Turn 10 is particularly chuffed at being able to make use of Xbox One's cloud computing support for its much-sung Drivatar AI system, which trades out pre-scripted computer drivers for cloud-stored entities that learn from player behaviour. Greenawalt described the ability to offload such tasks to servers as a "tremendous opportunity".

"When you've got a learning neural network, more computing power is nothing but helpful. Because what you're able to do is process a lot more information, and you don't have to do it in realtime on the box. And that frees up more of the box to be doing graphics or audio or other computational areas.

"So we can now make our AI instead of just being 20%, 10% of the box's capability, we can make it 600% of the box's capability," he went on. "Put it in the cloud and free up that 10% or 20% to make the graphics better - on a box that's already more powerful than we worked on before."

http://www.oxm.co.uk/59493/forza-5-is-the-hardest-thing-turn-10-has-ever-done-xbox-one-cloud-offers-600-more-ai-capability/

Ok so before this turns into a gaf, what they're basically saying is this. Typically their A.I. required 10-20% of the processing capabilities of the console's CPU. Since they can offload some of the A.I. task to the cloud, they can actually bump this up to as much as 600% because they have a lot more processing power on the servers and they can do features like Drivatars.

In addition, they are saying whatever local resources A.I. used to take up locally, in this case 10-20%, can be freed up to do other things, such as improving graphics.

So basically without cloud, they would be limited to using 10-20% X1's CPU power and a feature like Drivatar may have not been feasible since it would require more processing power than they could get even if they dedicated the entire CPU to A.I.

I know this news will be shat all over, but I really hope that, just for the lulz, the Xbox cloud stuff is actually some world changing tech that exceeds everyone's expectations. I would get a good laugh out of that.

@alexglass: no

Those are the two steps of using neural networks, training and decision. Training is the heavy task, and can take minutes, hours, weeks depending on the complexity of your problem. But you only need to do it once to get a functional AI : when it's done, it will have learnt the rules to apply to make the "right" decision from any input.

The decision is only the task of applying those rules. You can use the same set of rules for all your races onward, they're supposed to cover all possible situations (of course if it doesn't, your AI will have a silly behaviour). And they don't require any heavy computing.

What Turn10 claim they're doing with Forza is :

- do the training sessions on servers rather than on the console itself to generate the Drivatar

- update the Drivatar with new player data by launching new training sessions

Ok, let's try with a fake example of an AI of "how to approach a curve" (I'll just mention that I'm bad at driving games and driving in general, so it's purely theoretical).

Step 0

: the default AI says "brake 20 meters before the curve, then turn". That AI is applied to your Drivatar any time it is used in a game, and is run by the console on its own.

Step 1

: You play the game with your own, more agressive style. All your gaming history is uploaded at the end of each game to MS servers ("the cloud").

Step 2

: On the server, a training session is applied on your data, and updates your Drivatar with a new behaviour : "brake

10

meters before the curve, then turn". It does the same thing for other players, like your friend who generated his own Drivatar style "don't brake, drift !". In the meantime both you and your friends keep playing against Step0 AIs.

Step 3

: Some time after you uploaded your latest data (maybe 5 secs, maybe 2 days, who cares ?), your updated drivatar is available for all to download, so is your friend's. You now have different possible opponent AIs to face, the original, yours and your friend's.

Step 4

: you or your friends can race the updated avatars. Their AIs are still run by the console, since the rules aren't harder to apply than the default one, only different. If the console goes offline, either you can still play the drivatars you've downloaded, or are back to step 0.

Step 5

: go back to step 1 to keep updating your drivatar, and maybe generate improved behaviour ("brake 10 m before a curve, or 30m if there's a car in front of you").

So in the end, "the cloud" is not interacting with your game while you're playing. It's only collecting your data when you're done, do its thing in the background, and updates your game when it's finished.

In that case, being offline shouldn't have any impact on the resources available during your gaming session, since it's not at that moment that the hard work is done.

This is what the cloud does. It does not interfere with your game at all it just stores data you than download. Nothing will interfere with your gameplay experience while you are playing. Nothing will help you to free more power

If you example would be accurate what would happen wo offline players? Less graphics? Less AI? No it will not.

