Technology enriches all of our lives and its use can make many daily activities easier and quicker. For example, the development of the Internet Of Things (IoT) has made way for smart home technology where most household appliances can be controlled remotely, while 3D printing has revolutionized healthcare with the possibility of printing medical devices and even organs.
Technology has also greatly improved our choice and quality of entertainment in recent decades. We can catch up with friends or family on social networking sites and connect with people from around the world when playing online video games.
In fact, the online gaming world is an industry that has really seen the benefit of technological innovation in recent times. The casino industry in particular has seen technology advancements with games like roulette now being streamed as live versions as well as being accessible on a range of devices.
Here are just some of the latest technology developments that have improved experiences for gamers.
1. Cloud Gaming
Cloud gaming is one of the latest technological innovations that has helped increase accessibility to high-powered gaming to players. For gamers that wish to play some of the newest game titles with superior graphics and high frame rates, usually, would need expensive hardware such as consoles or gaming PCs.
However, using a cloud-based gaming platform, players can now experience these top-quality games on their normal devices through streaming. There are now a number of cloud gaming platforms available to subscribe to, such as NVIDIA GeForce Now.
NVIDIA GeForce Now, unlike other cloud gaming services, does not give players that option to purchase games through them, it instead allows players to access games they have through integration with other game clients like Steam and Epic.
There is also the PlayStation Now cloud service. This is ideal for players who want to play PlayStation games, there is a library of over 800 games available to stream to your device.
Many services support cross-platform gaming. Once you have synced up your devices, you could begin playing a game on your PC and then switch to your smartphone to play on the move, without losing your progress within the game.
Cloud gaming allows gamers to stream many different games on their device.
2. Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual Reality or VR can be described as a highly immersive technological experience. While the concept has been of great interest to many in the gaming community for a long time, within the last decade the technology has become developed enough to make this a viable, and enjoyable, gaming option.
Virtual reality hasn’t quite reached the mainstream just yet and only accounts for around one percent of all global game sales. However, this doesn’t mean that demand is not there.
There are a number of VR headsets now on the market and large tech companies like Sony, Valve, and Meta are all investing heavily into developing the VR technology even further.
In order for VR to be enjoyed by a greater number of gamers, headsets will need to be lighter, more comfortable, and more affordable. A greater variety of VR-optimized games will also help to attract a wider audience of gamers.
VR is still a growing trend within the gaming industry and more gaming providers are incorporating VR into their games.
3. Augmented Reality (AR)
The first augmented reality game to appeal to a wide global audience was Pokémon Go back in 2016. Pokémon Go is a popular smartphone game where mythical creatures, known as Pokémon, are overlaid onto the player’s real-world view.
Shortly after its release, this game received high amounts of global press attention as millions of players congregated in physical locations to play the game on their phones. It generated over $5 billion dollars in sales revenue.
One of the biggest benefits of augmented reality in comparison to traditional gaming is that it is far more immersive. Augmented reality does not only have to take place through a mobile phone screen, AR glasses can also be used for an enhanced gaming experience.
AR glasses such as the Microsoft HoloLens use 3D holograms overlaid on to the real world, while Heads Up Displays or HUDs use a transparent display add useful information to the screen to prevent players having to look away from the main viewpoint to see necessary data, such as speed in a racing game.
4. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
One of the more recent applications of artificial intelligence in the context of gaming involves nonplaying characters or NPCs. NPCs are now able to perform surprisingly complex decision-making processes as they have been developed with behavior trees.
One example of this in the popular game Halo 2 is how the alien enemies that players fight are able to coordinate their attacks rather than aiming at gunfire in a basic one-by-one sequence. This makes the game feel more realistic and challenging.
AI is now also used as part of the game-making experience and technology is still developing in this area. One application is a procedural content generation, which involves creating data algorithmically to make assets such as textures and 3D models.
The game No Man’s Sky was particularly innovative in this area and relied on AI procedural content generation to create the entire open-world environment.
These are just some of the technological innovations making big waves in the gaming world. As they are developed further, we can expect many more new, immersive gaming experiences to become available to players.