author: Bart Swiatek
Xbox Series X Will Enable us to Download Games Faster? All Thanks to AI
It seems that machine learning may be employed in ninth generation consoles. In an interview with journalists, James Gwertzman - head of the Microsoft Game Stack initiative - described a technology that allows for significant reduction of downloaded data size by scaling textures using AI.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- Microsoft is testing a technology to reduce the amount of data you need to downloadto play a game;
- The solution is based on an AI algorithm that "magnifies" low resolution textures and reproducing details from memory.
Anyone who has been gaming for a long time knows that over the years the amont of HDD space required by games has increased dramatically. Instead of a few or a dozen or so gigabytes, they generally require several dozen or so, and in some cases over 100 GB of space. What is more, in the era of digital distribution, we usually have to download all this from the Internet. It seems that the new Xbox can make life a little easier for players in this regard, allowing them to limit the amount of data they have to download by using AI. Information about such technology appeared in a conversation between journalists (via VentureBeat) and James Gwertzman - head of the Microsoft Game Stack program (an initiative unifying various solutions of the comapny to facilitate game development).
"The download is way smaller, but there’s no appreciable difference in game quality. Think of it more like a magical compression technology," said James Gwertzman.
Interestingly, it's not really about compression at all, but a technology of... texture reproduction. The programmers create them in high quality and then give to AI as a material to "learn". When downloading the game, we only download textures in much lower quality, which are a kind of base - using it, the algorithm restores the "remembered" details. The solution supposedly works "frighteningly well", especially in the case of photorealistic visuals.
"One of the studios inside Microsoft has been experimenting with using ML models for asset generation. It’s working scarily well. To the point where we’re looking at shipping really low-res textures and having ML models uprez the textures in real time. You can’t tell the difference between the hand-authored high-res texture and the machine-scaled-up low-res texture, to the point that you may as well ship the low-res texture and let the machine do it," said Microsoft's boss.
Unfortunately, for the time being it is not certain whether this technology will actually be used in the new Xbox, but the idea is undoubtedly interesting. We would like to remind that both of the announced ninth generation consoles - Xbox (Series X) and PlayStation 5 - will hit the market during the holiday season this year.