The Fox Engine is about "photo-realism", says Kojima

Hideo Kojima has been on a roll of late on Twitter, and while we told you earlier about the possibility of the next Phantom Pain trailer being edited at his desk earlier, another tweet from the enigmatic developer has surfaced regarding the Fox Engine.

"The concept of the ‘Fox Engine' is photo-realism," Kojima tweeted - translated by Kotaku. "The age of fixating on pictures and sound in games is over. Now the questions are: How free is it? Does it connect to the internet and is the gameplay smooth? Even so, a certain level of realistic atmosphere is required.

"At Kojima Productions we're aiming for a line where even simple CG models look photo-realistic when you zoom out of the game screen. When Metal Gear Solid 1 was released in 1998, it was said that it was 'the day that [pre-rendered] movies would disappear.' We looked to the future and chose to have video sequences in the game that used polygon models instead of pre-rendered graphics. Now they make VFX movies with game engines."

"With Peace Walker, we tried a hand-held system with the age of cloud technology in mind. People laughed at us then, too."

Kojima goes on to talk about evolving technology, and how creators must "look to that future when they create."

Last year, Kojima teases such photo-realism with the new engine, and he will be discussing it in person at GDC next week - where he will also be revealing more on Metal Gear: Ground Zeroes - aka Phantom Pain for all intents and purposes.

We'll be sitting in on the session, and it's rumored to be live-streamed, but we've yet to find confirmation of this.