How 5G changes gaming technology

Thanks to the joint work of industry companies, new devices are already entering the market and 5G networks and infrastructure are being actively deployed. After ten years of developing the revolutionary technologies needed to create next-generation networks, we introduced the world to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform, the first commercial platform to support 5G multi-gigabit networks paired with the Snapdragon X55 modem. And very soon, real 5G gadgets will go on sale!

In this article, we want to talk about new opportunities that the 5G era is able to give people. And these features, including those that we already managed to talk about, are getting closer to users. Let's talk today about what the advent of the 5G era means for gaming and communications.

Game evolution

The popularity of mobile games is growing . In 2017, 2.1 billion people played them, but it is expected that by 2021 this figure will increase to 2.7 billion.

The main obstacle to a smooth gaming process is a delay in data transfer, or “lag”. The reaction speed in games is very important, so even a minimal delay can cause you to miss the opponent in a shooter or miss the necessary turn in a racing simulator. Also, a high level of delay prevents full immersion in the game. This indicator is so important that many developers have begun to add a special scale to the interface of their games, which shows the quality of the network connection.

The game industry’s focus is gradually shifting towards the cloud, which was confirmed by the new announcement by Google, which a few weeks ago introduced its own cloud gaming service Stadia at the GDC in San Francisco. And there it became clear that reducing the delay in data transfer is becoming an even more important task. Another example is the Qualcomm booth at MWC Barcelona , where One Plus and OPPO gave visitors a chance to evaluate the possibilities of "cloud" gaming by playing in the multiplayer modes Ace Combat 7 and Soul Calibur VI. Moreover, all the game data was transmitted from the "cloud" in streaming mode over the 5G network.



5G allows developers to deal with the problem of delay and gives them and users completely new opportunities. We believe that with the technologies of the fifth generation networks, the very concept of “lag” in games will soon be forgotten, and the combination of 5G and augmented reality in multiplayer mobile AR games will help bring mobile gaming to a whole new level.

Using only smartphones, you and your friends can play paintball in augmented reality to combine the real world with the elements of the virtual. As in a real paintball battle, when you need to run around the site and shoot paint balls at your friends, you will catch them in the “sight” of your smartphone and click on the screen to fire digital paintball shells. In addition to reducing latency, 5G technology and artificial intelligence will help ensure complete immersion in the game with high-quality graphics and new effects. For example, if such a virtual projectile hits a friend’s clothes, the ball will not just bounce off of it, as in 4G games, it will cause the fabric to bend at the point of impact, and then fill it with bright color in real time.

The evolution of communications

Text messages, social networks and video chats - now there are an almost infinite number of ways for comfortable virtual communication, but many of them have certain problems. Some technologies are highly dependent on delays in data transmission, and when communicating with residents of other countries, the language barrier is much more than the distance between the interlocutors. Real-time speech translation technologies already exist, but they also have their own limitations, the main of which again is the delay in data transfer. The extremely low latency in 5G networks will help to solve these problems and give people reliable and high-speed communication for communication.

We believe that thanks to the combination of the capabilities of 5G networks and artificial intelligence in the era of Wireless Edge transformation, people will be able to overcome language barriers and without delay or lag communicate via video communication with anyone and anywhere, regardless of the language of communication and the location of the interlocutors. At the same time, artificial intelligence technologies are gradually moving from networks directly to modern devices with powerful processors. This will ensure the work of an instant and “smart” translator for such communication.

For example, the face mapping technology, which reads face parameters and ensures lip movement synchronization during a conversation, will be able to further enhance the effect of these translators, so that the other person not only heard, but also “saw” how you speak his language. Friends and family members separated by distance will become closer again, and working with representatives of other nationalities will become much easier and more comfortable.

The possible uses of 5G technologies described in our articles will help us communicate and interact at a whole new level, but they are only a small fraction of the capabilities of 5G. 5G networks open the door to completely new application scenarios that people have not even thought about. And this applies not only to smartphones.

The 5G world will be full of industries that will completely change the Internet of things, including, for example, motor vehicles and manufacturing. Both our technologies and our life will only benefit from this and become even smarter!