Forza's Use of the Cloud in Better Detail - Kotaku

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We started talking about Xbox One and some of the new online requirements it has. Stuff like the check-in every 24 hours. I said that Microsoft really needed to explain what the benefits are for some of this stuff. They talk vaguely about using cloud computing, for example, but what do we really get out of it? Maybe they should show some next-gen games with the cloud computing turned on and off, I suggested.

Greenwalt had a surprising but refreshing reaction. He said it was on the game creators to explain this stuff to gamers. It was on them, he said, to show people the possibilities, something Turn 10 also tried to do when it integrated Kinect into the Forza series on the Xbox 360. He started talking to me about Drivatar, which he'd been talking about on stage at the Xbox press briefing earlier in the day.

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Drivatar uses the cloud to figure out how you drive and to then represent you n races in other people's games. It does the same for them, bringing virtual versions of other people into your copy of the game as your opponents.

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The first time you put the game in, it'll reach out to the cloud and pull down data from other people's Drivatars. Immediately, you'll have opponents in the game who are driving in the style of real people. These Drivatars are imbued with the driving personality and tendencies of real people, Greenwalt told me. So if the person tended to take turns a certain way, pass in certain ways, drive off the road a lot... that'll be evident in the virtual version of them against which you compete.

When you play the game, if you're connected, your own driving data will be uploaded to the cloud. It'll happen pretty much after every race. But if you play offline—and, remember, you can do that for almost 24 hours—the game will collect your driving data, let you play against the Drivatars it already snatched but then do a new data exchange whenever you re-connect.

Players may be able to select difficulty levels, weeding out tougher or worse opponent Drivatars, if they wish.

The actual data going back and forth from the Xbox One to the cloud isn't that complex, he told me. What's complex is the work the computers connected in the cloud will do to crunch players' driving tendencies. Doing that all outside of the Xbox One frees the console from having to use any muscle figuring it out. Eventually, he said, the cloud computing system will begin to discard older data that used to inform a player's Drivatar. That's so that the Drivatar more accurately represents how the player's driving skills have improved or deteriorated.

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