Drivatar is a dumb not-word.

It doesn't just store data. It processes data as well. And to process the data, it requires CPU processing.

You're not actually contradicting what I am saying. Even though it's not being done in real time, it's still a feature that would not be possible without it. If you did it offline, you'd have to download the info, let your X1 bake it for hours or a day, then come back and play it when it's all updated. So basically, it's not a realistic feature without the cloud.

In the case of Forza, of course there are no less graphics or less A.I. offline because the cloud is being used in this manner. It's not being used for real time processing and there is no frame synchronization. The cloud is being used similarly to how network computing is usually in research lab. You upload the data, hit start, come back and get the results when it's ready.

So basically you just wouldn't be able to do this realistically with just an X1 CPU. At all.

@alexglass: It is just driver data from other players turned into AI and stored on a server. Nothing else. And that is nothing new at all.

Sounds cool and I can't wait to see it in action, but that 600% sounds too ridiculous.

The kids are going to see this is a developer saying that somehow the cloud is making the xbox one 600% more powerful and they will lose their minds.

Really hope this is the next evolution of AI in games. This could theoretically be applied to AI. Shooters with enemies that behave like actual humans because the AI is based off human behavior that has been processed on the server side.

Forza is a launch title and they are being very outspoken about the tech. They really need to deliver.

You really never get tired of trolling this forum, do you?

I think we get it, you think the xbox one and everything associated with it is a joke. It's not like the OP is posting this on the PS4 forum. You just happen to find yourself here in every single xbox one thread trying to reduce everything to nothing.

You would think someone who seems to love Sony so much would be happy to stay on that forum and engage with other like minded people.

It's pretty new to consoles and new or not, it doesn't make it any less interesting. Video game developers don't typically get to use massive supercomputer clusters like Azure as part of their loop for game development.

Forza 5 basically shows, the other way the cloud can be used, which is far more practical for launch games. Not for real time processing boost, but rather for massive simulations on the developers end. Unlike an individual user, who would probably have access to what MS initially claimed as 3x the processing power, a developer would probably be able to get access to a huge chunk of the worldwide server for a few minutes or hours, process a huge simulation and large amounts of data, then make it available to players. This has its own interesting uses.

There's nothing not to like here, even for those that have an issue with server side processing, since in this case, it doesn't alter the way the game actually works.

@alexglass: It is just data storage. And the PS4 can do the totally same if developer want to. There is nothing interesting about driveatars. CLoud is just a buzzword for dedicated server and data storage nothing else.

This is a pretty entertaining back and forth, you two are the antithesis of each other. Though you'd think Darji would be a huge proponent of Xbox judging by his post count on its forum.

Oh, and I have a feeling Forza 5 will be quite good.

No it's not just storage. That data needs to be processed. There is actual processing taking place.

Yes, for something like this, the PS4 can do it, if Sony provides their Gaikai servers to developers or if developers want to pay for access to cloud servers.

And finally, no. Dedicated servers are just that, and the X1 cloud is going to be a hybrid X1-cloud virtual console. Which will be used for things other than hosting and bots and will extend beyond A.I. to things like physics, lighting, A.I. etc. Stuff dedicated servers don't do. And for this part, I don't believe the PS4 has that capability. Probably part of the reason it has a GPU with more CU units. Developers will have to use those if they need more compute processing than the Jaguar can offer.

@dharmabum: I will never argue about Forza being good or not. . Of course it will be good but the cloud stuff is just pure bullshit^^

@alexglass So, how much Microsoft is paying for this viral marketing thing?

@alexglass: Strange why did the Titanfall guys said exactly that what I was telling you? You can look it up it is on the Giantbomb E3 show. The one in the porno studio.

Is this what people call gamers that actually understand network computing isn't magic? I sure as hell miss the days when gamers were mainly intelligent computer nerds that actually understood how tech works.

I keep noticing this. Console gamers seem to have a half-ass grasp on what a GPU, CPU and RAM is. But toss in network computing or server-side processing and it's too much, people short circuit and say a whole bunch of stupid crap.

600% huh?

