I Saw Square Enix’s Jaw-Dropping Luminous Studio Engine Running. It’s for Real

Evan writes: "The videos above show the demo in full and then peel back the layers to show the level of detail and control that Luminous will afford developers. 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."

[GamingPerson]

I can't wait!

[BISHOP-BRASIL]

First presentation that actually get me thinking it's time for next gen. Epic, Crytek and DICE (last year) new engines looked good, better than most current engines on ultra-high settings, but not such a leap...

But this video... That's some crazy realistic lighting. Also they actually introduced polygons to what we currently see as particle effects 90% of the time. And all that hair/beard moving and I didn't saw one single hair gone through each other, I don't know if that bit is real time or just part of the animation, but it's impressive.

I had seen Luminous Engine last year in that garage walk video, but it was just a dozen seconds, it was hard to tell it was computer generated, looked just like actual video of a real garage, but well, it was just a garage with nothing happening there. Good to see the photorealism hold there with characters and all kinds of objects.

I believe everyone had already seen it back them, but here's two links (article and video), it's just some seconds walking down a garage ramp...
http://www.siliconera.com/2...
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

I remember that when the engine was first showed there were a discussion if it were current or next gen as SE hinted it could be used on FF Versus XII. I guess now we can assume it's not current gen at all... Let's just see where FF Versus XIII sits with that, if it comes this gen with a more limited engine or if they let it for next gen with Luminous.

Let's just hope Luminous lives to the hype better than Crystal Tools/White Engine did... FF XIII don't look that hot considering the 2005 tech demo.

[PiccoloGR]

Holy cow... now this is really impressive. Blows Unreal Engine 4 out of the water!!!!!

[silkrevolver]

Agreed.

[NYC_Gamer]

That engine is very impressive and i'm more surprised it's from SE a Japanese publisher

[PLASTICA-MAN]

I am surprised how japanese developers totally missed this gen, now they are coming back in force in next-gen, good to know that :)

Kojima talked about why japanese developers couldn't cope with US develepers this gen, and that was because japanese didn't dive deeper in this generation tech with all the new development technics. It seems that now they fully understand it and understand next-gen tech too.

[Lucretia]

japanese have always had the best graphics. look at their fighters and action games.

im very impressed with the west this gen tho. massive step that caused the over shadowing of the japanese this gen.

i mean it is easy to make good graphics when everyone is the same buzzcut space marine dude but certain games and studios definatly outshine the others.

that being said, games like Final fantasy, MGS, Soulcal 5, dead or alive 5, etc all are still absolutely gorgeous.

[Arksine]

Really since the SNES days Square has been at the forefront of console graphics. All FF releases since VI have had impressive graphics for their time.

[chaos-lockheart]

HD Quality

http://www.qj.net/ps3/news/...

[belac09]

square enix has always been the one to beat with graphics.

[Christopher]

Okay, I'm very impressed with this. I still am extremely skeptical of this being the end result of next gen consoles. A lot of the elements of game are missing from this as it's an entirely scripted scenario. I think this will be next-gen cut scenes, in engine, at the least, but I do not believe we will get to that high level of quality during gameplay with 30-60 FPS.

I'm ready to be proven wrong.

[john2]

The problem here is that we don't know the PC specifications. Square Enix could be using quad-SLI (two GTX690 in SLI) for all we know. If that's the case then no, next-gen consoles won't be able to handle something like that. PCs on the other hand will.

[PLASTICA-MAN]

in the other video of Gametrailers, they said they are using an extremely high-end PC not available on the market.

[Aging]

It's been confirmed that both the Unreal Engine 4 tech demo and the Agni's Philosophy tech demo are both running on hardware that is in stores now. In the Gametrailers interview, they said the gpu and memory is similar to what other companies are using for tech demos, so I'm assuming they are referring to Epic Studios.

[Eyesoftheraven]

According to this PDF from Square, they are using an AMD 6990 to run the demo.

www.square-enix.com/jp/info/l ibrary/pdf/Real-Time Bidirectional Path Tracing via Rasterization (preprint).pdf

In the actual demonstration video, she says they're using "off the shelf" hardware available at any electronics store" sugesting more mainstream high end like 680's and 7970's or even like mentioned, the 6990.

[Wintersun616]

TBH, I agree. But I hope to be proven wrong and surprised positively with next gen graphics.

[camel_toad]

Thats the same set of feelings I have about it. Its great looking and its real-time but its not real time on an actual console, and right now we as the gamers at least dont even know if next gen systems will even be able to run something like that. That to me just means right now its just another pretty square cg cinematic, like they have always been known for.

Im hoping they already know something we dont or even have their hands on the next gen consoles and already know its possible.

[adamant715]

Well hopefully Sony and MS get the memo. THIS is what developers want.

[Yangus]

This awesome...i think this better UE4 demonstration...

But please Final Fantasy Versus XIII this generation!

[Theo1130]

It's all CG, where's the gameplay, that's what I want to see to believe that this isn't just a cutscene creator, then again most final fantasy games are just cg.

[mttrackmaster38]

It's all being run in real-time, not CG.

[Theo1130]

Did they use a controller? did they move any characters? Did they give any indication that it's gameplay? No, then it's CG

[ash_divine]

@Theo

Fail.

Realtime is not synonymous with gameplay.

[suicidalblues]

@Theo

I have a dictionary if you need it....

www.dictionary.com

[DigitalRaptor]

That's the common misconception when terming CGI. It's computer generated imagery, so that can be either real-time or pre-rendered. It's all generated by computers, so it's all CGI.

But the most impressive part of this is that it's all in real-time rather than pre-rendered cutscenes. If this kind of animation can be run in-engine, then there's not much to suggest gameplay would be much different, aside from frame rate and other performance issues based on what is happening in the scene.

So yeah, I'd like to see actual gameplay too - but you cannot deny that this is truly impressive.

[xtreampro]

They did a side by side comparison of the CGI version vs the real-time version, so yes this is real-time.

It's tech demo for their next-gen game engine, if it wasn't running in real-time what would be the point of DEMONSTRATING the TECHNOLOGY if it was just CGI?

We don't need them to show us how good pre-rendered CGI looks, Avatar already does good job of doing that.

[1nsomniac]

As said above it really is a bit of a cheat to claim in the way they have that it's 'real time' because it's a 95% entirely scripted scene. If you look close enough you can actually see the 2 extremely short almost millisecond cutout clips of the real 'real time' action. So yes it is in real time & in engine but because it's an entirely scripted scene it only has to visually show & render whats actually viewable on screen at the time. Unlike gameplay which has to include everything realtime surrounding areas with particle displacement & movement.

I like it but it's mostly PR bullshit. If your expecting actual gameplay to be like this unfortunately your going to be sorely mistaken.

[Minato-Namikaze]

Final fantasy versud 13 runs parts of the luminous engine

[chaos-lockheart]

in HD

http://www.qj.net/ps3/news/...

[Gorbenshore]

For those who think this isn't real-time, watch this Youtube video /watch?v=Q9xhFpuIMX4&featu re=relmfu
They're moving around in the demo

[josephayal]

I hope Final Fantasy VS 13 could look like this

[h311rais3r]

Just cuz the engine has the capability to run that way doesn't mean it will be that way on a console.

[Nerdmaster]

After saying that making real towns in FFXIII would take too much time and money and that's why they didn't do it, do you really believe that Square will make a game with this quality?