The virtual worlds found in video games are becoming increasingly visually realistic. Many AAA first-person games have reached a point where screenshots of in-game environments are almost indistinguishable from real world locations. However, once movement is introduced into an environment it becomes much easier to tell whether that environment is real or not due to the subtle limitations of the game’s physics engine can be seen acting on the moving objects.

Making a game’s physics engine seem realistic isn’t just about how objects behave by themselves, it is also about how they interact with other objects and the player. This system is called collision detection, and it can be quite taxing on a PC or console, especially when a lot of individual objects are affected at once.

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When players think of collision detection it will usually be in relation to the precision of weapons and attacks, and this can often be a point of frustration in games like Call of Duty. But collision detection is found in all games which contain individual assets that can be affected by the player. Activision has now filed a new patent which hopes to see collision detection become more realistic in games while simultaneously reducing the risk of lag or frame rate drops whenever a large amount of collision happens at once.

Activision collision detection patent

Collision detection in video games works in two phases, the first is described in Activision’s patent as “rough” detection, and this sets the basic boundaries for all the game's different assets, and makes sure they cannot move through each other. The second phase is known as “fine” collision detection, and it is during this phase that points of contact with the player character are specified and the realistic movement of the object is calculated. Activision’s patent essentially hopes to combine these two phases and hide the processing time by making the system run at the exact same rate as the game’s displayed frame rate.

If implemented successfully this patent could see a player's interaction with in-game objects and other players become much smoother and immersive without having to rework the game’s physics engine. This latest Activision patent will also periodically run the collision detection system even when the player isn't interacting with an object in order to predict likely collisions and make them run even smoother within the game’s frame rate.

Since this collision detection patent is tied directly to the game’s displayed frame rate, it is possible that frame rate drops could also become self-correcting if the strain on the system immediately drops when the frames do. However, this could also mean that players with a higher frame rate could be given an unfair collision processing advantage in online games. Players of Activision's online focused titles like Call of Duty: Warzone are already quick to point out any unfair advantages found in the game.

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