The important thing to remember is that it's completely stupid unless it's on a sony platform. Then it's the best thing ever.

Never forget.

@darji: Why are you sure about this when every release from Microsoft says otherwise? It's not as if everyone here doesn't realize that 'the cloud' up to this point has been a term for decentralized storage of information. We just happen to believe that Microsoft isn't advertising a bald-faced lie.

I don't know what you are referring to. Post me a link.

But I really think you need to learn the difference between data storage and data processing.

A data storage server would require very basic CPUs and a worldwide network worth of hard disks. It certainly wouldn't require $2,500 Xeon chips built for compute which MS is using in Azure. Data storage is when you upload a video or a picture and you get back the same video. That's storage. If that video comes back longer, shorter, different resolution, different quality, then it has been processed and that requires processing. If you upload a picture on a free website, and you crop it, then that cropping gets processed by their servers.

Storage is storage, and server-side processing is server-side processing. Two different things, and in this case, as is often the case, can be accomplished by the same server.

The Drivatars in Forza requires server-side processing. That's why it requires some time for it to process. Whether a minute, whether a day, whatever. If it didn't you could just transmit the code straight to your friend's console and they would be downloading your "ghost" basically. Which is nothing new. This is different. Drivatars are actually changing the NPC A.I. in the offline mode as well and altering the initial game code.

All I know is that there's a lot of people that want really bad for Azure to be nothing more than a storage server and want badly to convince people that's all it is. And so far, the loudest voices that first started spewing this crap seem to have gotten a head start. But it won't last. Lies have short legs and the facts tend to reveal themselves sooner or later. I feel bad for the psyche of those that have dug their feet in to those neogafs(since that's what every stupid myth that was started about the X1 cloud deserves to be called).

No, it is what you get called out for when you get payed to post things with positive spin about your product in social media. Looking at your post history, there is somewhat heavy concentration on certain subjects. Combine that with timing of your first post...

Since you brought up non-magic network computing, care to lighten me where did you gain your knowledge about the subject?

Lol, OK Turn 10.

I'm very excited to see what this looks like, as, theoretically, the AI in this game will be ~500-600% more robust than every other driving game that doesn't use the cloud in the same way.

WAY TO RAISE EXPECTATIONS BEYOND THE ACHIEVABLE.

@alexglass: again giantbombcast E3 this year. I think it was day 2 or 3. just watch it and see how these gys call it basically dedicated server and a storage for data.

So skynet

I cannot speak for or against this claim, i guess i'll have to see it for myself (by that i mean digital Foundry)

Though the Xbox One Version of Watch_Dogs will have "more dynamic AI".

http://www.inquisitr.com/833345/watch-dogs-will-have-a-more-dynamic-world-on-xbox-one/

I don't know what 600% better than mediocre is.

@darji: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/

So how does 600% more AI look in a racing games? Umm, turn left if teh rule in NASCAR I hear...

No, really what does 600% more AI look like? Does the car accidentally turn 1 degree less in a turn slightly moving its line around the turn by a foot? Okay, well you don't need sophisticated AI for that a random number generator should have the driver apply less/more break or gas or turn of the wheel and get the same results. Car AI sucks, but ist not because there isn't enough processing power in a console.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time imagining how a 600% boost in A.I. will manifest itself in a driving game.

Well in this case, the game's NPC A.I. Intelligently adapts to yours and your friends' driving style so that instead of static, permanent A.I. or rubber band A.I. so many racers suffer from, it will incorporate opponents that drive theirs cars more like you and your friends would.

You just answered your own question. Car A.I. sucks. So Forza tries to do something about it by giving it dynamic A.I. that doesn't suck and will change based on how you and other players improve over the lifetime of the game. So basically it adds a more realistic driving and learning curve, not just for you, but for the game's NPCs as well.

What's there to complain about?

Drivatar is the best name for anything ever

Do you realize that not every person who plays games is a 12 year old.

