Activision Patent Could Lead to Better Collision Detection in Video Games
The virtual worlds found in video games are becoming increasingly visually realistic. Many AAA first-person games have reached a point where screenshots of in-game environments are almost indistinguishable from real world locations. However, once movement is introduced into an environment it becomes much easier to tell whether that environment is real or not due to the subtle limitations of the game’s physics engine can be seen acting on the moving objects.
Making a game’s physics engine seem realistic isn’t just about how objects behave by themselves, it is also about how they interact with other objects and the player. This system is called collision detection, and it can be quite taxing on a PC or console, especially when a lot of individual objects are affected at once.
Activision Working on Making Dynamic Assets Less Intrusive in Multiplayer Games
When players think of collision detection it will usually be in relation to the precision of weapons and attacks, and this can often be a point of frustration in games like Call of Duty. But collision detection is found in all games which contain individual assets that can be affected by the player. Activision has now filed a new patent which hopes to see collision detection become more realistic in games while simultaneously reducing the risk of lag or frame rate drops whenever a large amount of collision happens at once.
Collision detection in video games works in two phases, the first is described in Activision’s patent as “rough” detection, and this sets the basic boundaries for all the game's different assets, and makes sure they cannot move through each other. The second phase is known as “fine” collision detection, and it is during this phase that points of contact with
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