TECH NEWS – Nvidia’s latest development enables AI-controlled game characters to interact with players in real time. The technology could revolutionize gaming experience, but there are still unanswered questions.

Nvidia has unveiled its latest development that enables interaction with players using artificial intelligence. This system is none other than the Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine for Games, integrating several AI-based features and capabilities into a single, comprehensive game AI package. AI-based upgrades in video games have long been considered one of the most interesting use cases, and it seems that Nvidia could be the first to take this seriously and fully exploit it.

What sets Nvidia apart from its competitors is its total focus on AI. Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling has been at the forefront of game upscaling technologies for years, thanks to its Tensor cores and how they are developed and utilized in subsequent GPU generations.

Nvidia decided to take a step further and fight with further AI integrations. The Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine, or ACE, for Games technology allows NPCs with no pre-written dialogue to communicate with the player in real time, with appropriate voice lines. ACE for Games is fundamentally a “large language model” that’s been repurposed for video game integration. ACE for Games combines the understanding of natural language, text-to-speech conversion, and facial animation, allowing NPCs to listen and respond to players in real time.

Although Nvidia’s GPU business performance in 2023 was criticized for the disappointing performance of some of its RTX 4000 GPUs, the company is still going full steam ahead on other fronts. In theory, ACE could revolutionize AIinteraction in games, but there are still big questions that Nvidia will need to answer. One of the most obvious questions, for example, is how to run the AI integrations in real time; Nvidia has not been completely clear on exactly what is needed for ACE for Games to run properly.

Of course, there’s a good chance that ACE for Games will be very interesting to see in action once it finally picks up steam. For the time being, the company’s most impressive real-world AI application is still ray tracing. The most prominent and stunning example of ray tracing is that of Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode, which came about as a result of Nvidia’s collaboration with developer CD Projekt RED.

Nvidia’s AI-based tech has proven to be very flexible in the past, with modders able to integrate it into games that don’t actually support such features by default. A prime example is that of a modder setting up Nvidia DLSS in Fallout 4, alongside AMD and Intel’s own upscaling technologies. It’s possible that ACE for Games will be similarly flexible, but only time will tell.

Source: GameRant