BUILD | GUIDE: AI
ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE
Smart thinking for Always interesting, at present the market for games-related artificial intelligence technology is even more fluid than usual…
L
ike a slowly swinging pendulum, the trend within the games AI middleware market has once again moved away from games. It may seem like a nonsensical thing to say, but as well as Pregasis effectively withdrawing one-time market leading product AI.implant, French company SpirOps also seems to focusing more on the simulation market these days. It’s exactly the same decisions taken by companies such as Stottler Henke and MASA a couple of years ago. But it’s not all bad news. PathEngine continues to burn its own track for companies looking for pure pathfinding software, while
Kynogon’s acquisition by Autodesk will surely result in something novel, although whether we’ll be able to place it neatly within a box marked ‘AI middleware’ remains to be seen. The real joker in the pack however is AIseek, which has sprung to life in 2008 with its Intia AI chip. The company has found its first client MMOG company Simutronics, and it could be that adding the specialised hardware within the massed server racks of MMOG providers is a workable business model. Certainly the recent history of Ageia would suggest that if gamers don’t want to buy a physics add-in card, an AI add-in card is even more unlikely.
KYNOGON TECHNOLOGY: Kynapse v5 CLIENTS: Activision, Bethesda, DICE, EA, Realtime Worlds, Spark Unlimited, THQ, Vivendi PLATFORMS: PC, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360 INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TECHNOLOGIES: Unreal Engine 3 COST: Available on request CONTACT: +33 156 035 980
www.kynogon.com Where next for Kynogon? The French company, which released version 5 of its popular Kynapse middleware at GDC 2008, has also been bought by Autodesk, with future plans involving the development of a new suite of
PATHENGINE
AISEEK
TECHNOLOGY: PathEngine v5.16
TECHNOLOGY: Intia processor
CLIENTS: Avalanche Studios, Flying Lab Software, NCsoft, People Can Fly, Rare
CLIENTS: Simutronics
PLATFORMS: PlayStation 3, PC, Xbox 360
INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TECHNOLOGIES: Ageia, HeroEngine
INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TECHNOLOGIES: 3ds Max, Maya
COST: Available on request
56 | JUNE 2008
AIseek combined an AI chip with an SDK
CONTACT: +972 3 612 0306 PathEngine is a focused pathfinding and collision engine
www.pathengine.com It says much about the AI middleware market that one of the most successful products is also one of the most focused. As its name suggests PathEngine is all about providing points-of-visibility pathfinding and
technology sitting between Autodesk’s 3D content creation tools and runtime engines. In the meantime, new features for v5 include 3D pathfinding and support for multithreaded and multi-core hardware.
PLATFORMS: PC
COST: From €4,500 to €13,000 CONTACT: +33 4 78 27 06 02
Kynogon’s Kynapse AI engine now offers 3D pathfinding
collision on 3D ground surfaces, with particular attention being paid to how obstacles and surface edges constrain agent movement. The SDK also comes with a graphical test bed and associated tools.
www.aiseek.com Despite operating in stealth mode for a number of years, it seems as if Israel AI chip company AIseek is finally close to launch. For one thing, it hass announced its first customer. A deal with Simultronics will see
the pathfinding, terrain analysis and line-of-sight technology used for its MMOG engine, although it’s not clear whether this deal is for the chip themselves or the associated AI SDK.