Of the many technologies that will have application in gaming for years to come, SpeedTree is perhaps one of the top-most. As a real-time foliage creation software, SpeedTree has found use in games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Batman: Arkham Knight and many other high-profile games. How will it benefit from the power of cloud computing in the coming years though?

GamingBolt spoke to SpeedTree director of business development Kevin Meredith about the same. After the reveal of Crackdown 3, is there an application for streaming large amounts of foliage through the cloud? “Yes, the cloud should enable computationally-intensive features like tree destruction and other physics effects, which can impact both aesthetics and gameplay. We’d like to think SpeedTree offers a lot of options for customers who cloud-stream their games.”

Meredith also commented on resolution vs. frame rate, especially with many games taking alternative routes to increasing visual fidelity even at a lower frame rate (like Star Wars Battlefront, which focuses more on alpha effects and post-processing). How does SpeedTree fit into such an alternative scenario?

“We’ve always tried to develop SpeedTree so it works great in any game, whether it’s a twitchy first person shooter or the latest Sims game. Artists can design trees in the SpeedTree Modeler for the particular look-and-feel they’re after, and tweaking the rendering code in the SDK is something we encourage.”

Thoughts on all this, especially with the potential that SpeedTree will unlock with cloud computing? Let us know in the comments.

For all the benefits we’ve heard about cloud computing, there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. While Crackdown 3‘s multiplayer could achieve great things with the power of the cloud, what other benefits could the technology bring?

GamingBolt spoke to Oxide Games’ Dan Baker, Tim Kipp and Brian Wade regarding the Nitrous Engine, the team’s proprietary game engine, and how cloud rendering could benefit the same. Has the team considered looking into it?

“Maybe. There are things we could do. You could do significant rendering calculations on the host and upload them. The way our engines works there are no latency issues. You might see some occasional rendering every now and again. So we haven’t really invested in it. Other than to know the architecture is compatible. From a business standpoint we’re always skeptical when we see cloud computer. The reason why is when you add up all the overhead in a big machine somewhere else, it’s not that expensive to have a machine locally. It’s never clear when it becomes a benefit.”

“I think a lot of it tends to wind up” a cost calculation. I think the cloud tends to be much more successful when you’re aggregating data and crunching numbers and then spitting those results out to a large number of users. From either a shading stand point there’s a reduced bandwidth cost there and there’s latency tolerance. If you look at AI generation and running AI in the cloud that becomes a really interesting idea. Because you can aggregate a lot of different users results, put them together and then dynamically form that data back out to other players. If you’re doing procedural generation of various parts of worlds or things, you’re streaming some of the results down, I think there are a lot of ways that that can work. But you definitely have to be careful about it.”

What are your thoughts on the same? Let us know in the comments, especially with Crackdown 3‘s multiplayer beta set for this Summer.

"The Park has undergone many iterations even during such a short development time, but the backbone of the story was in place very early. We knew that we wanted a slow build-up and we wanted to plant a lot of possibilities in the mind of the player early on."

Funcom has a very strong reputation with adventure games, as evidenced by The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Is that what motivated you to return to the genre or was it something else?

Joel Bylos: Funcom has always been a company that likes to tell stories and even though in recent years we have had a focus on multiplayer games, we still tried to develop interesting worlds and narratives within those worlds.

Our motivation with The Park was mostly technical, to be honest. We assigned a small team of developers to learn the ins and outs of the Unreal Engine 4 technology and as a team decided that the best way to learn the engine would be to create a full game from start to finish. Because of our past and our strength as storytellers, it was only natural that we went with a heavily narrative driven game

The Park is very unlike Funcom’s previous adventure titles. Was the intention to experiment with The Secret World’s mythos or were you unsure what kind of game it would ultimately be?

Joel Bylos: We made a lot of choices based on economy in the beginning. We wanted to constrain the gameworld to a small area – Atlantic Island Park was a very good fit for the size of the world we wanted to create in The Park. From there it was a very simple choice to set the game in the universe of The Secret World and to use that style of storytelling in a familiar setting.

So the answer that we started out unsure as to what type of game we would make, but as we constructed our logical framework for such a short production, we quickly saw that The Secret World was the best alternative.

