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Kusanagi

Networked 3D Multimedia Gaming Platform

Coordinator: Philippe Martineau, e-mail: philm (at) eureva.fr

Involved countries: France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden

 

Abstract

Kusanagi project is an end-to-end seamless infrastructure to develop, publish and play High-Definition 3D Real-Time Networked Videogames and therefore, more generally interactive Networked Media. The project is focused on a business and a technological breakthrough, by circumventing the dedicated terminal for videogame, to replace it by the network and high performance computing. This breakthrough has the opportunity to move the added value away from the console towards the content where the European industry is rather strong. The project aims to exploit two major technological changes introduced by very high broadband access (fibre to home) and affordable high performance computing (n-core CPUs & GPUs) and develop a high-end network centric game content development environment, capable of overcoming local hardware limitations to distribute interactive entertainment as never experienced before. In the project we will research, design and develop beyond the state-of-the-art: 1) The Scalable Computing Platform to host 3D media content to provide unprecedented gaming experience, both in terms of flexibility and high visual quality 2) The multiplayer experience where high performance computing overcomes any console capabilities 3) The Efficient Network Streaming Technologies to provide large access and easy distribution of the interactive content.

To achieve its ambitious vision, the Kusanagi project is driven by a strong consortium with extensive experience in R&D and industry leadership in blockbuster games, intelligently combining universities, large telecom companies, SMEs and start-ups. In the long run, Kusanagi wishes to be a driver of the European video game industry and bring strategic and technical value, in conjunction with the move from consoles to networked gaming services. It is also important to note that the Kusanagi breakthroughs are not game specific, but can be applied to many industries, requiring 2D or 3D real time remote interaction, while the consortium believes gaming is the best application to drive the project innovation. The project focuses on the evolution of software architectures that will be critical to master fields of highly parallelized processing, distributed processing, high bandwidth and low latency networks, and their intricate impact on content quality and speed of delivery, dataset size, optimization complexity, open infrastructure viability and production tools and middleware standardization efforts.