Tech Demo
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Square Enix’s ‘Back Stage’ tech demo is all about ray-tracing
Square Enix, the JRPG behemoth behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, has released a tech demo titled Back Stage, which is rendered almost entirely with a technique called path tracing. This is an offshoot of ray tracing that specializes in processing realistic lighting, shadows and reflections in real time. While ray tracing has become a bit of a buzzword, the render quality in the video below serves as proof that the technology will be a highlight of the next generation of consoles and PC graphics cards.
Firefox stops being polite, starts getting Unreal Engine 4 in tech demo
Mozilla offered up a new trailer this week that shows Unreal Engine 4 tech demos running in Firefox. The games shown are seemingly running without the use of plugins in the popular browser. The software company added Unreal Engine 3 support to the browser last June.
Xbox One's Kinect to use 'time-of-flight' for more exact measurements
A recent Microsoft blog explored the technology behind the Xbox One's Kinect hardware and how "time-of-flight" is expected to be a significant improvement on the Xbox 360's version of Kinect. The tech "emits light signals and then measures how long it takes them to return," which Microsoft said needs to be "accurate to 1/10,000,000,000 of a second." The blog included two videos, the first demonstrating how the Xbox One's Kinect uses time-of-flight to track the 3D orientation of players as well as calculate force exerted by different muscles. The second video, seen after the break, shows off the camera's infrared sensors and ability to pick up movement while players are in the dark. Microsoft's blog described the development process behind the next-gen camera and how assistants from Microsoft Research had to overcome issues such as motion blur. Sunil Acharya, senior director of engineering for Microsoft's Architecture and Silicon Management team, said that "the time-of-flight camera uses global shutter, which has helped reduce motion blur significantly - from 65 milliseconds in the original Kinect to fewer than 14 milliseconds now."
Oculus Rift tech demo Museum of the Microstar is full of particles
This video, courtesy of YouTuber Vaecon, offers a long look at the Oculus Rift tech demo Museum of the Microstar. It's too bad that it's not a full game, as the voice near the beginning of the demo makes us want to play it – it informs players they've been given audio implants that come with a fee for removal. Developed by RUST LTD, the demo is freely available for download, and shows off DX11 Tessellation Shaders, GPU Simulated Particles and other things we honestly don't understand. We do know that if you cross your eyes while watching the video, it appears almost as if it's in 3D and comes with bonus headaches. [Thanks, Daniel!]
PS4's AR games collection 'The Playroom' bundled with console
Sony's Playroom tech demo for the PlayStation 4, first demonstrated at E3 a few weeks back, will come packed in with every system, GameSpot reports. The demo is made up of micro and augmented reality games that include a colorful variant of Air Hockey and a mean exercise in swatting curious, flying robots. The PS4 Eye camera, required for some of the experiences in The Playroom, is sold separately. Both the Eye and additional DualShock 4 controllers will be available for $59 alongside the Playstation 4 console, which will launch with a $399 price tag.
Quantic Dream's 12-minute PS4 tech demo is ready for your viewing pleasure (video)
Now that the dust has settled from Sony's E3 press conference, Quantic Dream's posted the entirety of its PS4 tech demo, The Dark Sorcerer. Over on the PlayStation Blog, the studio's director, David Cage, laid out the finer points of their experience with performance capturing and going from flexing the PS3's graphical muscle to working with the next-gen powerhouse. When it comes to technical details, the Heavy Rain developer's comedic sketch was rendered at 1080p in real-time (lighting and all), includes one million polygons for the set and just shy of a million for every on-screen character, which each boast 350MB of textures and roughly 40 different shaders. Impressed with what you see? Cage says it's bound to get better. As it stands, the engine used for the demonstration is in its first iteration, and is missing features that are scheduled for the final version. "We can feel that we are closing in little by little on the kind of graphic quality we find in CG films," Cage notes. Venture past the break for the video or hit the bordering source link for more background.