It’s interesting to note the characters of The Secret World but how The Park‘s protagonist is a seemingly normal woman. What can you tell us about the process behind designing Lorraine and her story?

Joel Bylos: Because of the shorter production time and the limited team size, we tried to keep our ambitions for the gameplay in check. This meant that in order to gain traction we needed to build interest in the story. In the end, we’re all the sum of our influences and in the case of The Park, I’ve spent a lot of time the past few years (since my children were born) fascinated by the changes that people go through as they become parents. It’s intriguing to me that in a world with so much information there are still dark sides to being a parent that are not discussed openly.

Lorraine was born of that fascination – I wanted to make a character that could reflect some of those thoughts and ponderings back into the world and build a story around a horrible “What if?”

"As for additional chapters, The Park itself is a very self-contained story which doesn’t really need further chapters or sequels. But more of the same in The Secret World? I’d be onboard with that."

Horror games have made a very strong comeback in the past few years but The Park seems to take a more reserved approach. What can you tell us about the overall atmosphere and how you went about creating it?

Joel Bylos: The Park has undergone many iterations even during such a short development time, but the backbone of the story was in place very early. We knew that we wanted a slow build-up and we wanted to plant a lot of possibilities in the mind of the player early on.  Visually, our art team know how to create a story through the environment and they took the first design and ran with it. Originally the world was more open and gradually became more claustrophobic and I think that they managed to carry this over well.

And naturally, our audio team have always been world class and in a genre like horror it really gave our guys a chance to shine. It’s really important to remember that The Park was experimental and so we tried a lot of different techniques throughout the game – each ride is an experiment with one aspect of the technology built into Unreal Engine 4 and we tried to build our game accordingly.

What is your response to criticisms regarding The Park’s length? Does it feel like something worth continuing into additional chapters/games?

Joel Bylos: I think that the criticism is of the value proposition rather than the length per se. People see the length of The Park and the price of The Park and they have to decide whether it is worth their time. And that decision will always be up to the individual, I think. Some people will say “It’s worth a couple of beers or a lunch” and others maybe don’t want to spend that much on a couple of hours of entertainment.

My biggest focus is making sure that the game isn’t full of “filler” content. I’m not a massive fan of the direction many games have taken lately with larger worlds that are filled with collectible content that extends the playtime, but doesn’t add much to the experience. We tried to make The Park focused and intense, with minimal filler.

Some examples of this were making the game more linear (originally you could visit the rides in any order) and making sure that the player had a run button. Both of those decisions decreased the playtime, but in my opinion they increased the value. I’d rather players walk away feeling that they got something of value in 2 hours, rather than feeling that they got something vaguely unfulfilling in 5 hrs.

As for additional chapters, The Park itself is a very self-contained story which doesn’t really need further chapters or sequels. But more of the same in The Secret World? I’d be onboard with that.

Have you considered an episodic horror series in the vein of Telltale Games’ various IPs?

Joel Bylos: I’d love to develop a longer story that we could tell over several episodes and I certainly have some ideas in that direction, but if I told you anything here, I’d have to kill you.

What are your thoughts on The Park coming to Xbox One and PS4?

Joel Bylos: It’s exciting! In my career I’ve never actually worked on a console game so seeing that process from start to finish will be very interesting. These days it seems a lot simpler to get on consoles than it used to be, but we still have a lot to learn to get The Park up and running.

"[VR] is almost like the evolution from card games to board games to PC games. There is a new type of design mindset that is going to be needed and while principles will be shared across the all, it is going to require a specific subset of skills."

Furthermore, which platform are you guys more likely to launch on first?

Joel Bylos: I have no idea. I have seen it running on one of the consoles, but again I don’t want to say too much without knowing for sure.

For that matter, what are your thoughts on both consoles in general? Do you see Funcom investing heavily in current gen consoles at any point in the future?

Joel Bylos: I do think the benchmark for getting a game onto consoles is a lot lower than it was last generation. In general the gaming market is converging in a way I haven’t seen before – Valve are focused on bringing the PC experience to the TV screen, but on the flip side, the console makers are making it as simple as possible to bring new games to their consoles from the PC platform.

The important winners here are game developers because we get more places where we can deliver our products and that hopefully means we can expand our fan base as well. Funcom is definitely watching this space with interest!

Is it possible that The Park ever heads to VR devices in the future? What do you think of technologies like Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR?

