At the start of the Game Developer Conference (GDC), Ubisoft unveiled a new cloud-based technology that wants to revolutionize the way video games are developed. This new paradigm is called Ubisoft Scalar and it is a method of maximizing the use of information to facilitate the processing of all the ingredients that build a digital experience.
This is not about a streaming service like Xbox Game Pass or Nvidia GeForce Now: the company proposed a structure where software and hardware are integrated virtually in order to eliminate gamers' dependence on devices and enable developers to improve titles without interrupting other processes.
Scalar's proposal would work as a graphics engine whose parts are disassembled in the cloud and where each component of the process manages to become independent from the others. These parts represent the engines that form a single video game (audio, physics, graphics, etc.) and that are commonly activated at the same time from the same software.
Ubisoft usually uses two types of graphics engines of its own: ANVIL (responsible for the Assassin's Creed franchise) and Snowdrop (Tom Clancy's The Division). The new proposal allows greater interaction between all the company's offices and would enable greater ease of collective work.
In this way, the company intends to use the near-infinite processing power of the cloud to extend all components of a graphics engine and break the hardware barrier that usually limits experiences.
Scalar technology was developed by a team with Ubisoft Stockholm at the helm and in active collaboration with Ubisoft studios located in Malmö (Ubisoft Massive), Helsinki (Ubisoft Redlynx), Bucharest and Kiev.
Although it is not yet available in all of the conglomerate's studies, the announcement at the GDC confirmed that Ubisoft Stockholm is already working on a new IP using this service.
How would Scalar work?
Ubisoft's new service would rely on a cloud processor with the ability to start and stop services dynamically that would also be subject to the need of players. This type of process would enable experiences to have to use the required computing power in real time, rather than having these services active at all times.
Compute-intensive tasks would be cached (a special memory that exchanges high-speed data) and distributed globally, eliminating the need to replay variants that were already calculated once.
Scalar aims to eliminate updates and patches in video games
This collaborative system would not only be beneficial to the development team, but it would also allow players to continue enjoying their experiences without waiting for software updates.
The studios could work on constant improvements and prevent the retouching of one area from representing a limitation in another, since each space would operate from a different environment.
As each space would be integrated virtually, Ubisoft stated that Scalar would be built as a microservices architecture, where systems closed to a single processor would move to a model that distributes tasks to an almost unlimited number of machines.
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