I just don't understand when people became such jaded assholes. It's nothing but negativity. There is another console generation around the corner and we are on a video game website. Where else are people in a community supposed to talk about and get excited about these things? So a guy who is excited about a potential new technology making its way into games is called out as an employee or someone trying to spin PR. That's what we have come to. No one can be excited about anything. Especially if it is something Microsoft related. There are guys on the xbox forum that have multiple threads that they have created where they do nothing but bash the xbox one. Are those guys working for Sony doing anti Xbox PR? What about the guys losing their shit over every little thing that sony is doing?

A developer of a huge launch title for the next generation came out and said something about his game that is directly related to one of the touted features of the xbox one. Even if it is complete nonsense, it's still fun to think about what the implications could be. He obviously had a reason for saying it. 600% is specific enough that it has to stem from something. Why not say 800%, 10000% or 100%?

How is someone who is talking about the potential of cloud powered games any different than the person on the other end who is dismissing it at every turn. It's ridiculous. If sony had an infrastructure like Azure and was willing to put some of that weight behind games, people on the Sony side would be losing their minds like they are about Gaikai which is nothing but an idea and the promise of streaming games in the future. Where are all the detractors screaming about latency and bandwidth when it comes to that potential service? How close do you have to be to data centers for games to run smoothly enough? Microsoft has Azure data centers all over the world and it's getting bigger every day.

Microsoft threw around of jargon over the past few months and I'm glad that developers are at least touching the subject of cloud computing and how it can help their games. We don't know how this stuff will turn out, but that's the exciting part of new technology. I'm glad there are people on this forum who want to discuss this stuff. At least it's not a wasteland like the PS4 forum. Every time I go there to learn something new or find out something interesting about the PS4, I leave disappointed. Threads about party chat and features that we've been using on xbox for years aren't exactly exciting. It's also why you have so many Sony fans on this forum expressing their opinion about how great the PS4 is and how terrible everything about Xbox one is.

For the record, I don't know what the hell 600% means in terms of what Turn 10 could be doing for Forza. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but if it means more advanced AI that feels more human, I'm definitely interested. If it means nothing, it's going to come back and bite them soon after launch. From what they are saying, it will only get better with time.

So cars will instantly crash into eachother at the start of the race, just like real humans.

I would have gone with Avitrave.

I've been one to say that there's a limit to what the cloud can do given the current infrastructure, but this isn't entirely correct. Yes, the cloud is mainly used for storage, but in this case, it can (not necessarily will) offload data processing to come up with data to store. I don't think it will be a synchronous process. You've said as much in what you quoted earlier. A possibility is to have the servers in the cloud control any bots you're racing against, but you may encounter latency just like any other online game at that point.

This however doesn't make the Xbox One significantly more powerful than what is being alluded to. At most, people may see a slightly increased frame rate if it isn't locked, and that may be affected by latency of the bots.

@sergio: What forza 5 is doing is loading your driving profile on a server and then uses any driver profile as AI opponent. Nothing of this happens in real time. Before the race or before you start playing it you are downloading these profiles and then this is the AI you are facing off.. However it still need to calculate the patterns on the console itself. It does not safe anything in terms of Power that could be used elsewhere.

And all this is also possible with a PS4 if developers want to use it. Yoshida already confirmed this much.

Why would anyone need to spin positive news into something positive? I think you have it backwards here, and it's others that's actually trying to spin something positive into a negative or downplay it, even if it means, in the process they're just spreading a whole bunch of B.S that's quite wrong compared to the original story.

As far as my knowledge, well I got it beginning in high school 17 years ago, college, personal interest in video games, personal experience with graphics design and networking and actually truly personally taking the time to research and learn about the topic. My posting history represents things that I am interested in discussing. I like new and exciting tech and video games and that happens to be the Xbox One with cloud networking and Kinect.

Personally I'm excited about trying it and playing with it? Are you excited about NOT trying it or do you just feel better if you convince yourself and others things you don't like suck or are only liked by shills? If that's the case I can see how it would be annoying when you run into someone who has done their homework and calls out the B.S. I guess the only thing you have left is accusing them with some derogatory label.

When I say offloading processing in the cloud in my first point, that processing is what determines what the drivatar (I said it, I hope you're happy) will behave like. You might not like saying it, but that is processing in the cloud.

