Ubisoft Scalar is a cloud-based game production tool for massive worlds

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French video game publisher Ubisoft has unveiled its cloud-based technology Ubisoft Scalar as part of its preview for the Game Developers Conference.

The technology will leverage the cloud to enable better game production to expand the types of games that can be created for massive experiences or new types of games, Ubisoft said in a panel ahead of GDC 2022 next week.
cross-platform and scalable, it allows them to accumulate millions in a unique, shared virtual environment for new kinds of games and massive social experiences.

Usually online games limit the number of players in an online multiplayer game to about 100 players in a single shared space. I’m not exactly sure what Ubisoft is talking about, but it sounds like Microsoft has tapped into its Azure cloud to create an expansive landscape for its Microsoft Flight Simulator game, where the cloud landscapes in the flying game are on-the-fly. feeds. Ubisoft said it plans to free gamers from single-machine computing, where the player’s machine will instead take advantage of the cloud’s supercomputing capabilities.

“We are also mandated to break out of the molds we know about making games and also how to push technology further to try something completely new,” Patrick Bach, president of Ubisoft Stockholm, said in a press conference. “How do you think about what games should be and what they might be in the future, and start building towards that to create new experiences? Because games are generally a repetition of what they have done before. We want to break free from that and build something big.”

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It’s not about streaming games to players using the cloud. Ubisoft Scalar is targeting game developers to sue the cloud to give them more creative freedom and do more with their worlds. It is also not a game engine per se, but rather a cloud production tool that allows game developers to use a game engine as a service.

The company didn’t describe the technology in detail, but it said Ubisoft Scalar unlocks the power and flexibility of cloud computing to Ubisoft’s game engines — the software used to create games. It reduces dependency on players
hardware and opens up new possibilities for game development and player experience.

The result can be huge game worlds populated by millions of players simultaneously.

The company said the technology is under development at Ubisoft Stockholm in collaboration with Ubisoft studios in Malmö (Ubisoft Massive), Helsinki (Ubisoft Redlynx), Bucharest and Kiev. Ubisoft started the studio in Stockholm in 2017, with some Battlefield veterans from the EA DICE studio.

Bach said the idea is to rethink what games could be in the future and build on that to create new experiences.

He said: “We can now build even bigger worlds where players can play.”

Ubisoft Stockholm is working on the intellectual property using Ubisoft Scalar, but it can’t say when it will talk about it, Bach said.

“We need to rethink and relearn how to make games,” said Per-Olof Romell, chief technology officer at Ubisoft Stockholm. “I would expect you to see the broader spectrum of games.”

Romell said the technology is decentralized because other Ubisoft studios can use it too.

“It’s something you only experience once in a lifetime,” Romell said.

Romell said Ubisoft is looking for talent. Ubisoft has been involved in a #MeToo scandal involving alleged sexual harassment of employees, and it saw a lot of talent leave the company. Meanwhile, the game industry has been booming during the pandemic and many companies have struggled to recruit developers.

Christian Holmqvist, technical director at Ubisoft Stockholm, said the company is attacking the restrictions on large game worlds. Developers can use a piece of a game engine on their local machines and develop faster with just the tool they need.

“What scalar actually allows us to do is to remove those constraints completely, rather than push their boundaries. If we delete them, what do we actually want to create? That sets us up for a new set of challenges. We need to rethink and learn how we make games to create the experiences we really want,” said Holmqvist.

How it works

Game engines are complicated.

Games using this technology can therefore use an almost infinite amount of computing power to push the boundaries in all aspects and run everything from huge virtual worlds to extremely deep simulations and environments that were previously unfeasible.

“The game is always running. And it’s always possible to update parts of that game,” said Holmqvist. “So developers can create very rich worlds that can evolve and evolve and change as the players actually play them. Right. So it creates a much closer bond between players and the creators of those teams.”

With scalability as a key design decision, one of Ubisoft Scalar’s key differentiators lies in its on-demand philosophy, the company said. The technology dynamically starts and stops services, optimized based on the activities of players and developers to use only the required computing power in real time.

This optimization extends to intensive compute tasks that are cached and distributed globally, eliminating the need to recalculate what has already been computed. In addition, the flexibility of cloud computing also allows developers to update and improve one service without affecting others, or even add new features to a game without interrupting game sessions, meaning no patch to download and no downtime for players.

Ubisoft Scalar could enable worlds with many more players at the same time.

Ubisoft Scalar removes historical frictions between creativity and technology and allows creators to fully focus on game design to provide players with radically new gaming experiences. And with cloud-accelerated systems, game worlds are also reaching a new level of persistence where player actions can have an immediate and lasting impact on their environment, opening the doors to new forms of emerging gameplay.

Ubisoft Scalar will gradually be made available to all Ubisoft studios whose future projects require cloud capabilities.

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This post Ubisoft Scalar is a cloud-based game production tool for massive worlds

was original published at “https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/18/ubisoft-scalar-is-a-cloud-based-game-production-tool-for-massive-worlds/”