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Future gaming uses for Cloud Compute

T

Trup1aya

Member
By now, you should have seen the crackdown demonstration from Gamescom.

If not here it is
https://youtu.be/rFWIpAPvF-Q

After seeing this and reading the impressions from folks who have seen it first and, I believe that Crackdown represents the first of many titles that will strive to take advantage of this technology.

I've already seen people posting wishes to see this tech to power destruction physics in a proper Superhero game, Rampage remake, Godzilla game, etc. I'd like to see it used for more advanced, physics based weather simulation in games.

But outside of physics computations, what are some potential applications of this technology? How else would you like to see it used? All I can think of is more AI processing for larger numbers of enemies and NPCs, a concept that TitanFall conceptualized, but really didn't execute in an impressive manner.

Thoughts?

Please, if you are of the belief that this tech is useless or won't work as intended... Please don't bother replying to this thread.
 
nVidia research made a proof-of-concept of cloud compute being used for high quality indirect lighting: https://research.nvidia.com/publica...tizing-indirect-lighting-real-time-rendering/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiWdJxshWMM

It's an interesting problem set...for it to be worth doing, thr problem must involve a lot of compute, but relatively little data to be transferred to/from the client, and also be very latency tolerant. Aside from some physics applications, and processing of AI (which, from a player's perspective, might as well be a black box) or some other large scale simulation (as in the case of dedicated servers, naturally) there aren't a ton of other places that it may be used.

Oh, and the cost has to be justified. Running dedicated servers for the purpose of a cosmetic effect, or for stuff beyond letting players olay with each other can be a hard sell, because of the tens of millions of dollars that that costs.
 
It's going to be fun to see what happens when the flood gates open and thousands of players start playing this, hehe.

I mean, the immense server power behind Battle.net consistently crumbles from just handling normal mulitplayer (way way less intensive for the server than this) when they have big new releases (wow expansions, diablo 3 etc).

Seeing this run in tech demos means nothing to me.
 
I think it'll would / will be more impressive when consoles are forced online and fast internet connections become more prevalent.
 
Horp said:
It's going to be fun to see what happens when the flood gates open and thousands of players start playing this, hehe.

I mean, the immense server power behind Battle.net consistently crumbles from just handling normal mulitplayer (way way less intensive for the server than this) when they have big new releases (wow expansions, diablo 3 etc).

Seeing this run in tech demos means nothing to me.
Click to expand...

Battle net is so tiny campared to Azure though.

The whole of blizzard has 20k servers lol. Compared to 300k Azure servers just in Chicago.

And this was during their peak WoW sub.
 
Realtime ray tracing?

And can I get a short-but-sweet answer so as not to derail, but I thought the main issue with sending data to the cloud to be processed and getting it back for game applications was latency. Has that been fixed or does it only apply to some aspects of processing?
 
I believe the cloud can be used for anything not latency sensitive, so wont' be used to upgrade graphics or increase frame rate.
 
danowat said:
I think it'll would / will be more impressive when consoles are forced online and fast internet connections become more prevalent.
Click to expand...

honestly with this happening either on consoles or with "online-only DRMs" on PC , i would just quit gaming and possibly would be able to finish my backlog before pension

as for the uses of Cloud - possibly anything server-based and as for features anything which can be transfered from client by as small data as possible (maybe some AI like in forza, some small graphic tweaks or simple-geometry destruction like in crackdown) - problematic for anything reliable on latency or dataheavy
 
Horp said:
It's going to be fun to see what happens when the flood gates open and thousands of players start playing this, hehe.

I mean, the immense server power behind Battle.net consistently crumbles from just handling normal mulitplayer (way way less intensive for the server than this) when they have big new releases (wow expansions, diablo 3 etc).

Seeing this run in tech demos means nothing to me.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure Azure has significantly more server capacity than Battle.net
 
The possibilities are endless. Very excited to see what devs do with it. I would like to see Battlefield use it which could really benifit with the destruction capability, Other than that, surprise me

Exciting times ahead.
 
justgames7604 said:
Battle net is so tiny campared to Azure though.

The whole of blizzard has 20k servers lol. Compared to 300k Azure servers just in Chicago.

And this was during their peak WoW sub.
Click to expand...

It's not about size and numbers. Blizzard probably have way more actual physical servers than they need. The web doesn't really work like that though, pure quantity can only get you so far.

Azure itself is definitely solid, but it's really just a "dumb" big server farm. The actual server side code for this game is what I'm doubting. The load balancing, the scalability, these things.

I look forward to be disproven, but until I've seen it actually handling tens of thousands of players at once, it's nothing special. And I mean it, just running physics on a server application really is nothing special. If they can scale it to work with a huge cluster of servers together and keep it smooth for all players, then that's something new.

