The Square Enix staff behind the publisher’s Agnis Philosophy tech demo recently showed off their latest technical achievements at the Microsoft Build Developer Conference this week. This was done using a new tech demo using DirectX 12 on Windows 10, called Witch Chapter 0 [Cry].
Witch Chapter 0 [Cry] is part of ongoing research at Square Enix in regarding “next-generation technology” that pertains to videogame graphics and improving processing capabilities. The results of this research, being conducted in collaboration with Nvidia and Microsoft, will be incorporated into Square Enix’s Luminous Studio engine and is intended for use in future games, including Final Fantasy XV, which is currently in development for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
In particular, Square Enix are keen to point out that the human emotion of crying is hard to replicate in videogames and other CG-heavy media, which is why they chose it as the focus for their Witch Chapter 0 demo. Just how or to what extent this technology will be used in Final Fantasy XV and other games remains to be seen.
“We’ve designed DirectX 12 to deliver industry leading performance across the widest range of form factors and graphic cards,” said Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice-president at Microsoft. “The work Square Enix is doing plays a valuable role in exhibiting the potential of DirectX 12 to enable even greater innovation and optimized game performance.”
