Nvidia shows off 'A New Dawn' DX11 tech demo

Square Enix's real-time tech demo 'Agni's Philosophy' wowed us yesterday, and Nvidia was also showing off some tech of its own. Come watch the 'A New Dawn' demo, dedicated to rendering one single realistic character.

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Games are all right, so it's nice that there are lots of them at E3, but sometimes you want a cold, hard tech demo to ogle. Square Enix revealed its gorgeous Agni's Philosophy demo yesterday, and graphics card manufacturer Nvidia also had something to show off. Its faery mascot Dawn returned in the 'A New Dawn' demo, showing off how realistic a real-time character we can run in real-time nowadays.

The new and improved Dawn boasts 40,000 DirectX 11-tessellated strands of hair with physics-simulated swaying, subsurface scattering, carefully-slicked skin oil maps, and other technical gubbins Nvidia explains. In short, modern-day GPUs can render a very pretty person in a pretty scene, as long as there's nothing else going on.

A New Dawn will be released for you to run yourself later this month, though it's made to showcase Nvidia's new Kepler GPU so your PC will need to be packing at least twin GTX 670s.

Now, watch the faery perform her awfully dull burlesque act:

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 6, 2012 4:45 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Nvidia shows off 'A New Dawn' DX11 tech demo.

    Square Enix's real-time tech demo 'Agni's Philosophy' wowed us yesterday, and Nvidia was also showing off some tech of its own. Come watch the 'A New Dawn' demo, dedicated to rendering one single realistic character.

    • reply
      June 6, 2012 5:36 AM

      How to market to gamers: if it's not violence it's gotta be (very mild) sex. That faery looked incredibly depressed.

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      June 6, 2012 5:42 AM

      After all these years they still can't come up with a new demo concept than this?

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      June 6, 2012 5:46 AM

      *sigh*

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      June 6, 2012 6:05 AM

      that fairy has some huge tits. A++ would buy again

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      June 6, 2012 6:12 AM

      She looks uncomfortable... like...

      "Jesus Christ... a fucking tech demo for video cards... 4 years of acting school and all the head I had to give.. and this is what I get? Friggin' fairy wings... and a tulip bra? I can't even talk.. just sit here and smile on this stupid fake vine swing. Look at it down there.. it's like a 30 foot drop.. I could DIE up here. Shit... should have been an accountant or something.."

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        June 6, 2012 6:16 AM

        [deleted]

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          June 6, 2012 6:17 AM

          [deleted]

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            June 6, 2012 7:14 AM

            Tiny animation budget. Remember the old days of the original GeForce tech demos, where the majority of them were interactive demonstrations of things like realtime lighting, cube environment mapping, and particle effects? There was only one demo with a high-poly woman talking, and there were only two short dialogue lines. The focus was purely on the high polycount and lighting.

            IIRC the Dawn and Dusk demos in 2003 were the GeForce FX showcase demos, back when shaders were starting to get pushed hard. It seems anachronistic for NVidia to go for that same angle AGAIN, while most developers don't give a shit because they're targeting the 360 for hardware spec on their multiplatform game that's getting rushed by their publisher. They don't care about a demo that requires twin GTX 670s, except perhaps in that same respect that Epic cared about it when they showed the Samaritan demo, but then Epic has the clout to influence hardware spec on Microsoft and Sony's next hardware, since they produce the engine that runs almost every multiplatform game.

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      June 6, 2012 6:25 AM

      That hair is incredibly...water-like.

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      June 6, 2012 6:26 AM

      Still not a fan of the face model.

      Remember live action Dusk at E3 2003? I don't have any better pictures from whoever Shacker uploaded it, but here's two:
      http://chattypics.com/files/E3_Dusk01_0xarqwi27e.jpg
      http://chattypics.com/files/E3_Dusk02_zcg58r78iv.jpg

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      June 6, 2012 7:33 AM

      [deleted]

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      June 6, 2012 7:34 AM

      Anyone cringe with embarrassment at the size of her tits? You'd think the industry would've moved past the whole big titted women phase in the 90s.. I just find it quite sad really.

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        June 6, 2012 7:50 AM

        Everyone in this thread?

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        June 6, 2012 8:24 AM

        My biggest issue is how poor it looks compared to the DX11 FF concept footage.

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        June 6, 2012 8:32 AM

        Kind of like how Hollywood has moved on from big tits and explosions?

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        June 6, 2012 10:28 AM

        [deleted]

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        June 6, 2012 10:46 AM

        It doesn't really make sense because look at her hair. I mean one guy said oh no, she needs big boobs for the nerds looking at this, and then the next guy chimed in with "oh yeah, and give her a buzz cut too, men like women with short hair"

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        June 6, 2012 11:47 AM

        I wish the industry would move past the whole 18 year old frat boy focus but then again why would they it brings in the money. You just learn to ignore things after a while. The fairy totally looks like a girl I like though.

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        June 6, 2012 11:52 AM

        [deleted]

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          June 6, 2012 12:56 PM

          tbh faeries are supposed to have lil A-cups, not very realistic imho

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      June 6, 2012 9:16 AM

      9 years on she doesn't look that much better from what I remember of the original Dawn. I probably don't remember that old demo very well though

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      June 6, 2012 11:23 AM

      Here's a Protip NVidia: Hire better animators

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        June 6, 2012 11:30 AM

        That's what kills it. Freaky smile, boring movement.

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      June 6, 2012 11:37 AM

      Damnit DV1980, what the hell is this crap?

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      June 6, 2012 11:40 AM

      Hair design looks to be the result of not wanting to deal with the rendering complexity of long hair.

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