Gamasutra interview of N. Yoshida

[Claire_Pendragon]

I Coulda sworn Crystal Tools is UE3, and this new engine is a modified Crystal Tools, that will be made solely for MMOs. (Maybe i remember this wrong.)

[Rizon]

I Coulda sworn Crystal Tools is UE3, and this new engine is a modified Crystal Tools, that will be made solely for MMOs. (Maybe i remember this wrong.)

My understanding is that the PS3 version will be using the Luminous Engine while the PC will use and engine designed for it that will include some aspects of the Luminous Engine. Could have read it wrong.

[ChiefCurrahee]

My understanding is that the PS3 version will be using the Luminous Engine while the PC will use and engine designed for it that will include some aspects of the Luminous Engine. Could have read it wrong.

PC and PS3 will not use either Luminous or Crystal tools engines. It will use the "FFXIV" engine which is made just for this game. What Yoshi said is that programers and engineers from Luminous ported over some of the lighting code so, parts of the "FFXIV engine" came from that.

Luminous and Crystal tools are engines built around the idea of rendering near static scenes in high detail which a camera travels through. Games where predetermined amounts of action take place on screen, like FFXIII excel on this type of engine.

The FFXIV engine will favor more dynamic amounts of on screen action allowing players to interact in high population/ high density PC/NPC areas. However the trade off for displaying more onscreen dynamic action is the near static environments won't be as detailed or HQ.

You can see from the Ver 2.0 screen shot that the game still looks very detailed when up close, so maybe things like draw distance or over all character/environmental model poly-count will be lower.