The Future of PC Gaming
March 4, 2015, Game Developer Conference, San Francisco—Pete Baker and Chris Silva from Intel presented their views on the future of PC gaming. In some sense, the whole computer industry needs PC games to drive improvements in graphics performance at high volumes.
Gaming evolves at a fantastic pace. The industry is always seeing better performance , quality, and new features in the hardware and software. The past, present and future will continue to look at games as a way to change form factors and the underlying technologies. The biggest draw is that there are hundreds of millions of PC platforms that can play games. as a result, software makers and some intermediaries like Steam are working on 4k PC games. The developers are critical to access the players.
The array of devices and platforms available is growing and now developers can cross-compile to other platforms like the Android tablets. For example Jean-Michel Detoc from Ubisoft stated that the Cosmos engine now has native support for tablets on an Intel processor with Open GL. More games will migrate to the Intel architecture over time.
The core processors are in many platform and form factors. One of the latest is the all-in-one computer which integrate the processor and monitor. Another interesting area is the 2-in-1 tablet/laptop. These machines are tablets with keyboards or notebooks without hinges. Viao is using a Haswell family processor to address the challenges and opportunities.
Rui Caszai from Lego MMO described a kids game for any IA platform. It has both mouse and touch interfaces and the user interface automatically changes with the input mode of the platform. In addition, they worked on power management in the game to address the any platform issues.
The platforms like the all in one systems are benefiting from the various technology improvements. Since ’06, the performance and capabilities have increased dramatically. Games on Intel graphics have improved 3-D performance by 100 times. The IRIS pro GPU on a desktop machine draws less than 65 W.
The next unit of compute will use a core i7 and IRIS 6100 graphics and only draw only 0.62 W in a mini enclosure that is smaller than a stack of 4 CD jewel boxes. The IRIS graphics units are growing in popularity. At present, 19 percent of Steam users and 40 percent of Unity users are on IRIS platforms.
However, most users are not getting the full performance from their computers. About 85 percent use the default settings for everything and over 60 percent don’t know if their drivers are up to date. The video capture resources like Twitch are calling for new and better graphics performance that is not supported by the default settings.
As a result, the are offering Raptr, an on-line service to optimize the settings for over 300 games. The baseline is performance measurements from Intel test labs and performance databases. They apply machine learning and crowd-sourced data to update the base data. The service identifies and notifies the user of new drivers. For example, the video capture of game records requires integrated quicksync. By adding hardware acceleration for encode, this process only takes a 5 percent hit on frame-rate performance. Of the 400 M Intel-based graphics systems in use, most from the last 3 years are capable of being preset for games. By going to intel.com/raptr a user can get a one click optimization for that game.
In the future, PCs will continue to be on open ecosystem and the first target for advances in technologies. Further, more direct access to the underlying silicon will come through new APIs, like the DirectX 12 for 5th generation Core processors. Bryan Langley from Microsoft noted that Direct X 12 is the culmination of 20 years of progress in
APIs, starting with DirectX 1. This new architecture reduces CPU use and is more scalable for multicore processors, as well as improving GPU performance a much as 20 percent.
Games are becoming more highly tuned to all of the feedback modes. bio-feedback from camera inputs allows a game to change with detected emotional levels. Erin Reynolds from Flying Models described their “Nevermind” game that uses the RealSense technologies to detect fear from the camera inputs and allows the player to practice stress management skills while playing the game.
