Cloud Computing
Why Spatial Partitioning is Not the Answer to Scaling the Metaverse
On the existential paradox between the efficiency and survivability of the human race.
June 13, 2023
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6
mins read
Tobin Ireland
Founder & Chief Business Officer
Key takeaways:
In a recent interview with award-winning journalist Paul Barron, Rashid Mansoor, MetaGravity CEO, shared insights into the company's groundbreaking technology and its potential to revolutionise online gaming, the metaverse, and the broader web3 ecosystem. Moreover, MetaGravity's HyperScale Engine is poised to overcome long-standing limitations in virtual world development. This would open up new possibilities for game designers, enhance players’ experience, and drive the growth of decentralised applications.
For years, the gaming industry has grappled with a significant limitation: the inability to support more than about 100 concurrent players in a single-shard seamless virtual space. This constraint has restricted player interactions and fundamentally limited game design possibilities, as Mansoor explains.
"Today, we can really only build games or simulations with about 100 players. That's a hard limit on player counts, but it's also a constraint on total compute budget, including how many AI NPCs you can have and how many physics objects you can simulate."
This limitation has forced game designers to create artificial barriers and use techniques like instancing and sharding to create the illusion of larger worlds. However, these solutions often break immersion and restrict the potential for truly dynamic, player-driven experiences.
MetaGravity's technology represents a significant leap forward in addressing these scalability challenges. Unlike previous approaches that relied on spatial partitioning, MetaGravity has developed causal partitioning - a novel method for parallelising virtual world simulations, as Mansoor explains:
"We're taking what we learned from the past and making the next leap forward. Even in just 16 months, we have some remarkable technology that can do things previously considered impossible."
The company's achievements are already making waves in the industry. MetaGravity has partnered with ambitious projects like Star Atlas, helping them test environments with up to 30,000 concurrent players while maintaining network performance at high frame rates.
The implications of MetaGravity's technology extend far beyond simply increasing player counts. By removing technical constraints, game designers can explore entirely new mechanics and create more dynamic, player-driven experiences, Mansoor highlights.
"The 100-player limit fundamentally prevents certain game mechanics from even existing. Imagine if you could really exist in a living, breathing virtual world where you could build a house anywhere, and so could other players. Now you've got a hamlet that grows into a village, then a town, then a citadel. You can't handle that with any server technology that's existed in the past."
This newfound freedom opens up possibilities for true player-driven economies and emergent gameplay that were previously impossible to implement at scale. But there is another critical element.
MetaGravity's vision aligns closely with the principles of Web3, emphasising decentralisation, user ownership, and interoperability. Mansoor sees the company's technology as a crucial building block for the decentralised metaverse:
Our long-term view is that this new world of virtual societies, worlds, and economies can only come to life when we remove the need for trust and permission. Today, even the Web3 virtual world projects run on an AWS server somewhere. The moment the company behind it paying for the servers disappears, that world is gone."
By leveraging blockchain technology and decentralised infrastructure, MetaGravity aims to create persistent virtual worlds that can exist independently of any single company or server. This approach promises to enhance the longevity and value of digital assets within these worlds, a fundamental tenet of the Web3 philosophy. But is there living proof that such a world could exist?
To demonstrate the capabilities of its technology, MetaGravity is developing its own game, Edge of Chaos, which aims to showcase the potential for large-scale battles and player-driven economies. Players can join the HyperScale testing community to experience this medieval-themed virtual world firsthand while still under construction. Providing more context, Masnoor stated:
"Edge of Chaos is a full-blown virtual world simulation. We're starting with super large-scale battles because that's what will stretch the game’s limits. We're building and testing that now, and we plan to launch a public slice of the game around GDC time next year."
The game will serve as a proving ground for MetaGravity's technology and a glimpse into the future of Web3 gaming. A future where players have true ownership of their digital assets and can participate in expansive, persistent virtual economies.
MetaGravity's technology represents a significant step forward in the evolution of online games, virtual worlds, and the Web3 ecosystem. By solving the long-standing challenge of scale and embracing decentralisation, the company is paving the way for more immersive, dynamic, and player-driven experiences.
As the lines between gaming, social platforms, and the broader metaverse continue to blur, MetaGravity's HyperScale technology will play a crucial role in shaping the future of digital interactions and economies. With ambitious projects already leveraging the technology and plans for further decentralisation, MetaGravity is positioning itself as a foundational infrastructure enabler for the next generation of the internet. As Web3 and blockchain evolve, MetaGravity aims to build the infrastructure to power tomorrow's decentralised digital worlds.
Reach out to MetaGravity if you want to be at the forefront of this revolution.
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