Joel Bylos: The Park already works somewhat on VR (though we disabled it for launch) thanks to the built in capabilities of Unreal Engine 4. It needs a lot of UI work and design tweaks (unlocking the camera in cutscenes, for example) before we could release it on a VR platform. Whether that is ultimately something we decide to do will depend on the company strategy going forward.

That said, I do agree with the Oculus guys when they said that games should be made for VR and not converted. It’s a different design process and The Park is ultimately not a game designed with VR in mind. VR in general, I think is going to (perhaps has already) become a new branch of the industry (actually a whole bunch of industries). VR will offer an experience that can only really be created using VR technology and I am very excited to see where it goes.

It might be that VR becomes the ultimate platform, given time. It’s almost like the evolution from card games to board games to PC games. There is a new type of design mindset that is going to be needed and while principles will be shared across the all, it is going to require a specific subset of skills.

I can’t wait, to be honest. We have a HTC Vive at work and it really does blow me away with its potential.

So there’s this whole marketing thing behind it and it’s going to be one of the bigger Xbox One games for next year. There’s this whole future technology behind it with cloud computing because people are like, “we’re taking advantage of the cloud. We’ll deliver this kind of stuff. This kind of level we’ve never done before.” I just find it a little strange. Somehow we are consolidating the future talk with the marketing budget for triple A titles, like say Call of Duty or even Assassin’s Creed and such. So I was just wondering your take on that. Cloud computing that going on in Crackdown 3 and where you think that’s eventually going to lead for video games in general.

Joel Bylos: Hmmm, technology is a wonderful thing but it is the impact on gameplay that really matters. I haven’t looked into exactly what Crackdown 3 is doing, but using cloud computing to do physics calculations on the server side and then passing that information back to a client… sure I guess. It’s a cool idea that probably doesn’t alter your immediate experience (the moment to moment) of playing the game that much. And seeing it is a multiplayer only feature, my assumption is that the developers would not be hanging their hat on that particular feature either.

I do think Cloud computing can have a huge impact on indirect activities, but since it will always be heavily tied to connection speeds, I’d be wary of using it for any core mechanics. With that said, imagine an RPG like The Witcher with an AI driven Game Master who lives in the cloud and creates adventures for your player (like a world building version of the AI director from Left 4 Dead). This sort of technology makes these sort of possibilities available.

I like new technology because it always throws a new tool in the toolbox.

"DirectX12 on PC and DirectX12 on Xbox One are slightly different propositions. The bottleneck on Xbox One is the GPU and DirectX12 is not a magical panacea which will suddenly remove that bottleneck."

What is your take on DirectX12 and do you think it will improve games performance on X1?

Joel Bylos: So, DirectX12 on PC and DirectX12 on Xbox One are slightly different propositions. The bottleneck on Xbox One is the GPU and DirectX12 is not a magical panacea which will suddenly remove that bottleneck. And remember that the Xbox One was already optimized to take advantage of DirectX11 at a hardware level.

So the primary advantage of DX12 on Xbox One (in my opinion) will be the optimized draw call pipeline. Which means more things happening on screen – but not necessarily faster or prettier things. If anything it widens the gap between the CPU on the Xbox One and the PS4, giving the Xbox One a larger advantage in the area where it already had one.

The consoles have 8GB of memory. Do you think that is enough to last the next 5 odd years?

Joel Bylos: Hmmm, that’s a difficult question. It will last because it has to. Is it an optimal situation to put developers in? Absolutely not. And VR is coming – that’s going to come with hefty requirements. Who knows what will happen in the end? There are rumors that the PS4 VR has a separate box with unknown hardware inside. Maybe they’ve added a little extra hardware to help with the requirements.

What does Funcom have planned after The Park?

Joel Bylos: We’ve recently announced our intention to release 3 games in 2016. We’ve also announced our renewed interest and partnership with the Conan IP. Keep your eyes peeled!

Reagent’s Crackdown 3 continues to be the centre of attention following its demonstration during Microsoft’s Gamescom 2015 presser. However, there have easily been more questions than answers – as is usually the case with these kinds of reveals – especially since the game’s developer announced that it would be the multiplayer component releasing in summer 2016. If that weren’t enough, the city won’t be completely destroyable in the single-player of Crackdown 3.

