September 23, 2015 at 12:41A revolution at the doorstep or another niche for “people in the subject”?
Recent years have been marked by the rapid development of start-ups of all stripes: from the ideas of “heating” people with microwave radiation (tested on living people, here they are, all alive and well) and others like them with geniuses. In the race for venture capital investments, many lose their heads, sometimes posing as wishful thinking, encountering previously invisible stones in a seemingly clean cash flow. Today we’ll talk about one such brilliant (?) Enterprise.
To do this, we will transport ourselves to the very heart of Misty Albion - fertile soil for young business and crazy ideas. A pair of Cambridge buddies, the restless Herman Narula and judicious Rob Whitehead, trying to build an easily scalable persistant environment for their ambitious game, quickly realized that it was impossible to achieve what they wanted with the help of famous libraries and started writing their own implementation. Gradually, our heroes (within the framework of the article, of course) came to understand: the technology on which they are working means much more than the game itself. Thus, an idea was born that forced to throw all resources, accumulations, all the time to its implementation.
They call themselves Improbable.. Very little is known about the technology itself, but I will share with you the discovered information. In the big picture, we have a cunning backend, something like an environment, a distributed operating system that in real time monitors millions, billions of entities interacting with each other. I believe that this was made possible thanks to cloud computing and virtualization similar to LXC (the engineer from the team was broadcasting at the recent Container Camp). This opens up the possibility of creating a “strong simulation” - a virtual space with its own laws and rules, which can change under the influence of its inhabitants. It is easy to guess that the technology will easily find application far beyond the scope of the gaming industry (although it is the most obvious and monetary): the military industry, energy, the city’s economy and the Economy in general (Macro and finance), health care. Just imagine: a model of the human immune system, requiring billions of independent entities, a simulation of a giant tsunami approaching a coastal town with a 100-mile coastline, an energy consumption model of the entire urban system - and this is possible thanks to Improbable.
It’s known from open sources that the company is negotiating with the UK Department of Defense, Samsung has shown interest in technology in the context of its own development of the Internet of Things project, Oxford economists are launching models of the UK's “living” domestic market under Improbable.
And, of course, games. The British indie company Bossa Studios (Surgeon Simulator, Tomas was alone), having assigned only a dozen frontend engineers to develop a huge MMO project, was able to achieve amazing results in a year. And this, given the cost of developing an average MMO project today, Bossa is forged almost “for free.” The game is called Worlds Adrift .
No less interesting example - ION. Nothing is known about this artifact, except for the concept: a massive, unified Universe (like WA) and the same persistance. The author is inspired by Space Station 13, a beloved in narrow circles . Using Improbable, literally on his knee, he developed a huge-scale world working according to the laws of physics. In it, players can breathe and be exposed to various gases on the body, temperature, pressure. And there is also a simulation of internal organs!
So, I think the question raised in the title is very relevant. Will this be a new milestone in the development of the industry or will it settle somewhere in the abyss of niche products? Let's discuss.
The comments of backend specialists regarding the reality of what is happening are warmly welcomed (and these guys promise a revolution in the field of online entertainment).
Links to sources and other interesting information (for the curious):
0. An article that reveals a little technology and features
1. An article about Improbable
2. Recording of Narula's performance Strong simulation.
3. Recording of the speech of the director of Bossa Vince Farquarson. Interesting comments. The reaction of the developers themselves to their creation.
4. Improbable Blog
5. Fresh Worlds Adrift trailer
6. Teaser ION
7. ION on Reddit
Background
To do this, we will transport ourselves to the very heart of Misty Albion - fertile soil for young business and crazy ideas. A pair of Cambridge buddies, the restless Herman Narula and judicious Rob Whitehead, trying to build an easily scalable persistant environment for their ambitious game, quickly realized that it was impossible to achieve what they wanted with the help of famous libraries and started writing their own implementation. Gradually, our heroes (within the framework of the article, of course) came to understand: the technology on which they are working means much more than the game itself. Thus, an idea was born that forced to throw all resources, accumulations, all the time to its implementation.
Improvedbable
They call themselves Improbable.. Very little is known about the technology itself, but I will share with you the discovered information. In the big picture, we have a cunning backend, something like an environment, a distributed operating system that in real time monitors millions, billions of entities interacting with each other. I believe that this was made possible thanks to cloud computing and virtualization similar to LXC (the engineer from the team was broadcasting at the recent Container Camp). This opens up the possibility of creating a “strong simulation” - a virtual space with its own laws and rules, which can change under the influence of its inhabitants. It is easy to guess that the technology will easily find application far beyond the scope of the gaming industry (although it is the most obvious and monetary): the military industry, energy, the city’s economy and the Economy in general (Macro and finance), health care. Just imagine: a model of the human immune system, requiring billions of independent entities, a simulation of a giant tsunami approaching a coastal town with a 100-mile coastline, an energy consumption model of the entire urban system - and this is possible thanks to Improbable.
Creating a world with strong simulation involves many technical difficulties. One of the biggest is the need to distribute simulations among thousands of servers in real time. Simulation elements have many interconnected layers of complexity, most of which do not have the property of extreme parallelism(therefore, the traditional approach to scaling does not work). You can imagine our approach as a set of decentralized, heterogeneous “workers” working together to create a simulation much more extensive than a single worker can imagine. With the rapid growth of the world, the most efficient distribution of workers is changing; so they need to move between physical machines in real time. In addition, the system must support a potentially huge number of users interacting with the world simultaneously with each other.
Cooperation
It’s known from open sources that the company is negotiating with the UK Department of Defense, Samsung has shown interest in technology in the context of its own development of the Internet of Things project, Oxford economists are launching models of the UK's “living” domestic market under Improbable.
And, of course, games. The British indie company Bossa Studios (Surgeon Simulator, Tomas was alone), having assigned only a dozen frontend engineers to develop a huge MMO project, was able to achieve amazing results in a year. And this, given the cost of developing an average MMO project today, Bossa is forged almost “for free.” The game is called Worlds Adrift .
No less interesting example - ION. Nothing is known about this artifact, except for the concept: a massive, unified Universe (like WA) and the same persistance. The author is inspired by Space Station 13, a beloved in narrow circles . Using Improbable, literally on his knee, he developed a huge-scale world working according to the laws of physics. In it, players can breathe and be exposed to various gases on the body, temperature, pressure. And there is also a simulation of internal organs!
Summary
So, I think the question raised in the title is very relevant. Will this be a new milestone in the development of the industry or will it settle somewhere in the abyss of niche products? Let's discuss.
The comments of backend specialists regarding the reality of what is happening are warmly welcomed (and these guys promise a revolution in the field of online entertainment).
Links to sources and other interesting information (for the curious):
0. An article that reveals a little technology and features
1. An article about Improbable
2. Recording of Narula's performance Strong simulation.
3. Recording of the speech of the director of Bossa Vince Farquarson. Interesting comments. The reaction of the developers themselves to their creation.
4. Improbable Blog
5. Fresh Worlds Adrift trailer
6. Teaser ION
7. ION on Reddit