Luminous Engine Appears Again at E3

As mentioned several months ago, the team at Square Enix have been working on a new game engine to power their games of the next or next-next generation. Dubbed "Luminous," the engine purports real-time photorealistic rendering and even a developmental cost savings, making it potentially a competitor to the ubiquitous offerings from Epic, currently at work on the fourth generation of the Unreal engine.

At E3 this year, the engine appeared again, this time with the capability to show a "game" running within the engine. The game itself is not a real game, but instead a real-time tech demo, called "Agni's Philosophy;" however, assuming that this is legitimate in-engine work and not pre-rendered (it must be legit, or else Squenix will be branded utter charlatans), it looks simply amazing. The particle effects alone sell it, and the realistic facial animations, dynamic lighting, and the blazing fast focus-shift just look gorgeous.

Will it mean anything for games? No way to know yet. It's still a tech demo. I'm sure the hand-wringing has already begun, though.

Source: Kotaku, Agni's Philosophy Site