Earlier in the year, Square Enix showed off a demo of its next-gen Luminous game engine and it was nothing short of amazing. Now, the Yoshihisa Hashimoto, chief technology officer at Square Enix, brought the demo to SIGGRAPH and they even demoed the various changes the game engine can do on the fly (4Gamers via Siliconera).
The trailer, which shows a part of the Agni's Philosophy demo, has the user adjust the camera in real-time. You can see the in-game camera zoom in, zoom out and even have the old man's beard change color — thus reaffirming that what we just saw was in real-time and not just CGI.
In another snippet, we get to see the a dragon forming, but it, too, can also be adjusted on the fly. Watch as the particle effects are adjusted in real-time while the dragon's muscles are forming. The camera even zooms in to highlight each speck of dust before it forms.
While Square Enix has been adamant that Agni's Philosophy is not a game, it's hard to think that when you see stuff like the videos running in real-time, no? Here's to hoping next-gen games really do look this good. Heck, if they are, I'd wager even mediocre games will get some love.