Just as a background; I was part of the team that is behind the server technology that actually is in the Guiness Book of World Records for having the most players in one game session; all being able to interact with each other in real time without zoning. (this one: http://1000playerfps.com/)

Edit:
Would you look at that, someone actually beat us this year :)
 
I thought maybe Forza/Another Driving Sim could use it.

They could physically built the tracks and cars down to crazy detail and use the extra compute power to model what happens. I always found the upgrade stuff in driving games to be a bit boring. More like snapping on whatever makes higher numbers. Car fanatics could have a crazy amount of tweaking options and to make a truly customized car to their liking.
 
It'd be nice to see it used for quality AI rather than how Titanfall took a quantity approach. AI has stagnated forever, this could be a great way to push some sophistication forward.
 
Lady Siara said:
It'd be nice to see it used for quality AI rather than how Titanfall took a quantity approach. AI has stagnated forever, this could be a great way to push some sophistication forward.
Click to expand...

The problems with AI aren't a problem of processing power, though.
 
They mentioned that background detail could benefit from it mountains, fights in the distance etc). But as far as SP games go I hope, for the sake of posterity, it's barely used at all. In fact, I won't buy a PC game that uses it outside of MP.
 
A large scale RPG where A.I actually does a job. I am not talking about walking to A and then walking to B, I would like to see an actual economy being lived out around the player and then use the extra compute to makes changes based upon what the player does to impact the world.

Couple into this items getting weathered, things growing etc. Hell, they could actually do Fable with this tech.
 
prudislav said:
honestly with this happening either on consoles or with "online-only DRMs" on PC , i would just quit gaming and possibly would be able to finish my backlog before pension
Click to expand...

I'm probably in the minority, but I have no issue with a online only requirement.
 
Nothing, because I dont want my games to rely on the cloud so they can end up shutdown and lost forever, or charged a premium.
 
In a racing sim it would work quite well if every fine detail was dynamically controlled. Aerodynamics, weather, track status and evolution, dynamic AI behaviour, ambience (crowds, leaves on track, flies on visor etc.) Even a server for each wheel of a race car could be used to calculate the individual forces going through each tyre, also how the car reacts to the tiniest of inputs on the steering wheel and changes of the car's setup.

DAMN IT I WISH THIS WAS REAL
 
Perhaps rendering the entirety of static virtual MMO worlds? Something like rendering all of WOW's landmass on remote computers at once and stream it to host machines to take off rendering load and prevent pop-in?
 
It would be great if you could have a physicsserver running on your local pc also. Then you could choose if you want to use azure or your pc.

It could be way faster in terms of latency and you could send more data.
 
chrislowe said:
It would be great if you could have a physicsserver running on your local pc also. Then you could choose if you want to use azure or your pc.

It could be way faster in terms of latency and you could send more data.
Click to expand...

Ken Kutaragi's dream of connected Cell devices...
 
Horp said:
It's not about size and numbers. Blizzard probably have way more actual physical servers than they need. The web doesn't really work like that though, pure quantity can only get you so far.

Azure itself is definitely solid, but it's really just a "dumb" big server farm. The actual server side code for this game is what I'm doubting. The load balancing, the scalability, these things.

I look forward to be disproven, but until I've seen it actually handling tens of thousands of players at once, it's nothing special. And I mean it, just running physics on a server application really is nothing special. If they can scale it to work with a huge cluster of servers together and keep it smooth for all players, then that's something new.

Just as a background; I was part of the team that is behind the server technology that actually is in the Guiness Book of World Records for having the most players in one game session; all being able to interact with each other in real time without zoning. (this one: http://1000playerfps.com/)

Edit:
Would you look at that, someone actually beat us this year :)
Click to expand...

Yea I know, but thats not what your post was saying. It was written as if blizzards battle.net was even close to Azure in terms of sheer power.

And also thats a fantasic feat.
 
Loads of things

PVP - Ai for pedestrians who were doing jobs and because you opened fire with an AK they are no longer working. Destruction for properties in GTA, in fact all the things that choke the processor in GTA would be awesome.

Imagine having a persistant GTA worled where you could do individual and group missions with smarter ped AI, better physics for weapons, cars, buildings etc.

Assassins creed, all of it

Prebaked and raytraced lighting

Doing a war game with 1 million actual soldiers in formations and squads and rather than a corridor shooter then a battle that actually has some impact on the world around it.
 
People need to keep in mind this is purely CPU tasks, rather GPU. So lighting etc, are out of the question.

My idea I had a while back was imagine a MMO which used the cloud to create a dynamic wind that effects everything you can see. Trees, grass, cloth, flags and everything could be animated by physics calculations in the cloud. Imagine walking through a huge open environment, a storm comes and everything you see goes crazy. Even walking through the grass and it moving would be possible. Think Khampfields gif he showed on here.

Think of GTA also, the living city in GTA V uses a lot of CPU. Imagine offloading all of that to the cloud, which could basically actually create a real world with many random actions around you.
 
justgames7604 said:
Yea I know, but thats not what your post was saying. It was written as if blizzards battle.net was even close to Azure in terms of sheer power.

