Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

This proposal targets a topic that has been identified as of strategic importance for Canada: distributed, interactive gaming as an example for a network-intensive application and a technology for advanced communication and management of information. In this research project, we will work with Koolhaus Games to create new software technology for games on handheld, wireless-networked devices. The importance of mobile games is motivated by two observations. First, the hardware basis for ubiquitous mobile devices such as mobile phones is already a reality and will further improve in the near future. Second, we have been witnessing a tremendous commercial success of network-based computer games for PCs and consoles. Therefore, we see a great demand for a technology that advances network games on handheld devices. Our research approach is based on close integration of networking, 3D computer graphics, AI (artificial intelligence), and game design. 3D graphics has been driving the games industry for a decade, leading to highly-optimized special-purpose graphics hardware. We will exploit this graphics functionality to solve 3D rendering, networking, and AI problems alike. In particular, we will develop visibility-based techniques for distributing game-world simulation, graphics, and AI for mobile multi-player games. We will also adapt 3D graphics techniques to resource-constrained handheld devices and develop sensor-based AI techniques. Finally, we plan to integrate the new technology in a software platform for mobile games in order to transfer the technology to the games industry.