Let thousands of virtual worlds rain down from the clouds. Or, more precisely, from a cloud. This is precisely the appeal of the giant Google, which has backed a tiny British start called Improbable.
Founded by two Cambridge alumni and backed by $ 20 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Improbable offers a new way to build virtual worlds, including not only exciting games like Second Life or World of Warcraft, but also giant digital simulations of real cities, economies and biological systems. The idea is that these virtual worlds can maintain integrity by existing in an almost unlimited number of computers, so they can expand to unprecedented sizes and reach new levels of complexity.
Until now, the startup has only shared its technology with a handful of programmers and companies. However, today Improbable has joined forces with Google to bring its creation, dubbed SpatialOS, to everyone.
You can think of SpatialOS as a cloud computing service for creating virtual worlds, whether it runs on desktops or virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift. The service works in conjunction with the Google Cloud Platform, the tech giant's burgeoning cloud computing empire, and the two companies have just launched alpha programs that allow programmers to prototype and test their own virtual worlds. When the beta goes live in the first quarter of this coming year, a separate program will give programmers free time in Google's cloud while they hone these virtual worlds for release on the big web.
As developers create more complex virtual worlds, this provides AI researchers with better ways to train the next generation of AI. Games have long been a testing ground for AI, but SpatialOS could help expand that range by not only allowing AI agents to recognize the successor to Second Life, but also the ability to navigate the streets of real cities, or even trace the path of an infectious disease.
In the end, such simulations may even become testing grounds for autonomous vehicles. Craig Keeter, an engineer at Otto, a robot-transport company owned by Uber, trains AI agents on Grand Theft Auto, as a stepping stone to a more advanced generation of autonomous vehicles. Replace Grand Theft Auto with a simulation of the city of Manchester, and the goal will be much closer.