New Square Enix Tech Demo Gives A Glimpse Of The Future

Square Enix has shown a glimpse of what the future of gaming graphics might look like with a new tech demo.

Titled “Witch Chapter 0 [cry]”, the real-time demo - which was shown off at this week’s Build conference - makes use of Microsoft’s new Direct X 12 API, due to ship with Windows 10 later this year on PC, before being rolled out on Xbox One sometime after. It’s incredibly impressive, showing off a more advanced version of the Luminous Engine powering Final Fantasy XV and first shown in the Agni’s Philosophy demo back in 2012. During the demo, Microsoft’s Steve Guggenheimer revealed that the demo was rendering scenes with 63 million polygons - between 6-12 times higher than what was possible under DirectX 11 - and that textures are 8k x 8k resolution.

“Our team has always pursued cutting-edge pre-rendered and real-time CG,” said Hajime Tabata, head of the next-generation technology research project and Division Executive of Business Division II of Square Enix Co., Ltd. “As a part of the technical development, we created this demo using world-class, real-time CG technology with generous support from leading-edge software and hardware providers – Microsoft’s Windows 10/DirectX 12 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX. The efforts from this project will power future game development as well as Final Fantasy XV, currently a work in progress.”

It’ll be a long time before we actually see visuals like this in a game, however - the demo was being powered on a high-spec PC with four GeForce Titan X graphics cards. To put that in perspective, the graphics cards alone would set you back over $2,000. Still, as an early look at what the next generation of consoles might be able to achieve, it certainly gets the saliva flowing.

Take a look at the video below, as well as some stills from the demo.

New Square Enix Tech Demo Gives A Glimpse Of The Future

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Dale Morgan

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When Dale isn't crying over his keyboard about his never-ending workload, he's playing games - lots of them. Dale has a particular love for RPGs, Roguelikes and Metroidvanias.