by Paul Lilly — Friday, May 01, 2015, 09:00 AM EDT

Square Enix Witch Chapter Real-Time CG DX 12 Demo Steals Show At Microsoft BUILD

Computer generated graphics have come a long way in the past several years and are starting to blur the line between animation and real actors. One of the more difficult tasks for CG artists is to recreate human emotions, especially crying, though you wouldn't know it after watching a tech demo that Square Enix showed off at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference.

The real-time tech demo is called Witch Chapter 0 [cry] and is part of a research project that studies various next generation technologies. For this particular demo, Square Enix put a lot of research into real-time CG technology utilizing DirectX 12 in collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA, the company said. It's an ongoing project that will help form Square Enix's Luminous Studio engine for future games.

"Our team has always pursued cutting-edge pre-rendered and real-time CG," commented Hajime Tabata, head of the next-generation technology research project and Division Executive of Business Division II of Square Enix Co., Ltd. "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."

The short demo shows some breathtaking graphics with an amazing level of detail. As the camera zooms in, you can clearly see imperfections in the skin, along with glistening effects from areas where the face is wet with either tears or water.

This bodes well for DirectX 12 and the future of gaming, though it took some serious horsepower to drive the tech demo -- a four-way GeForce GTX Titan X SLI setup.

Tags: Microsoft, Square Enix, CG, build, DirectX 12, DX12, (nasdaq:msft), withc chapter 0 [cry]