And also thats a fantasic feat.
Click to expand...

You're right, I did express my self very strangly in hindsight. With immense server power I was in fact referring to the whole system (including the quantity/power of course).
 
GuessWho said:
oh now cloud computing exist? thisisneogaf
Click to expand...

In case you didn't notice...

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Believe!
 
Dynasty said:
I believe the cloud can be used for anything not latency sensitive, so wont' be used to upgrade graphics or increase frame rate.
Click to expand...
There are researches going on for trying to predict and hide latency, and collaborative rendering to improve graphics, ms even has a VR research going on that mixes these two approaches for an untethered low latency VR.

Sure, that's still years ahead of us, but it feels possible and it's exciting.
 
How about a real, to scale open world RPG. Where no buildings are locked up, the cities are actually miles apart and it takes actual real days to travel from one part of the world to another. You would have to actually make camp and generally plan for long trips.
 
danowat said:
I'm probably in the minority, but I have no issue with a online only requirement.
Click to expand...
well i pretty much dont care about MP/Coop/pseudo-social features in games at all (since my brother died) so those i dont count as "my gaming" and online-only requirement for a game with support of solo play is travesty.. (to name a few games ... SimCity at launch, AC2, Darkspore, Diablo3pc,...)
Also i have not so stable internet connection and really bad experience with some of those
to name a few in recent years ...Error 37 (still cant stomach that poeple on consoles can play it offline) and various deaths of HC characters in D3, unsaved cities in SC5 even though i save it quite often, fucked up save in NFSRivals thx to "server migration" while playing solo campaign whileconnected to online, various corrupted "Cloud" savegames (mostly Uplay and Origin)....
but i guess thats a downside of living on countryside where better connection isnt available
 
New002 said:
But if Superman is supposed to be a good guy why did he destroy half the city???
Click to expand...

Supes is not destroying the city. The godlike dudes who he is fighting are and most of the destruction comes from the fighting itself. He really can't ask them to move the fight to more convenient place. Also, if you are talking about the latest movie, it was pretty much his first time doing things.
 
prudislav said:
well i pretty much dont care about MP/Coop/pseudo-social features in games at all (since my brother died) so those i dont count as "my gaming" and online-only requirement for a game with support of solo play is travesty.. (to name a few games ... SimCity at launch, AC2, Darkspore, Diablo3pc,...)
Also i have not so stable internet connection and really bad experience with some of those
to name a few in recent years ...Error 37 (still cant stomach that poeple on consoles can play it offline) and various deaths of HC characters in D3, unsaved cities in SC5 even though i save it quite often, fucked up save in NFSRivals thx to "server migration" while playing solo campaign whileconnected to online, various corrupted "Cloud" savegames (mostly Uplay and Origin)....
but i guess thats a downside of living on countryside where better connection isnt available
Click to expand...

Yes, I understand that, I can only base it on my experiences though, in the last, say 10 years, I can count on two fingers where I have had an internet connection problem, so stability doesn't worry me, I am also in a very rural area, however, we do have 70mb fibre.

From a purely personal view, I can see the benefits on an online only future outweigh the negatives.
 
danowat said:
From a purely personal view, I can see the benefits on an online only future outweigh the negatives.
Click to expand...
I guess lets agree to disagree ;-)
I just can't see that from both personal (singleplayer lover and games collector) and professional view. (working as tester/analyst for document management apps)
Yeah I can see the benefits , but for me the downsides are just way too terrifyng (aka possible problems in solo play and like what happend with Darkspore - when they decide to close servers - whole games is worthless and lost forever and I just want to play whenever I want not when my connection/publisher tells me)
 
Jackpot said:
Realtime ray tracing?

And can I get a short-but-sweet answer so as not to derail, but I thought the main issue with sending data to the cloud to be processed and getting it back for game applications was latency. Has that been fixed or does it only apply to some aspects of processing?
Click to expand...

Latency is always an issue... But some functions are less latency dependent than others...
 
Future gaming runs on chips so powerful that they can single-handedly stimulate all the computations by them-self; without the need of an external "computation" farm.

Cloud computing is maybe today's solution but its not the future of gaming.
 
WanderingWind said:
How about a real, to scale open world RPG. Where no buildings are locked up, the cities are actually miles apart and it takes actual real days to travel from one part of the world to another. You would have to actually make camp and generally plan for long trips.
Click to expand...

I'd love this. Sort of like how Dragons Dogma makes travelling long distances feel very dangerous. Especially if you do it at night.
 
WanderingWind said:
How about a real, to scale open world RPG. Where no buildings are locked up, the cities are actually miles apart and it takes actual real days to travel from one part of the world to another. You would have to actually make camp and generally plan for long trips.
Click to expand...

No Man's Sky is the first variation of this design choice of this generation.
 
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