The tech demo is part of Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming push, and features an AI-generated replica of Quake II that is playable in a browser. The Quake II level is very basic and includes blurry enemies and interactions, and Microsoft is limiting the amount of time you can even play this tech demo.
Microsoft is still positioning Muse as an AI model that can help game developers prototype games. When Muse was unveiled in February, Microsoft also mentioned it was exploring how this AI model could help improve classic games, just like Quake II, and bring them to modern hardware.
Okay, here’s a much-less ambitious use of existing AI technology that I think would be vastly-more-useful than whatever they’re off doing: how about just going out and using existing AI upscaling techniques and limited human interaction to statically-upscale the textures by maybe 2x to 4x, take advantage of more VRAM on newer hardware?
I mean the demo capability isnt bad, could test out 100 ideas before you commit. But thats not what this is going to be used for. Its going to be a weapon against developers eventually.
There is a lot of potential for generating on the fly skins and specs. Everyone seems to want to do stupid flashy junk, but a well configured agentic setup could easily get constrained in ways that alter geometry and interactions more dynamically than the broad scope nonsense I keep seeing.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/
That’s kind of what this is for.
That’s frame scaling in real-time, rather than offline texture scaling.
But, we already have quake.
But if it’s AI generated, who are they going to lay off after they release it?
Lmao
Ted and Cheryl in accounting. I’m calling it now.
Surely not Ted! That mighty hero dines at the Allfather’s banquet, surrounded by the mightiest heros of all the ages!
No no, I mean Ted Pendergast
Nobody wants this
Wait until Preston shows up with his AI generated radiant quests before you judge.
Maybe some want this, but nobody needs this.
Copy+paste is still a pain in the ass in Microsoft Teams. Why don’t you work on that instead?
I can’t make a correct numbered list in Teams to save my life. I have to do it on word and then…copy paste
Teams is kind of awesome of what you want to do is exchange emojis and funny gifs with your co-workers. Not so much if you want to work.
I miss the days when applications were coded like applications, not like web sites. The ammount of clutter that goes behind the scenes to get a simple OK button on screen these days must be mind numbing.
Fucking stupid, this timeline sucks
We have Quake at home
Thank god, I’ve been waiting for this my whole life /s
i hope every tech company burns
Hit detection doesn’t work, going into pure darkness makes the AI hallucinate to the point it distorts the map layout, npcs will teleport around ot just disappear… runs at like 640p at maybe 20 fps, textures are a blurred indistinct mess…
Oh and it requires basically a super computer to run this.
Brilliant.
Preservation!
How to actually do games preservation:
Reform IP laws.
Mandate open sourcing of hardware and software architectures after some period of time. 10 years? 5 years after no more of that hardware/software is sold? Yes texhnicalities are insanely complicated but you get the idea.
Oh, how about government funding for emulator development? We fund libraries that preserve books, and movies, and other stuff.
Don’t want a friggin thing to do with it then.
Old school gamer here. Headline should definitely say Quake II.
There might not seem to be much difference to a casual observer, but from that standpoint there’s not much difference between either and any other FPS. Even Minecraft to some extent.
Speaking of which, the Minecraft equivalent to this had all the same problems outlined in other comments here. Interesting as a proof of concept, but there are almost certainly better ways of using AI.
I wonder why they didn’t do Quake 1 instead.
They tried but it kept creating clones of PacMan instead
I love how corporations anounce: we stole something and call it AI.
In this case, Microsoft does own the IP (it bought Bethesda after Bethesda bought id), so they definitely didn’t legally steal it.
They just reproduced it in the most uninteresting way possible.
Technically they stole from themselves because they didn’t transfer ownership from Bethesda to Microsoft. Those are still separate entities.
Every time I see this I think about opportunity costs. What got skipped in favor of this dubious effort?
Quality and security
Originality
Fun.
deleted by creator
