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Square Enix DirectX 12 tech demo ends in tears

by Mark Tyson on 1 May 2015, 10:01

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Square Enix (TYO:9684), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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During a keynote at Microsoft's BUILD 2015 conference Square Enix showed off a new tech demo called WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry]. The demo was built upon "state of the art software and hardware" including Microsoft DirectX 12, Nvidia GameWorks effects folded into Square Enix's Luminous Studio engine and powered by a PC with four Nvidia GeForce TITAN X GPUs installed.

As the Nvidia blog says, many tech demos end in tears for the wrong reasons. However the WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry] tech demo portrays real-time computer generated 'human crying'. It apparently "stunned" the audience at BUILD. Nvidia suggests that this demo may, in the future, be seen as a milestone that broke through the boundary of 'uncanny valley' in video games – what do readers think?

Microsoft's Steve Guggenheimer presented the video above and switched between auto and manual mode so he could navigate around the scene for us, showing off various rendering details and lighting possibilities. Guggenheimer noted that there were over 63 million polygons being rendered in each of the scenes he showed us. This, he said, represented about six to twelve times greater data density than was possible with DirectX 11. In a close up of the 'witch' character, looking at her skin and hair, he said the textures being used were 8K by 8K.

Nvidia concluded by reminding us that the tech demos of today show us the possibilities of gaming engines in the future and that much of the know-how and techniques applied in WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry] "will surely trickle down to tomorrow's games".



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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a milestone that broke through the boundary of ‘uncanny valley’ in video games – what do readers think?
I was going to say that when the person doing the crying has completely black eyes then the uncanny valley is still being travelled along .. but then maybe that was just because the image is too dark.

So I zapped it with a bit of gamma and I discovered lovely green eyes, quite reasonable irises unless you're an iridologist, but the crying is revealed to look more like a streak of glitter make-up than salty emotionality. ;-)

will surely trickle down to tomorrow's games
One pun intended? ;o)
Wow!
Tears indeed when you get the credit card bill for the necessary GPU hardware to run it.
Bagpuss
Tears indeed when you get the credit card bill for the necessary GPU hardware to run it.

Always the way with demos, should be affordable at around 10nm graphics cards so just wait a few years.
might been impressive on the stage, but from this youtube video, all I see is blur and jagies, only scene that even remotely looks good, is the face close up scene.