Photo/Tan Yuhan (NBD)

"Tencent Games is actively collaborating with global top-tier companies such as Nvidia to make gaming engines and tool chains a 'multiplayer game' that involves collaboration between multiple teams and companies," Ma Xiaoyi, Senior Vice President of Tencent, said at Tencent Game's annual conference, SPARK 2023, on May 15.

Ma Xiaoyi hopes more people, even people and programs, people and PCG (Personal Computer Games) technology, people and AI (Artificial Intelligence), can collaborate in virtual spaces and create the next generation of real-time collaboration technology solutions, he said. At the same time, Tencent is also exploring a modular architecture based on self-developed engines, embedding the required performance modules directly into platforms and industrial scenes such as maps, and achieving more extensive applications in the future.

At the conference, Tencent released more than 40 products and innovative content on-site, as well as the independently developed engine with independent intellectual property rights CrossEngine, also known as CROS. 

Li Congbing, Deputy General Manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment's R&D efficiency department, said that game engines are currently the key production tools for building digital virtual content. The development of CROS self-developed engine took nearly three years. At the beginning of the construction, it had 3A-level rendering effects and cross-platform capabilities, focused on large-scale rendering, realistic visual effects, and online and offline generation of digital content, and maximized the latest CPU and GPU capabilities through innovative architecture.

"The CROS self-developed engine is aimed at becoming a complete game engine product matrix that can be applied in multiple industries, with the game engine as the main body. Its lightweight and modular characteristics are also more adaptable to the engine customization needs of different fields," Li Congbing said.

It is worth noting that Tencent has invested heavily in the development of self-developed game engines, which is expected to lay the foundation for further building digital scenes and Digital Twin. Digital Twin refers to mapping the real world to the virtual world, and eventually achieves the virtual and real fusion and cognitive prediction through perception and calculation in the virtual mapping process. 

Li Congbing revealed that the technologies applied in the self-developed game engine mainly include PCG technology, scanning modeling and Lookdev (lighting environment performance visual appearance development) technology, deep learning and differentiable rendering, cloud rendering, etc. Among them, the rapid development of PCG technology has increased the efficiency of building large scenes by 100 times, providing a foundation for subsequent large-scale digital twin reconstruction.