Dave Jones, Crackdown 3 creative director and Reagent Games founder chipped in his thoughts on why single player won’t have cloud based destruction. He believes that since players are going to be the hero in the campaign, it does not make sense for them to make the city completely destructible. The reason is simple…heroes are meant to save cities.

“So we haven’t discussed much about the multiplayer side. We will be bring some of the things from the campaign. Crackdown has always been about going into this city as a top down agent and you have your character progression so that is a big thing about the main campaign which we will probably bring into the multiplayer and it’s all about taking down your enemies, finding them out and figuring out the best way to take them out so we have some great characters in it. We thought what elements can we bring across where you are going to have loads of players in a fully destructible world which will make sense in the story. One of the things that we want to do is that we don’t want to destroy the city in the campaign, you are going to be the good guy in the campaign, you will be saving the city so we came up with a whole new way to take Crackdown to this multiplayer experience,” Jones said in an interview with Twitch.

Senior producer John Noonan also offered some good reasons why the single-player component doesn’t rely on cloud computing though. Though one fan on Twitter expressed the desire to remain always online in order to take advantage of the destruction in single player, Noonan responded, “We have lots of customers that aren’t always-online though!”

Noonan also added that with regards to adding online connectivity for the single player as an option, “It’s too fundamental of a game design change to make it an option. It changes literally everything.”

There’s still plenty we don’t know about the campaign and the multiplayer, so it will be hard to judge just how fundamentally such destruction would affect Reagent’s designs for single player. We’ll find out more in the coming months though so stay tuned.

@braynbasher We have lots of customers that aren't always-online though!

— John Noonan (@JohnNoonan) August 10, 2015

@braynbasher it's too fundamental of a game design change to make it an option. It changes literally everything.

— John Noonan (@JohnNoonan) August 10, 2015

Any discussion about the Xbox One’s cloud capabilities would be incomplete without mentioning Turn 10 Studios. The developer was the first to implement the cloud in Forza Motorsport 5’s Drivatar system and it looks like it will again be present in Forza Motorsport 6.

Executive producer Ryan Cooper spoke to GamingBolt and though he didn’t go into great detail regarding how the developer is using the Xbox One, he admitted that there was plenty of power behind it.

“We’re not disclosing a lot of details about how we’re utilizing the power of the Xbox One, but it’s an incredibly powerful box. We actually had the last 2 years to just learn more about the capabilities of the box and what the box can provide. As with any game, as time goes on you just have more time to work on the game and as you work more on the game you discover new ways to present things and build things that allow for the game experience to be better.”

As for whether the cloud came into play for the developer this time around, Cooper said, “Absolutely. The power of the cloud is providing the ability to update our Drivatar system to make Drivatars feels more realistic. So, absolutely. 24 Player multiplayer, we’re really excited about that and then off course Leagues. It’s something we’re gonna be talking about more later this Summer, but Leagues are essentially ranked competitive races strictly controlled by divisions.”

Forza Motorsport 6 will be out on September 15th in North America and September 18th in Europe for Xbox One.

When the Xbox One was first announced last year, Microsoft made it clear that the console will have a clock speed of 1.6ghz, however they managed to boost it to 1.75ghz. Now Microsoft is currently looking to optimize it even further according to a recent job listing for a Senior Software Development Engineer. Obviously this does not mean that they will boost the clock speed again but they are definitely working to improve and optimize the CPU’s performance.

The job listing states that they are looking for someone who has experience in CPU performance and optimization along with C/C++ compiler architecture. “Experience in any the following areas is a plus: low level debugging on Windows platforms; CPU performance tuning on one or more platforms; C/C++ compiler architecture; assembly languages; digital signal processing; Direct3D and general 3D graphics concepts,” the listing reads. The last point could indicate DirectX 12 involvement.

Furthermore, the concerned candidate should have deep technical knowledge about cloud computing and games development. The job also involves optimization of all platforms, including “working directly with game developers to understand and address their technical problems; researching and developing incubations, samples, and white papers that illustrate advanced techniques”. This is fairly typical of any console manufacturer – the Xbox One may be fairly powerful but it will take time to efficiently utilize all of that power in the coming years.

