Witch Chapter 0 [cry]

Despite the fact that its Japanese releases have generally taken a critical beating over the past decade or so, one accusation few would level at Square Enix is a lack of technical expertise. Since the PlayStation One era, the company’s tech demos have been synonymous with push the bleeding edge of graphics. It’s latest experiment, powered by four Nvidia GTX Titan’s and DirectX 12, holds true to that heritage, and then some.

The absolutely stunning piece of real-time rendering, called “WITCH Chapter 0 [cry],” is available to view on YouTube User Caith_Sith’s channel. The tech demo shows off what a game company can do with a monstrous amount of processing power by four of Nvidia’s flagship graphics chips in a quad SLI config, as well as the upcoming DirectX 12 API upgrade.

While it may seem fanciful, and its true that none but the tiniest percentage of gamers would own a machine with those specifications, technical demonstrations such as this allow developers to explore and experiment with new workflows and rendering technologies. The learnings from these tech demos are typically filtered down to benefit current, or near-future software.

“As a part of the technical development, we created this demo using world-class, real-time CG technology with generous support from leading-edge software and hardware providers – Microsoft’s Windows10/DirectX 12 and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX. The efforts from this project will power future game development as well as ‘Final Fantasy XV,’ currently a work in progress,” said Square Enix head of the next-generation technology research project in a press release.

One example of this is the Agni’s Philosophy tech demo released by Square Enix nearly three years ago. The demo, powered by a single GTX 680, features the same main character as seen in the “WITCH Chapter 0 [cry]” tech demo. Learnings from Agni’s Philosophy were folded into the development of the company’s proprietary Luminous Engine, which partly powers the currently in-development

“Final Fantasy XV.” “Final Fantasy XV” is currently in development for both PS4 and Xbox One. In March, Square Enix released a demo version of the game for fans who purchased first-run copies of “Final Fantasy Type-0 HD.” As previously revealed, an upgraded version of the demo, with updated graphics and gameplay, is set to be released some time in May.

(Credit: YouTube/Caith_Sith)

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