Behold all 12 minutes of Quantic Dream's The Dark Sorcerer E3 tech demo
Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream has released a full-length version of its satirical PlayStation 4 tech demo The Dark Sorcerer, first shown at Sony's E3 press event last night. The Dark Sorcerer recasts the old man character featured in a previous Quantic Dream tech demo as a struggling actor with a goblinish/trollish co-star. Hijinks ensue. Shenanigans, even. %Gallery-191355%
Face of Mankind releases development documentary
The scrappy little Kickstarter sandbox, Face of Mankind, sees its journey from conception to completion as an odyssey worth sharing. That's why the team has put together a talking head documentary video that chronicles the game's development since 2001. The video itself is long on developer and player anecdotes, although it is short on actual in-game footage (this is probably not surprising considering that the team is rebuilding the engine from scratch). If you have 15 minutes and want to see how an indie MMO is made, check out the documentary after the jump!
Face of Mankind releases from-scratch engine tech demo
As part of its in-progress Kickstarter campaign, Face of Mankind is planning for funding beyond its original $50k goal. One of the stretch goals -- at $250k -- is to build an entirely new game engine with brand new art assets. And to help show off what we could expect with that new engine, Nexeon Technologies has released a tech demo video. The video spotlights an interesting marriage of futuristic sci-fi structures with natural environments, without allowing one style to overcome the other. It also shows the night and day cycles, where Creative Director Marko Dieckmann explains that the contrast between the two will be much more significant than most other MMOs, allowing darkness to provide an "interesting strategy to combat." With 23 days to go in the Kickstarter campaign, the company is currently at around the halfway mark for their 30-day goal, so we'll be watching this stretch goal with particular interest. [Thanks to everyone who tipped us on this!]
Project Awakened's Unreal Engine 4 tech demo is impressive, gross
We don't know if you guys are aware of this or not, but the human body is a disgusting thing. Even the really top notch, showroom-quality human bodies are essentially sacks of greasy tubes and cartilage. Here to remind us of that fact in stunning detail is Project Awakened's Unreal Engine 4 tech demo, which shows just how elaborate the game's character creation system could be.Now, we doubt Project Awakened will allow players to select from a multitude of different organs or anything, but the super powers shown off are quite impressive looking, if a bit disturbing at times -- we're looking at you, weird split-open-hand-bone-thing.Of course, Phosphor Games will only be able to turn this flashy demo into something tangible if its ongoing Kickstarter proves successful, but with only four days left on the clock, and around $300,000 in funding still needing to be raised, that looks increasingly unlikely.[Thanks, Ryan!]
'Epic Citadel' tech demo now on Android
Android users still can't partake in the acclaimed slashing hijinks of Epic Games' mobile showpiece Infinity Blade or its sequel, but they can walk around its medieval setting and watch things, like, render and stuff, now that Epic Citadel is available for free on Google Play and the Amazon Appstore.Originally released on iOS way back in the stone ages (read: September 2010), Epic Citadel serves as both Unreal Engine 3 tech demo and phone hardware benchmarking tool, allowing Android users to not only see how pretty UE3's rivers are, but also how well their devices handle rendering them. Our Galaxy Nexus, for instance, ranked in at the "High Performance" level, churning out an average of 43.9 FPS at 1196 x 720. During testing, framerates peaked just below 60 FPS and momentarily bottomed out around 18 FPS.As with the iOS release, there isn't a tremendous amount to actually do in Epic Citadel, aside from looking at fluttery banners and lens flares, and its on-screen twinstick controls are only recommended for those who enjoy being 100 percent out of control of their movement. Still, it's very pretty. %Gallery-177522%
Pathfinder Online unveils 'Environment Experience'
Pathfinder Online's Kickstarter campaign continues ever onward, but it will soon be drawing to a close. The Goblinworks title has received pledges totaling $671,765 of its whopping $1,000,000 goal. If you're on the fence trying to decide whether or not to pledge to the campaign, Goblinworks' latest treat might be enough to knock you off of it (one way or another). Fans can now access a nifty tool that will allow them to traipse about the environment from the game's tech demo. It runs right in your browser courtesy of Unity, so it's definitely worth at least a quick look. There is, as you may have guessed, no actual gameplay in this little demo-land; it's just you, the movement keys, and a small chunk of the Pathfinder Online world. If you wanna poke around for yourself, you can find the demo at the source link below.
