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| MARCH 12, 2008 |
| 03.11.08 New Mass Effect content on Xbox Live 03.10.08 Britain makes camera that sees under clothes 03.07.08 Buffy the Slayer Lay-er / Eric Powell Interview |
As the consoles have become faster and better, the software developers have risen to the
challenge of designing a better game experience, and one of the reasons I have come to San
Francisco is to see two demonstrations of software that LucasArts is excited about
incorporating into its next marquee game. The first program is called Euphoria, and was
developed by NaturalMotion, a tech company based in San Francisco and Oxford, England.
On a projection screen in a darkened auditorium, I watch as a digitally animated Imperial
stormtrooper, the comically doomed cannon fodder of Lucas’s Star Wars universe, is lifted by
an invisible force and dropped in various ways—on his head, on his back—and over various
objects such as steel and wooden crates. Each time he is lifted, he struggles mightily, and
then, every time he drops, he reacts differently. Dropped on his head, he grabs it with his
hands before going still. And after being dropped on his back, on a metal box, he arches it in
a way that suggests he is in agonizing pain.
His reactions are eerily lifelike, and I am told that what I am seeing is not animation but a
kind of artificial intelligence generated by Euphoria, which enables the stormtrooper to react
with an almost human uniqueness—in real time, no less—to obstacles and attacks.
Dropped 100 times, the Euphoria-imbued stormtrooper will react differently 100 times,
unless he is dropped in exactly the same way twice. When he is placed at the top of a sloping
roof, he struggles furiously to gain purchase as he slides down, and actually grabs and
hangs on to its edge for a few moments before falling to his inevitable fate. But the real pièce
de résistance of the demonstration is when the stormtrooper is placed on an unsteady
surface and actually begins to shift his weight and pedal his feet in order to maintain his
equilibrium. “That’s not animated at all,” says Steve Dykes, the LucasArts senior engineer
running the presentation. “That is actually a character trying to maintain his balance,
physically simulated.”
Another demonstration begins—for a technology called Digital Molecular Matter (D.M.M.),
developed by a Switzerland-based company called Pixelux Entertainment. D.M.M. makes it
possible to assign the molecular properties of virtually any substance to any virtual object. In
other words, doors can be made to splinter like oak, bend like soft steel, or shatter like glass
with a remarkable level of realism. For this demonstration, Pixelux chief operating officer Vik
Sohal called up an on-screen control panel that enabled him to adjust the physical properties
of a wall via such geeky-sounding parameters as Young’s Modulus (the measure of a
material’s stiffness) and Poisson’s Ratio (a measure of “volume preservation”). First, Sohal
made a brick wall. Then he began tossing what looked like human-weight versions of green
plastic army men into the wall, which didn’t give much upon impact but cracked along the
mortar lines. He called up the control panel again and gave the wall the physical properties of
thin plastic. This time when the army men hit the wall it caved in and bent like a cheap
aboveground swimming pool. [read more]
challenge of designing a better game experience, and one of the reasons I have come to San
Francisco is to see two demonstrations of software that LucasArts is excited about
incorporating into its next marquee game. The first program is called Euphoria, and was
developed by NaturalMotion, a tech company based in San Francisco and Oxford, England.
On a projection screen in a darkened auditorium, I watch as a digitally animated Imperial
stormtrooper, the comically doomed cannon fodder of Lucas’s Star Wars universe, is lifted by
an invisible force and dropped in various ways—on his head, on his back—and over various
objects such as steel and wooden crates. Each time he is lifted, he struggles mightily, and
then, every time he drops, he reacts differently. Dropped on his head, he grabs it with his
hands before going still. And after being dropped on his back, on a metal box, he arches it in
a way that suggests he is in agonizing pain.
His reactions are eerily lifelike, and I am told that what I am seeing is not animation but a
kind of artificial intelligence generated by Euphoria, which enables the stormtrooper to react
with an almost human uniqueness—in real time, no less—to obstacles and attacks.
Dropped 100 times, the Euphoria-imbued stormtrooper will react differently 100 times,
unless he is dropped in exactly the same way twice. When he is placed at the top of a sloping
roof, he struggles furiously to gain purchase as he slides down, and actually grabs and
hangs on to its edge for a few moments before falling to his inevitable fate. But the real pièce
de résistance of the demonstration is when the stormtrooper is placed on an unsteady
surface and actually begins to shift his weight and pedal his feet in order to maintain his
equilibrium. “That’s not animated at all,” says Steve Dykes, the LucasArts senior engineer
running the presentation. “That is actually a character trying to maintain his balance,
physically simulated.”
Another demonstration begins—for a technology called Digital Molecular Matter (D.M.M.),
developed by a Switzerland-based company called Pixelux Entertainment. D.M.M. makes it
possible to assign the molecular properties of virtually any substance to any virtual object. In
other words, doors can be made to splinter like oak, bend like soft steel, or shatter like glass
with a remarkable level of realism. For this demonstration, Pixelux chief operating officer Vik
Sohal called up an on-screen control panel that enabled him to adjust the physical properties
of a wall via such geeky-sounding parameters as Young’s Modulus (the measure of a
material’s stiffness) and Poisson’s Ratio (a measure of “volume preservation”). First, Sohal
made a brick wall. Then he began tossing what looked like human-weight versions of green
plastic army men into the wall, which didn’t give much upon impact but cracked along the
mortar lines. He called up the control panel again and gave the wall the physical properties of
thin plastic. This time when the army men hit the wall it caved in and bent like a cheap
aboveground swimming pool. [read more]