Since its announcement, Microsoft’s Azure platform has been met with plenty of skepticism from the gaming community. Meanwhile, the console maker remains ambiguous with regards to its application in games, outside of a real-time tech demo that was showcased at the last Build conference.

A developer who is currently working on an unannounced Xbox One game recently chimed in with some interesting information regarding Azure on NeoGAF, and went on to explain how his game is built around its utilization for physics calculations.

"We are building our new game strongly with Azure in mind for physic calculations (currently for vegetation, grass, water being manipulated by wind and objects, which would not be easy [impossible] to do with local power only). We are so happy with it that we are currently thinking about going all-in and make the game kind of addicted to Azure."

He stated that Titanfall barely touched upon the possibilities of cloud computing, and implied that future titles such as Crackdown would make a far more plausible case in favor of the technology. He also clarified that Azure does not enhance local rendering efficiency, and things like a boost in resolution or an improvement in lighting are outside the realm of possibility. It’s primarily there to offload CPU workload and, in effect, boost its capabilities for the simulation of game worlds that conform to physics.

Interestingly, he also mentioned that building a game that truly utilizes the Azure platform from the ground up is the equivalent of working on two games. The workload is far greater, given how both “online” and “offline” instances need to be catered to.

You can not boost your games resolution with Azure. And no. You can not create better lighting effects with Azure. But, if you focus on it, you can still boost the overall graphical look of your game by a mile. We are currently creating a game. But in fact, we are kind of creating two-in-one. One with Azure available, and one for offline only. Everything you code, you need to code for two scenarios. This is a ton of work. if online = dynamic grass; if offline=static grass.

To demonstrate his example, he posted a very basic GIF animation that was originally rendered on an Xbox One devkit.

Whether Azure and cloud computing will eventually take off is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, it should certainly be interesting to see how things develop in the years to come. What is your take on the future of cloud computing? Let us know in the comments below.

http://gearnuke.com/unannounced-xbox-one-game-azure-physics-simulation/

Saw this earlier in the Xbox Empire thread.

Interesting stuff. People (including me) just wont believe in its economical implementation until it starts happening though.

Wow. The first time they've been actually open and honest about the cloud. Good for them.
It is a nice idea but like with everything real time that's going through the internet I'm skeptical.

Yeah its great to see someone actually benefiting from it. 

The lighting thing isn't entirely accurate, because you can offload lightmap generation to servers when approaching a new area of play rather than calculate it locally during the stage loading, and you can stream video data in the form of a black and white image to be used in lighting, too.

So you could, for example, have a baked lighting level, then trigger a firework display during multiplayer, and the textured surfaces would be fed the additional lighting data from the video stream and the baked lighting would be pseudo dynamic during the stream.

until its implemented properly in actual games i wont be impressed by it. and the question is, is it worth it? if they need to double the work on some cases for an offline and online mode, is it really worth it?

Though I hope they're having a look at GPGPU as well and don't take the cloud as their go to solution for every physics calculation.

Yeah that's a really good question. I think only a few games will actually use the cloud. Seems like too much hard work for most developers. 

i don't think it's really double the work. They will just create the game and during development will look at what they can improve with the cloud. In the end the offline and online mode is just like flipping a switch. Pretty much like turning AA on or off in a game.

i guess we will have to wait and see. honestly though i am not holding my breath, im not completely dismissing it but for now "power of the cloud" has been all talk no shizzle. it should have been a game changer in TF, it didnt. it should have made the XB1 4 times as powerful, it didnt.

i hope MS dont keep repeating the "power of the cloud" phrase until they actually got something to back it up. they should focus on the awesome stuff the got, mainly sunset overdrive.