Square's New "Luminous" engine can render tiny static boxes!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/13/squar ... -graphics/

Apparently this is supposed to be impressive, that they can have high resolution photosourced textures in a completely static environment. Maybe the engine actually is super sweet shit, but what's there in the article is laughable. In Kane and Lynch 2, there were main menu backgrounds, like the one looking out a car window, that looked virtually realistic to me... because it had high quality static reflections and textures in the car, realistic camera movement, and a photo sourced background out the window. It was a very pretty effect, but not exactly the oncoming wave of the future for all games. Show me a person, or at least dynamic lights, and then we'll see.

Quote from Sentura

trying not to sound like an idiot here, but it has the "real" feel to it. i wish i could point to what it is, but it's pretty much just "real".

the picture of the real environment and the screenshot of the game are very similar, because the game is using pictures of the real environmental as its art

If they were using a more complicated or dynamic scene as a basis it'd be much, much harder to pull off.