We’ll see what advanced techniques are in store and how Xbox Live Compute is further improved down the line. What are your thoughts on the listing? Let us know in the comments.

A recent Software Development Engineer for test listing for Microsoft has emerged, and indicates that the company will be creating companion pieces for the Halo universe alongside 343 Industries.

The listing states that, “We are creating a best in class experience for fans to dive deeper into the Halo games, story, products, and community across the web, Xbox One, and mobile platforms. We are seeking a self-motivated SDET with significant experience in web technologies and services. If you are excited about creating smart automated testing solutions and working on an entertainment product that has a large, rabid fan base, then this may be the role for you.”

It explicitly talks about creating the next generation of Halo along with requiring experience with “Azure or similar Cloud Services”, the former being Microsoft’s own cloud computing technology. No other platform except the Xbox One has been mentioned so there are several possibilities.

343 Industries and Microsoft are most likely looking to create several different products to link to the next generation Halo games via Azure. How will this shape Halo 5? Stay tuned for more information.

The Xbox One has faced several controversies in the past year or so since it was unveiled, but one of the few remaining issues has been the purpose of Cloud computing. Microsoft has told us time and time again the Cloud computing can be used to make the Xbox One console several more times powerful even with the hardware remaining the same. But is it really possible?

Turns out, even according to some one with limited knowledge of the Xbox One’s architecture, that it very much is possible. Harebrained Schemes founder and Shadowrun Returns creator Jordan Weisman was recently asked about the same by GamingBolt and responded that, “I think that you have to pull apart those marketing statements pretty specifically, and I should start with the giant caveat that I am not in any way fluent in the detail of the architecture for the Xbox One.

“In general, if you have a high bandwidth connection and they’re devoting server-side processing power to support what’s running locally on your machine, it’s technically correct. Your local machine could offload tasks to a server on the other end, which could execute it and send it back, where it is anything from pre-rendered videos to computational components to quote ‘enhance or multiply the processing power of your unit.’ I think that’s just a generic truth, regardless of what the specifics in their box are to anybody else’s.

So in short, technically speaking it’s very much possible that the console can become more powerful using the cloud. But before that we need to see something practical happen. Microsoft had promised in the past that they will show a demo of the cloud’s potential but that did not happened at GDC. May be we shall see something at this year’s E3.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Stay tuned for our complete interview with Jordan Weisman and let us know in the comments below.

In the midst of months of speculation regarding its next CEO, Microsoft has finally announced that Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group Satya Nadella is now CEO and a member of the Board of Directors effectively immediately. Current CEO Steve Ballmer will retire from his current role and pave the way for Nadella to lead the company forward.

Founder Bill Gates stated that, “During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella. Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together. His vision for how technology will be used and experienced around the world is exactly what Microsoft needs as the company enters its next chapter of expanded product innovation and growth.”

Steve Ballmer stated that, “Having worked with him for more than 20 years, I know that Satya is the right leader at the right time for Microsoft. I’ve had the distinct privilege of working with the most talented employees and senior leadership team in the industry, and I know their passion and hunger for greatness will only grow stronger under Satya’s leadership.”

Nadella has been credited for Microsoft’s move to Cloud computing, especially when it comes to implementing Cloud infrastructures in services such as Bing, Xbox, Office and more. He stated that, ““Microsoft is one of those rare companies to have truly revolutionized the world through technology, and I couldn’t be more honored to have been chosen to lead the company. The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.”

What are your thoughts on Nadella’s ascent as the new CEO? Let us know below.

As promised, Sony has begun sending out beta invites for its cloud-powered, game streaming service PlayStation Now. Those who received the beta invite will need to agree to the license agreement. After this step, you’ll receive more information about the beta in the “coming days”.

Some requirements include a wired connection, preferably at 5 Mbps. Seems a little hefty, but considering the games in question, it’s understandable. As of now, the beta will only be for US gamers as PlayStation Now arrives this Summer in America.

Announced at the beginning of 2014, PlayStation Now is the rechristened Gaikai service that will allow consumers to play PlayStation 3 games on their PS4. Of course, it won’t stop there – Sony eventually has plans to stream games on to the Vita, smartphones, tablets and even get PS4 game streaming started in the coming months. While initially expected to offer PS1 and PS2 games as well, Sony has revealed a PS4 emulator for said titles instead.