could look like, tech demo video inside

By Luke Plunkett

On June 7, 2012, 12:41 AM With Video

Unreal 4 better watch its back. Square Enix pulled off what may be E3's biggest surprise when they unveiled an incredible real-time demo of their new Luminous Studio engine. Using a Final Fantasy motif as a showcase, Square Enix describes the engine as being for "next generation quality games".

The next generation of consoles may not be at this year's E3, but their graphics certainly are. Everything you see in this video - dubbed Agni's Philosophy - and screens is supposedly running in "real-time". Or, to quote Square, this is a "FINAL FANTASY REALTIME TECH DEMO". Given this is an engine advertisement, don't expect launch games to look just like this, but still. A glimpse at the potential of future consoles is better than no glimpse at anything from the future from this show, right?

Square Enix has been known for eye-popping visuals in their Final Fantasy titles and this new tech makes it seem that like that legacy will keep going strong into future generations.

Republished with permission. Luke Plunkett is a contributing editor at Kotaku.

, , , , , , ,

User Comments: 42

Got something to say? Post a comment
  1. every six months they make leaps in video tech, so who knows in a couple of years they may look that good.

    Make the games use all 12 and 16 or more cores, and use the 64 gig of ram, and utilize the GPU's as well, cuda, phy and direct compute etc etc..

    Utilizing the cpu's and gpu's and the whole machine, that would be really cool then..

    Until then I willl wait... wait.. wait..

    making the game models are the fun part, then getting them into the game engine and seeing the HD 3D Model as it should be that would be cool yep yep

    now back to BattleMech Modeling og Mech Warriors 100 ton+ machines

    mike

  2. There will be huge hardware increases in next generation consoles, its been 6-7 years it would be ridiculous to think they wont be light years apart.

    I thought this was a cinematic before I read the posts and I only watched it at 480.

  3. Man, they should focus on what you can do with the environment, not on how good it looks.

    Also, what happened to the AI? developers figured it is easier to throw a basic multiplayer instead of complex and chellenging computer controlled opponents/NPCs, right?

    I'm losing interest in new game releases with every passing month. Creativity is pretty much dead.

  4. ha ha I stopped reading when I saw Final Fantasy.

  5. Make the games use all 12 and 16 or more cores, and use the 64 gig of ram, and utilize the GPU's as well, cuda, phy and direct compute etc etc..

    Utilizing the cpu's and gpu's and the whole machine, that would be really cool then..

    True... I hope OpenCL will help to see this happening, sooner rather then later...

    now back to BattleMech Modeling og Mech Warriors 100 ton+ machines

    mike

    indeed, now back to Simulink/Simscape modeling of the ground drive system on a 12 ton+ combine harvester...

  6. Lame premise for a game, guns vs. magic. Graphically it doesn't look that good. The scenes that were not zoomed in on faces were stuttery. The environment, despite obviously being based on Rio Dejanero, seemed very generic and blurry . The ambient music gave me the urge to stick a hot poker in my ear. The company should change its name to square-generic.

  7. They should switch to producing FPS cause that's what 80% of new titles that come out are. RPG's are unfortunately a dying breed.

  8. Could look like?

    Will look like.

    Question is, when will PC hardware meet the requirements.

    I love all the newbie comments about the hardware aspect.

    They do know this exact thing has been happening since the Voodoo cards right?...going on 15-20 years now.

    I remember playing Aliens Vs Predator (90's version on my PC) and saying 'one day graphics will look like these cutscenes'. Here we are in another loop! Enjoy the ride!

  9. I used to say the same thing - remember how big a deal it was with the city zoom intro on FFVII ? We can do that in real time now.

  10. I'd much rather Square make a fun playable game than focusing so much on graphics. 1 in 3 of their games are boring and cheesy. Mostly they make long boring movies that let you walk around a little bit here and there. They need to apply the kind of structure that FF4 or FF6 so successfully employed to these graphical leaps otherwise it's all for not. FF13 was a joke, it barely qualifies as a game. It was more like a "twist-a-plot" book only cornier.

  11. Looks pretty nice. Much better than the Unreal Engine 4 demo that was a bit unimpressive. Too bad SE said they aren't licensing out the engine.

  12. Well consoles shouldnt even be mentioned with next gen graphics. PC's need to be the focus and where games need to be developed from start to finish then ported to console kiddies. Not the other way around. Consoles are holding everything up to make games look like this. The next gen consoles will already be outdated when they come out, I upgrade my PC every year just to spite crap kiddie consoles.

  13. Really hard to tell a difference between this and the actual generation graphics. Besides, Square-Enix nowadays has the fame of making really bad games with good graphics and that's all, graphics are a secondary thing in every videogame.

  14. Its clear many don't understand the scale of what they are viewing, this is not a pre rendered cut scene. Using this engine, this is more or less what a game will look like, imagine you control the female or one of the gunmen, that's what this engine offers, and there is nothing available currently that can match what you saw in that vid, not even close.

    Sure, graphics do not a game make, content and game play are important but this is a huge leap in graphical fidelity.

  15. Wow, look at the all critics and noobs. There isn't a single console or PC game that looks half as good today, not even Witcher 2. Of course, most people think BF3 is good looking but it looks like utter garbage with crappy textures and uninspired models and level of detail. Take away the lighting model from BF3 and it looks worse than the original Crysis.

    This demo on the other hand is leaps and bounds ahead of anything we currently have in graphics.

  16. If we can expect games to look a little less detailed than this in the near future I don't think we have made much of a jump from last gen stuff to be honest.

    What you're mostly impressed by on the PS3 are seamless transitions to cinematics that are not rendered in real-time. This looks pretty damn good even compared to those pre-rendered PS3 scenes.

  17. If we can expect games to look a little less detailed than this in the near future I don't think we have made much of a jump from last gen stuff to be honest.

    What you're mostly impressed by on the PS3 are seamless transitions to cinematics that are not rendered in real-time. This looks pretty damn good even compared to those pre-rendered PS3 scenes.

    I've never owned a PS3, I don't even know what your talking about XD

    I had an Xbox a while back (when Halo 3 came out) but sold it, I only have a PS2 and a serious Gaming Rig.

    Still though, Don't get me wrong it still looks promising and everything but considering we are expecting games to look slightly lower in the graphical department than this demo shows I just don't think thats much of a leap forwards, even the launch titles on the Xbox looked better by a long way than anything on the orginal Xbox/PS2 at the time.

    That and it probably doesn't help I can run anything on my PC at full graphics, games today still have alot of the details the difference this demo displays is the clothing, draw distance and environment details but the characters themselves I wouldn't say are much better in detail than what we have today tbh...

Recently commented stories

Add New Comment

TechSpot Members
Login or sign up for free,
it takes about 30 seconds.
You may also...
Get complete access to the TechSpot community. Join thousands of technology enthusiasts that contribute and share knowledge in our forum. Get a private inbox, upload your own photo gallery and more.
TechSpot on:

Subscribe to TechSpot

Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.