A little known Intel development team is building a game engine which aims to make reality possible in the virtual world.

Project Offset has been showing off some fairly sexy videos on its bog which show a show a variety of graphics engine experiments. The site has some video footage including the detailed facial expressions of an ogre to a meteor shower blasting through ancient stone pillars.

OK it is not quite movie CGI, but the graphics are being rendered in real time by a dynamic game engine and are pretty damn good. Intel's work is part of industry wide plans to come up with a visually rich real-time game graphics engine.

Outfits like CryTek, Epic, and ID Software are all having a crack at it. Offset has yet to officially announce a game title, but we are excited by the implications they bring to the virtual world.