Warhorse Studios 'next-gen' tech video leaked
A video of Warhorse Studios' next-gen RPG that uses a modified version of CryEngine 3 leaked out recently. Even considering the "bootleg" feel of it, the video shows some impressive textures with murky, yet reflective water in the developer's introductory game.The video comes from a recent hour-long presentation at a small Czech gaming conference in Prague. Creative Director Dan Vavra clarified in a recent developer diary that the next-gen label is "somewhat misleading." The small demo was shown on a two-year-old laptop with a mobile GeForce 555M, or as Vavra described it: "Not exactly state-of-the-art PC or next gen Xbox." The area shown is 200 x 200 meters, and according to Vavra it "doesn't have the final lighting and there are no effects in it. It's simply an example of the environment."While the game is expected to run on next-gen consoles, Vavra sternly noted that the environment video is "not at all originally intended officially to support the claim that 'this is what next gen should look like.'"
Agni's Philosophy tech demos showcase insanely detailed faces, adjustable forehead sweat
In case you missed it during E3, Agni's Philosophy is a series of real-time tech demos created by Square Enix, in order to demonstrate the power and flexibility of its "Luminous Studio" development environment/engine for next-generation video games.As is clearly evident by these two spankin' new Agni's Philosophy exhibitions (above and after the break), Square Enix certainly has a lot to show off. The video above showcases a somewhat mystical feathered woman, whose incredibly detailed face, hair and clothing are all adjusted in various subtle-yet-crazy ways, apparently in real time. Similarly, the wizened man tucked past the jump is equally tweaked, his beard thickness altered and the amount of sweat on his brow changed simply by moving a slider.You know what? We don't even need this to become a game anymore. Just give us a character editor with this kind of power and we'll give you as much money as you want.
Nvidia releases 'A New Dawn' graphical tech demo
Nvidia has released an update to its famous Dawn technology demo, putting the exhaustively rendered fairy in an environment that's as lushly portrayed as the original character. This latest version for GTX cards features full DirectX 11 tesselation, with over four million triangles making up the vines and forest bark. Dawn's hair is also shown in much more detail: The original version had 1,700 strands that couldn't move, and this version realistically renders 40,000 strands of hair, reflecting light at various angles. The fairy's skin is also updated with a feature called "sub-surface scattering," which allows light to enter a surface for a short distance, and then bounce out at a number of angles. This allows the skin to look more real, as opposed to glowy or translucent. If you have the appropriate hardware and want to run the demo yourself, it's available for download from Nvidia right now. As Nvidia says in the official blog post, "let's hope games catch up to her real soon."
Square Enix tech director on Agni's Philosophy demo, next-gen hurdles
Square Enix worldwide technology director Julien Merceron realizes the Agni's Philosophy tech demo shows off impressive graphics that could drive next-gen Final Fantasy games, but he also knows that, as a developer, focusing on graphics alone is "a big mistake.""Focusing on graphics only would be a huge mistake," Merceron tells Games Industry International. "You start to have super-great graphics, characters look really good and you end up in the uncanny valley, but you don't have animation at the same quality level. Same thing with behavior and AI; it animates well and looks good, but it is making stupid decisions. It simply won't be immersive."As graphics improve, other problems arise, such as facial animations, physics and AI not hitting the same level and creating an obvious uncanny valley, where on-screen actions are disturbing to watch. The uncanny valley will always exist, and balancing engaging gameplay with upgraded graphics and other elements is key to player immersion, Merceron says.Another key aspect is the hardware itself – this generation of consoles has lasted "way too long" and has helped usher in alternative forms of gaming, via browsers and mobile devices, Merceron says."Now you don't need to manage longevity by complexity of programming, because your longevity is ensured by your online model," he says. "And I would suggest that maybe we don't want long generations. We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting seven, eight, nine or even 10 years and it's the biggest mistake they've ever made."Square Enix has recently focused on developing high-end 3D experiences for web browsers, a platform Merceron sees as "instrumental in the world of tomorrow.""We shouldn't underestimate the kind of experience that you can have in a web browser. Immediately you can play from anywhere. You have browsers all over the place. These cloud storage and computing interfaces will provide better ways for consumers to interact with the experiences they want to have."
