Square Enix Next-Gen Engine Is Photo Realistic

Luminous has been revealed as Square Enix’s photo-realistic next-gen graphics engine that will be used for PS4, Xbox 720, Wii U and next-gen PC games.

The engine allows Square Enix to drastically shorten development times while being powerful enough to pump out visuals that are, they promise, as realistic as real life. You can see exactly what they mean in the photos above and below which show a real-life photograph compared to their supposedly in-game screenshot using Luminous.

Of course, what games will look like when they are applied to more cartoony visuals while using this engine remains to be seen (not many Square games are “realistic”), but you can bet that the games will be extremely graphically impressive regardless; due to the power behind this next-gen videogame engine.

Here is a video of the in-game Luminous engine in action! CRAZY!

The Luminous game engine supports DirectX 11 and is capable of pumping out fluid cloth simulation, realtime reflections and all-new methods for putting details onto polygonal 3D models. According to Square technical officer Yoshihisa Hashimoto, Luminous will cut development time by up to 30% and will drastically shorten development cycles (that is, how long it takes them to develop a new game).

In describing the new technology in an interview, Square Enix technology officer Julien Merceron stated this regarding Luminous,

“If I take a picture and after this I create the same objects in a game with the right materials, I can achieve a rendering that is very close to the picture because I’m using the physical parameters of the real world.”

What’s more, Luminous will scale in order to be used for EVERY type of game, from smaller, casual or downloadable game projects, to large epics that take several years to create.

Japanese developers have been criticized in recent years as being slow to adopt the game-creation methods of Western developers which largely rely on already-created game engines to create their games; Which they then use for multiple years. This allows them to shorten development times and pump out a sequel quicker. In many cases even updating the engine in the process for the new game; but without rebuilding a whole new engine each time. Western developers have also outsourced engines or picked and used popular ones offered by developers like Epic, something that Eastern developers have been very slow to adapt and only in recent years during this console cycle have they started doing so.

But it looks like the time has come where these Eastern developers, like Square Enix, are taking a page out of the Western playbook with a groundbreaking engine (see: id Tech 5, Unreal Engine 3, CryEngine 3, etc.) that they will re-use for years to come.

So far Square Enix is keeping the Luminous engine to themselves though, and will use it to develop at their internal studios on their own internal projects. However you can bet that they will likely hand it out to other developers to use on their games in the future, once the next-gen consoles come into being. As Square Enix will now be one of the first to have created a fully-functional next-gen engine. A game engine many developers would certainly love to get their hands on right this second.

Via Edge