Luminous Revolution: Square's New Engine
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hitman and (spit) Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix has been experimenting with a brand new, proprietary graphics engine, which it calls Luminous. Given Develop notes this is DirectX 11 tech, it seems more than likely it's coming to future PC games - so let's take a look at the thing below. The idea is it's that much closer to photo-realism, at least in terms of environments - while I'd rather spend my games in a crazy, impossible, fantastical environment than a faithfully-recreated multistorey carpark, there's no denying that this tech looks mighty impressive.
So, they reckon the following reality/vidyagame comparison shot shows what Luminous is capable of:
And here it is in compressed online video-based action:
Not the most thrilling footage in and of itself, but cor blimey that's some fancy, realistic lighting there. I wouldn't grumble about playing a Deus Ex game that looked like that. But is it really possible? I'm not a believer until I've seen it running on a real, contemporay PC in real time.