TECHNOLOGY

How Technology Is Reshaping the Gaming Experience

Published

1 year ago

July 31, 2023

How Technology Is Reshaping the Gaming Experience

In the past five years, high-tech solutions like RTX ray tracing and AMD FSR upscaling have turned virtual worlds like The Witcher 3’s Kaer Morhen into beautifully lit spaces that feel truly alive.

Other breakthroughs, like virtual reality goggles and the meteoric rise of streaming, have left an indelible mark on the industry, too. In 2023, the streaming industry pulled in $11.69 billion per year, and experts predict that 1.65 billion users will start streaming by 2027.

Advancements in artificial intelligence will also improve the gaming experience. Advanced machine learning algorithms have the potential to reshape interactions with non-player characters and make virtual worlds feel even more responsive.

Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 represents a major breakthrough in graphics and game design. Better yet, the game engine is entirely free to use. This will level the playing field between indie designers and AAA developers. Developers are free to use the program as they’d like and only have to start paying royalties once the game has netted $1 million.

Unreal Engine 5 will noticeably improve the gaming experience by improving the physics, lighting, and graphics of any title that uses the engine. As players, we can expect to see movie-quality worlds rendered in real-time — meaning there will no longer be a disappointing contrast between the game’s trailer and gameplay.

Many players got a sneak peek of Unreal Engine 5’s potential when the Matrix Awakens demo was released in 2021. However, major titles like Fortnite and Ark 2 are set to make full use of the engine within the next 12 months. Games like Fortnite also feature creator modes that will empower players and help folks create innovative, unique user-generated content.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality headsets have captured gamers’ imaginations for decades. Every player has dreamed of popping on a pair of goggles and virtually entering video game worlds like Elder Scrolls’ Tamriel or Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City.

VR goggles haven’t quite taken the gaming industry by storm. However, that may be about to change thanks to improved portability and a wider array of gaming options.

Today, users can explore VR worlds from their phones thanks to mobile VR headsets. These mobile-phone-integrated headsets use Bluetooth integration to power the experience and are best suited to games that have low system requirements. However, this still means that phone players can power up their VR headset and enjoy titles like:

Most popular titles aren’t optimized for the VR experience but are still well worth playing. As consumer interest builds, more developers will produce a VR version of the games we know and love. This could dovetail with what we’re seeing in the auto industry. Currently, you can play video games in a Tesla, and once self-driving tech reaches true autonomy, it’s not hard to imagine playing VR games while your car is shuttling you to work.

Inclusivity Features

The gaming industry has recently undergone an inclusivity revolution. Even major titles, like Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II, now make full use of inclusive technology to ensure that all players can enjoy their game. Today, gamers can turn on accessibility features like:

Vision Accessibility: Gamers with low vision can enlarge the size of text, auto-aim on targets, increase audio queues, and turn on a ledge guard. This improves the gaming experience for many and makes AAA titles more user-friendly for folks with vision disabilities.
Hearing Accessibility: Many games use subtle audio queues to direct the action and inform the player. Folks with low or no hearing can set combat queues to trigger haptic feedback features that “rumble” the controller and can turn subtitles on for the story and combat scenes.
Motor Accessibility: Some folks may struggle to use the controls in the way that developers originally designed them. Accessibility features like auto pick-up and weapon sway modifications make the experience much more immersive for gamers who play using a different set of controls.

These features open the gaming world up to millions of users who, previously, have been excluded from the industry. While accessibility features are primarily reserved for single-player titles, there’s no reason why future cloud-based multiplayer video games couldn’t use the same features.

Generative AI

Can We Trust Generative AI

Some of the best video games in recent memory are story-driven dialogue-heavy narrative experiences. Games like Red Dead Redemption II and God of War, Ragnarok rely heavily on the strength of voice actors and utilize smart NPCs with deep dialogue trees.

However, in the coming years, we can expect to see a rise in generative AI in video games. These AI-built NPCs will be able to throw off their scripted, pre-recorded shackles and engage players in a way that feels authentically “real.” This will make the gaming experience more immersive and can help the virtual world come to life.

Immersive video games can be good for players’ health and well-being, too. Role-playing games help build social skills and can alleviate some of the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Folks who find meaning in story-driven games can also improve their cognitive skills, as many AAA games feature complex puzzles and social encounters that give players a chance to practice real-world skills in a safe space.

Games Are Only Getting Better Thanks To Tech

Video games are evolving at a staggering pace. Breakthroughs like Unreal Engine 5 represent a major step forward for many developers and theoretically level the playing field between indie developers and major studios. Recent innovations make gaming more accessible, too, as game designers have more options thanks to haptic feedback and more player customization features.

Source link

Up Next

Full ‘stream’ ahead for Scottish Water smart monitoring roll-out

Don't Miss

Best Alternative to Repair SQL Database When DBCC CHECKDB Doesn’t Work

TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

10 months ago

December 1, 2023

Max

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Source link

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

10 months ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

Source link

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

10 months ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

Source link