Quantic Dream demonstrates new Kara Engine at GDC

At his "Technologies To Support Emotion" panel at GDC, David Cage of Quantic Dream, which produced the PlayStation 3 hit Heavy Rain, showed off a year-old demo of the company's new Kara Engine, which uses motion capture technology. The presentation ran on Kara V1 but is said to perform 50% better in its current V3 state.

Quantic Dream created the Kara Engine because they wanted something that was "high quality, very fast, and very cheap"—more so than what's commonly seen in movies like Avatar that use motion-capturing. The new technology allows the developer to transfer actors' motions into the game engine with minimal editing time. Using this technique, Quantic Dream can draw a more accurate prediction of how the in-game content will look while shooting in the motion capture stage.

However, Kara uses many more cameras than were necessary during the production of Heavy Rain: a whopping 65 compared with the previous 28. Ninety markers are needed on the actor's face, and ninety more are attached to the body.

Below is the developer's demonstration, which is not related to any upcoming title from the company.