Next 3DMark teased, who says benchmarks don't need trailers? (video)
Futuremark, one of the preeminent benchmark companies out there, is gearing up to let loose a new version of its 3DMark gaming test. The new suite will hammer GPUs with a DirectX 11-based scene designed to push a system to its limits. Now, benchmarks are hardly the sort of thing that people get excited for... usually. But Futuremark still sees a need to drum up interest for its Windows-only program in a landscape increasingly focused on mobile gaming and power-sipping GPUs. Hence the trailer (which you'll find after the break) that shows off just what 3DMark will demand of your next gaming rig. Its visuals aren't quite as jaw-dropping as Epic's Unreal Engine 4 demo, or as over-dramatic as the Samaritan demo NVIDIA has been running for the last few years. But, it's still an impressive showcase of dynamic lighting techniques, particle effects and fluid dynamic simulation. In particular the subtlety of the smoke is eye catching. For more info hit up the PR after the break.
Unreal Engine 4 demo deconstructed
Epic's Unreal Engine 4 strides into public view with a spectacular real-time demo, dubbed "Elemental" (seen above). The short film depicts an ancient knight creaking to supernatural life while a decrepit castle comes apart around him, letting in floods of light and gusts of snow. It's a concise showcase of the underlying technology, which features sophisticated dynamic illumination, light-reactive materials, rich particle effects, per-pixel lens flares, and other visual processes that don't sound quite as sexy as they appear.According to Epic, games running on Unreal Engine 4 won't ship until sometime in 2013 at earliest. With partners already lining up to use it, and the engine running in 1080p on a PC built from off-the-shelf parts (the demonstration I saw was running on a variant of the Falcon Northwest Fragbox, augmented with Nvidia's Geforce GTX 680), Epic can focus on highlighting the usability of the editor that accompanies UE4.If you peer past the break you'll see a dry, detailed deconstruction of all the effects that comprise "Elemental," and a twist of sorts: the demo runs in real-time right from the editor itself. We'll leave it to Epic to explain how the engine allows for quick iteration on effects, materials and other visual properties, and how it can help manage the blueprints of a game, right down to the behaviour of the smallest particle.We've also embedded several videos of some simple games created with the aid of Unreal Kismet, an integrated visual scripting system. if you have a cursory interest in the nuts and bolts of game creation, you may appreciate this informative glimpse at our impeccably lit future.
Pathfinder Online's technology demo gets soundly kickstarted
Two days ago, we announced that Pathfinder Online was starting a Kickstarter project to fund a technology demo for the game. Yesterday, the project went live. Today, the project has already hit its $50,000 goal and exceeded it, meaning that the game's demo will most definitely be funded when June 8th rolls around. There are still another 29 days left in the project, so if you're interested in the game, there's still more time for you to throw in your support. But maybe you're one of the backers already. If you're still eager for more information on the game, the weekly developer blog has gone live, discussing the rationale behind the Kickstarter project and some of the future steps of the game's production. You can also take a peek at details behind the upcoming tabletop book available for backers, which might help motivate you to donate if you haven't already. [Thanks to Nick for the tip!]
Pathfinder Online puts together a Kickstarter project [Updated]
Kickstarter has been getting a lot of attention from the gaming industry of late after a number of high-profile successes. It's even gained the attention of the team behind Pathfinder Online, the upcoming sandbox MMORPG based on the eponymous tabletop system. So instead of trying to secure venture capitalist funding for the project, the development team is reaching out directly to the fans via a new Kickstarter project to assemble a tech demo for the game. It's important to note that the project is only for funding a demo of the game, enough to show bigger investors that the interest in the game does exist. However, the development team has still assembled a number of bonuses for prospective players, including special forum membership, specialized tabletop game products, and promotional posters. If you're interested in seeing the game continue in development, it's well worth dropping by the Kickstarter page and dropping in some money when it goes live soon. [Update: The Kickstarter page is now live!]
