News You can now play a real-time AI-rendered Quake II in your browser — Microsoft's WHAMM offers generative AI for games

[Admin]

Microsoft's latest WHAMM model builds on its predecessor. It is now capable of delivering a real-time AI-generated gaming experience with user input support.

You can now play a real-time AI-rendered Quake II in your browser — Microsoft's WHAMM offers generative AI for games : Read more

 

[usertests]

OpenAI's latest Ghibli trend, which has garnered a lot of negative attention.

I've seen it garner a lot of positive attention. Maybe the whiners are just louder?

 

[BearRaid]

This is a concerning step down a really dark road and we should NOT be celebrating it.

 

[davisch]

I'm curious how much electricity this takes to run. I have a suspicion that it uses some hefty wattage for just Quake II.

 

[TerryLaze]

Likewise, the resolution has been bumped up from a pixel-like 300 x 180 to a slightly less pixel-like 640 x 360. You can try out the demo yourself at Copilot Labs.

The term is pixelated not "pixel-like" every resolution consists of pixels so pixel-like would only make sense on a display that didn't have pixels but was made to look like it has.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Another step closer to having truly random dungeons, very detailed and interesting random multiplayer maps, and much improved enemies and single player experiences, something that game studios, especially independent and smaller ones, could never hope to achieve without unsustainable amounts of spending. While some may say doom and gloom, I say this is another step towards a golden age of independent game studios.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm curious how much electricity this takes to run. I have a suspicion that it uses some hefty wattage for just Quake II.

Almost certainly less than a period specific PC, running Q II natively.

Systems of that era were not known for being power efficient.

 

[TerryLaze]

Another step closer to having truly random dungeons, very detailed and interesting random multiplayer maps, and much improved enemies and single player experiences, something that game studios, especially independent and smaller ones, could never hope to achieve without unsustainable amounts of spending. While some may say doom and gloom, I say this is another step towards a golden age of independent game studios.

Yeah, no.
This is going to be way too expensive for indies for many Years.

Almost certainly less than a period specific PC, running Q II natively.

Systems of that era were not known for being power efficient.

They were inefficient but they also only had one core instead of 20+ and one tiny GPU compared to today.
We are talking about 1997 here, a whole gaming system would use less than 150W.

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah, no.
This is going to be way too expensive for indies for many Years.

They were inefficient but they also only had one core instead of 20+ and one tiny GPU compared to today.
We are talking about 1997 here, a whole gaming system would use less than 150W.

And this absolutely does not use all those CPU cores.

This, playing the first few bits, with a LOT of other things running at the time.
Maybe someone more motivated than I will do a clean slate power consumption investigation.

And the GPU:

 

[JeffreyP55]

And this absolutely does not use all those CPU cores.

This, playing the first few bits, with a LOT of other things running at the time.
Maybe someone more motivated than I will do a clean slate power consumption investigation.

And the GPU:

My shareware version of Super Blackjack from Crazy Hermit still runs on both my 5950x and 9900x. Using one core of course. Still the best blackjack game the comes with a trainer. Crazy Hermit? Gone... I still have to use my login and password for the full version.

 

[TerryLaze]

And this absolutely does not use all those CPU cores.

This, playing the first few bits, with a LOT of other things running at the time.
Maybe someone more motivated than I will do a clean slate power consumption investigation.

Doesn't that just mean that it does the compute on the server side?
Just because you are not using the power doesn't mean that power isn't being used.

 

[USAFRet]

Doesn't that just mean that it does the compute on the server side?
Just because you are not using the power doesn't mean that power isn't being used.

Right.
And whatever happens on the server can't be determined from us out here.
More, less? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[randomizer]

Yet, with AI's current rate of development, we might see that fully AI-generated games and movies could be a reality within the next few years, and that's where things are heading.

Ubisoft could bring out a new Assassin's Creed game every few months. They're all pretty similar so there's lots of training data available.

 

[bit_user]

And this absolutely does not use all those CPU cores.

This, playing the first few bits, with a LOT of other things running at the time.
Maybe someone more motivated than I will do a clean slate power consumption investigation.

And the GPU:

Terry is right: the heavy lifting is all happening on their servers. In the referenced model, that "1.6B" is the number of parameters (as confirmed by their research paper). If you didn't download gigabytes of data, before the game started up, that's a dead giveaway that it's running on their servers. They didn't say the size of the current model, but it's probably even bigger.

 

[alrighty_then]

AI generative content might be a game-changer but I already feel like the indie game movement has caused everybody and their brother to release a game on Steam. On one hand that's amazing, especially since reviews can make determining which are worth playing much easier. On the other hand, there's no time to play them all...and the future will only bring more. A good problem to have? I suppose.

 

[bit_user]

AI generative content might be a game-changer

This is really taking AI-generated content to an extreme, because the AI model is implicitly implementing the entire rendering pipeline. That approach is more like a tech demo of what's possible, rather than something likely to make sense in normal games.

The AI generation used in normal games is likely to be things like neural textures, where AI technology is used in more limited and controlled ways that should also be less strenuous on your hardware than a full image generator.

 

[TerryLaze]

On the other hand, there's no time to play them all...and the future will only bring more. A good problem to have? I suppose.

Don't worry you will be able to let AI play all these games for you as well, the only hope for all of our backlogs.

This is really taking AI-generated content to an extreme, because the AI model is implicitly implementing the entire rendering pipeline. That approach is more like a tech demo of what's possible, rather than something likely to make sense in normal games.

This could still be the first step in making a new game and then if whoever is in charge says that it's good enough a different AI can go to work on coding the actual game.

 

[bit_user]

This could still be the first step in making a new game and then if whoever is in charge says that it's good enough a different AI can go to work on coding the actual game.

The "code" for the game isn't like a normal computer program. It's represented as weights in the AI model, which means you can't really modify it in the normal ways that one would.

Also, as far as I've seen, these are only replicating existing game levels & logic. To make a general model that understand game engines in an abstract sense and can mix & match game concepts - or even be creative - that would be at least an order of magnitude beyond what they showed.

I also think it wouldn't really make sense. It'd be better for human game designers to work with generative AI to develop and refine ideas, concepts, and art for a game. Then, implement it in a traditional game engine that's maybe enhanced via neural rendering techniques like what Nvidia discussed earlier this year:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...ils-on-dlss-4-reflex-2-mega-geometry-and-more
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