The advancement of AI in videogames from servers in the cloud and beyond.
- Thread starter Mcmasters
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The Cloud is servers. It is just a better implementation of them and cheaper to boot. Not only that but it allows on the fly scaling of resources (as in server amount). I know this was not your question, but dedicated servers and the cloud are relatively the same, it is just set up and usability that is different. MS's back-end gaming stuff could be applied to a more traditional dedicated server set up.
Basically what menace said, yeah. The cloud is really nothing more than servers, only it exists solely on the internet. The companies that use the cloud (Azure) do not have to have their own hardware in order to run their own servers. They use MS' servers over the internet and MS is able to essentially give them more resources as they need it. They are sharing resources with everyone else on the cloud, but I think Azure has like over 100 thousand servers connected to it and over 1 million virtual machines, so the resources are plentiful. I'm probably missing stuff, but that's how I understand. I use cloud computing everyday with Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL. Same concept really, only I require a lot less resources than Respawn would.
Dedicated Servers:
A physical machine in a specific location is dedicated to running server code. 100% of the physical machine's resources are dedicated to running the server code.
Cloud:
Huge data-centers spread all over the world run server code on VIRTUAL machines and worker roles. Virtual instances of the server code can be spun up or spun down at any data-center around the world within minutes. Scaling is automatic, and dependent on how many users hit the service.
Dedicated servers really have no benefit over the cloud, but the cloud has tremendous benefits over physical/traditional dedicated servers.
Most games which have traditionally had dedicated servers have no where near the vast scale that Azure's cloud has.
The Cloud is more cost effective.
Dedicated servers are expensive. Prohibitively so for independent game makers.
The cloud compute SDK for Xbox One devs is free.
The Cloud never 'dies'.
Dedicated servers eventually need to be shut down, and when they are, the service they were providing goes away too.
With the cloud, since virtual machines can spin up or spin down as needed, you could (in theory) have a service that never dies; it would just scale down dramatically as use scaled down... but as long as the "cloud" that hosted it was around, the service would stick around.
The Cloud provides lower pings for more users world-wide.
Devs which have relied on dedicated servers in the past has usually only been able to afford a few server farms to host their dedicated servers. The further away from the dedicated servers you are, the worse your lag/latency/performance. With the cloud, Azure is expanding all the time, constantly. It has well over 300,000 machines spread over data-centers all over the world... no matter where you are in the world, if you're connecting to the cloud, you'll probably have pretty good pings.
The Cloud is more robust, resilient, and nimble.
Dedicated servers that crash out take more time and energy to restart, and when one machine dies - generally overall capacity is hit until that machine is restored. With the cloud, if a VM (virtual machine) dies, another can be spun up in minutes, and you're back up and running.
The cloud is just vastly superior to dedicated servers.
A physical machine in a specific location is dedicated to running server code. 100% of the physical machine's resources are dedicated to running the server code.
Cloud:
Huge data-centers spread all over the world run server code on VIRTUAL machines and worker roles. Virtual instances of the server code can be spun up or spun down at any data-center around the world within minutes. Scaling is automatic, and dependent on how many users hit the service.
Dedicated servers really have no benefit over the cloud, but the cloud has tremendous benefits over physical/traditional dedicated servers.
Most games which have traditionally had dedicated servers have no where near the vast scale that Azure's cloud has.
The Cloud is more cost effective.
Dedicated servers are expensive. Prohibitively so for independent game makers.
The cloud compute SDK for Xbox One devs is free.
The Cloud never 'dies'.
Dedicated servers eventually need to be shut down, and when they are, the service they were providing goes away too.
With the cloud, since virtual machines can spin up or spin down as needed, you could (in theory) have a service that never dies; it would just scale down dramatically as use scaled down... but as long as the "cloud" that hosted it was around, the service would stick around.
The Cloud provides lower pings for more users world-wide.
Devs which have relied on dedicated servers in the past has usually only been able to afford a few server farms to host their dedicated servers. The further away from the dedicated servers you are, the worse your lag/latency/performance. With the cloud, Azure is expanding all the time, constantly. It has well over 300,000 machines spread over data-centers all over the world... no matter where you are in the world, if you're connecting to the cloud, you'll probably have pretty good pings.
The Cloud is more robust, resilient, and nimble.
Dedicated servers that crash out take more time and energy to restart, and when one machine dies - generally overall capacity is hit until that machine is restored. With the cloud, if a VM (virtual machine) dies, another can be spun up in minutes, and you're back up and running.
The cloud is just vastly superior to dedicated servers.
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I'm curious, does free really mean free? No matter how many instance hours that dev is racking up it remains free? If so, how is that possible, what's the catch?
Edit: Just found this which has some details about Azure cloud services. I know this probably isn't the same thing as what the gaming devs are using, but how can they get it for free when everything else seems to be per use?
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cloud-services/
This is more in line with what I'm used to seeing with GAE and AWS.
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That says the SDK is free. SDK is software development kit, right ? Not sure that means the usage of the cloud service is free. It might be as MS may foot the bill, but I recall Respawn saying the cost of usage was far smaller than that of traditional dedicated servers. So that leads me to believe there is still a usage cost for devs.
Respawn's cost is free for X1, pay for use for PC.
Free is free with the cloud compute SDK, and for use for all X1 services. Respawn pays nothing for running their Titanfall service that X1 users connect to - regardless of use.
It costs devs nothing to use the Cloud compute SDK, and it costs them nothing to host their service on the cloud. Additionally, no matter how many concurrent users hit the service, it costs the devs nothing (for X1).
This is so unfair. The Rock clearly oiled his arms before this, to make his arm looks more refine.
Sound like Titanfall DOES NOT use the cloud for game play related things.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-performance-analysis-titanfall-revisited
"We are trying to better distribute the particle rendering on multiple processor cores. There is potential power, just like physics calculation," Baker said. "Therefore, the frame-rate drops when tons of simulated physics objects are flying through the area and countless particles are shown. Therefore, we are also working to improve these two systems."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-performance-analysis-titanfall-revisited
"We are trying to better distribute the particle rendering on multiple processor cores. There is potential power, just like physics calculation," Baker said. "Therefore, the frame-rate drops when tons of simulated physics objects are flying through the area and countless particles are shown. Therefore, we are also working to improve these two systems."
Funny enough just a year ago, at WWPC Ballmer announced they had 1m servers (which in itself was a $4.25b investment) less than Google and more than Amazon (keep in mind neither company has disclosed how many servers they have. But there are estimates out there), and now apparently according to Flynn MS magically now have 10m servers, that in the course of a year they've increased the amount of servers they have by 10x? lololol. YeaOkay.gif. Not even going to get into how inefficient that sounds.
Yes
Yes
The cloud is a force to be reckoned with. If you're not excited for what the cloud can achieve you should check your pulse.
Their not excited in the Cloud but they believe in a crappy streaming service for overcharged PS3 and PS2 games. Go figure...