It's also possible to have those drivatars act like other players playing online with you, thus having that processing done in the cloud - I don't think they've said they're doing that, but it is possible. This is similar to how MMOs drive NPC and enemy AI on the server. The console would still need to take that information and create those graphics, much like an MMO client. I think any performance improvement on the console would be negligible, and at the cost of potential latency with any cloud-driven AI. I don't think it would be a good trade-off given the US internet infrastructure - may be better in other countries, if there are Azure servers located there.

I've also said in the past that, yes, PS4 is capable of doing this. Gaikai is a cloud-based service. We agree on more of this than you think, but I will point out when people are wrong, even when they agree with me on some things.

Hear hear. Everyone needs to read this because sadly, it's true. These forums are full of jaded users, and a few notable ones come to mind.

So, if I pick this game up, say a year after it's come out, the AI will be impossible for me - as a beginner - to beat because it's learned from the millions who played the game previously?

But your drivatar will be awesome! :)

@sinusoidal: it's not going to put you against the best drivatars (typing that word hurts me) that the system has to offer. It's always going to based on what your skill is. If someone is an average player, the AI they will be facing will be appropriate for that skill level. That of course all depends on how you play.

They have talked this up so much. Not sure how long after launch it will take for the effects of the system to become apparent. It's a brand new system so I'm guessing they will have to adjust it extensively in the beginning.

So at what point does the car start talking to you? "My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer. But Turn10 pre-sets the switch to read-only when we're sent out alone."

To be serious for a moment, this is more or less how I would expect them to do "bots" where instead of having the console do work it uses the same "interface" the multiplayer uses. Your end experience doesn't matter if it is a real person or something else driving around.

The claim that it is "600% better AI" is stupid because measuring AI like that is like saying "Apples off of this tree are more granny smith than the other tree".

I'm sorry this all seems like hookum. An AI that watches/studies other players who are expert at driving virtual cars or even expert at driving virtual cars are indistinguishable from a good AI that doesn't watch because a tracks are mostly fixed paths, and cars (even with variations) are a KNOWABLE set of variables. All this "600% better AI" is in reality is accumulated ghost data turned into a path...but that path is indistinguishable from teh path of an AI that isn't watching.

That's what there is to complain about - it is hookum. They are collecting data that when processed and spit back via the cloud doesn't change that AI at all.

You got the first part right, then somehow you ended up concluding a human gamer playing a game = a set of variables.

An A.I. that isn't watching is either designed by a programmer, a group of progammers, or pooled from data somewhere and it's static. It's a set of static rules that often leaves a lot to be desired in racing games.

In this case the A.I. design comes from actual gamers playing the game.

And yeah, that's actually what the cloud does in this case. The cloud processes the data, then your A.I. in your game changes from those static variables created by programmers to match the variables created by you or your friends. Which get updated over time and are now dynamic.

And to really put it in reality, what this does is actually introduce human error and habits into the A.I. The idea and hope behind it is that if for example you have a player that always tenses up during a particular turn and misses that turn consistently, you might have some of the A.I. drivers in your game mimmicking that. Rather than follow static, proper racing lines, they might similarly start running off the road. Or if it's a child playing, the A.I. may attempt to mimmick loss of concentration or going too fast through turns and spinning out. Things of that nature, etc.

And considering a ghost is just a straight re-run of a player's race, this is quite a bit different. Because it actually adapts their habits into those set of variables, into the game's A.I., rather than just replaying their ghost.

And one more thing. The path of a 5 year old's Forza A.I. will be very distinguishable for the standard path usually found in A.I. set initially by developers who are amazing at the game.

Umm, by definition AI design comes from the designers and is executed by a computer. It maybe based upon what people do and behave but the result is still artificial.

So fun thought experiment: Exactly what needs to be improved about driver behavior over Forza 4? Although having this feature isn't bad it isn't that important either since you could do what you did a decade ago.

Which other racing game a decade ago has dynamic racing A.I. for the single player portion that adapts to you or your friends style as you play the game?

An immediate benefit would be to players of different ages and different levels of experience. I would probably be really good if I played a child's version of Forza on his Xbox, and that child would get whooped if he played on mine.

What other racing game does this?