Could future games integrate cloud based AI such as Open AI?

[BRiT]

What's the actual rate of packet loss these days on a good connection?

0%

 

[JPT]

0%

If we are talking fiber, if we are talking some sort of wireless or dsl connection there are tricks to recreate lost/corrupted data, but of course the price for that is lower speed. Aka most service providers probably does not enable it for you.

 

[trinibwoy]

I want cloud augmented physics and particles more than anything else right now.

Just give me a game where everything has high fidelity physics. Realistic clothing, hair, and kinematics, as well as ultra realistic fluid simulations all working together.. as well as destruction amped up to ridiculous degrees.

Ugh this brought back repressed memories of physics acceleration debates many years ago in these very forums. Back then people were arguing multithreaded physics libraries would usher in a new age of amazing interactive environments. With the exception of fire I’m pretty sure cloth and fluid simulations haven’t noticeably improved in the past 10 years. Back then I certainly had expected that in 2023 we would have game characters actually “wearing” their clothes.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What's the actual rate of packet loss these days on a good connection?

It's still very common in gaming and Modern Warfare 2 seems particularly prone to it, it's also why most online games that require low-latency show ping times and packet loss statistics.

Most 'lost' packets aren't lost, they just get slowed on route due to network congestion, ISP traffic shaping, VPNs and enforced QoS protocols in-between the client and server. In an online game, if you receive packets 1-4, and 6-10 in 10ms then packet 5 in 40ms then its as good as lost. Google modern warfare packet loss.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

I mean, sure but also no not for a long while

Just like the reason streaming games never took off like some execs predicted, doing something like this would incur an ongoing cost to the dev/publisher for the end users playtime. How many games today would countenance such an ongoing costs? Well MMO's, and not the quasi eternal expansion ones like Destiny. But the one way or another fundamentally pay as you go constant revenue stream ones, because servers for those cost $$ and the publishers need that money back.

I'm sure there's some future, plausibly live service game, maybe in the 2030's that could use such tech and people would be willing to pay for it. But then again by the 2030's end user devices will be pretty good at running their own "edge computed" AI. So that's going to be need to be one heck of a game to get people to pay that extra, ongoing cost.

 

[dobwal]

Relying on cloud was something Microsoft wanted to do more on with the Xbox One but the downside to a game having to rely on servers outside of traditional multiplayer or co-op experiences is having the extra development for that second (server) platform and the continued ongoing resourcing for support and cost for as long as anybody might want to play the game.

You need to account for the worst possible connection anybody might have, and that might include people play on the go or from very remote places where they accept that multiplayer and co-op are not viable, but who may not anticipate single player games also presenting with issues as well.

For something like dialogue? Can't you just have a limited and standard set of responses on local hardware and wider set of dialogue enabled by the cloud. In terms of story critical dialogue you are probably limited in what you can offer, but for open world games where a ton of dialogue can exist just for immersion purposes, it can add alot.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

For something like dialogue? Can't you just have a limited and standard set of responses on local hardware and wider set of dialogue enabled by the cloud. In terms of story critical dialogue you are probably limited in what you can offer, but for open world games where a ton of dialogue can exist just for immersion purposes, it can add alot.

Sure, I guess. But then publishers are potentially presenting slightly (or very) different game experiences depending how good your connecting is. This is probably a risk that even if you're only losing some non-essential background dialogue there is a risk of the customer base having the perception that the game is lesser for people who bad connections and they may be enough to deter sales.

I personally really like this idea, but there what is the cost argument for running a server to do this? Suppose this was Elder Scrolls VI, why would Bethesda want to maintain server capacity for ten years? There's only so many meaningful dynamic conversions (just listen to people around you) at which point, why not pre-generate it all and bundle it in the game? Audio compression is very efficient.

This feels like a solution looking for a problem.