Marvel’s Avengers — A Spectacular Experience on Intel Platforms
Author: Ryan Shrout, Chief Performance Strategist at Intel
It’s exciting when a leading developer releases a highly anticipated game into the market. It’s even more exciting when that game is Marvel’s Avengers, a title from Crystal Dynamics & Square Enix. Over the course of more than a year, Intel worked with the developers to optimize specific technology features for Intel’s PC Platforms to deliver a mightier experience for PC gamers.
As a technology leader in gaming, Intel is always looking for ways to push the limits on performance and emerging technologies to make the PC the best place to play and create games.
Marvel’s Avengers Brought to Life with Intel CPU’s
Imagine the possibilities when you combine the technology leadership of Crystal Dynamics & Square Enix game development and the magic of Marvel. That dream became a reality with the Marvel’s Avengers game and it packs an impressive heroic punch on Intel CPUs.
Teaming up with Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix, Intel worked with the developers to bring to life stunning visuals with differentiated features leveraging the power of the game’s physics system to add more visually dynamic and appealing content for the PC. This comes to life in the enhanced heroics for the Heroes, massive destruction, and amazing water simulation. To achieve these immersive experiences, Intel software engineers worked side by side with Crystal Dynamics to develop and deliver unique features, provide a range of hardware for testing and utilize Intel software tools to help test and optimize the entire game for a wide range of Intel platforms.
A Differentiated Gaming Experience on the PC
Players will experience optimized gameplay with Intel Core processors, and higher-end PCs enable richer, more immersive in-game features for armor destruction, heroics and water simulation.
Armor is destroyed with greater detail, debris explodes and stays on the screen longer to add to the realism, as your favorite Super Heroes seem to do more damage to their surroundings with every signature move. With its optimal balance of frequency, cores and threads to deliver high-frame-rate gameplay, Marvel’s Avengers on an Intel-based PC will be a gaming experience worthy of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
When Intel started working with Crystal Dynamics, there was already a great physics system in place, but the enhanced features developed are new and innovative. Most games typically have repetitive or predictable paths for the player and rely on similar graphic elements or animations to create what the player sees. With the game’s physics engines and random interaction between the world, each time someone plays the game, they will see new things and have different experiences.
Intel and the developers sought to create game features that build an enhanced experience for the player running on Intel CPUs — but all PC gamers will benefit from the optimizations. Players will experience a richer experience on Intel® Core™ i9 processors when compared with the Intel® Core™ i7 or i5 processors of the same generation. Each feature adds to the game and showcases the value of having a higher end Intel CPU.
Super Charged Heroics and Enhanced Enemy Armor Destruction: With a high-end Intel powered PC, you can finally see exactly how much damage these kinds of awesome abilities can deal. More armor shards, in more detail, with more destruction, fly in more pieces and places with longer persistence. As you see the fallout from every powerful blow, stomp, blast or smash, you’ll always feel like you are in the middle of the action, with every battle experience one you won’t soon forget.
- A new particle effects emitter was developed to emit physical objects for the increased destruction and heroics. This is a novel improvement that enabled the enhanced features to be implemented in time for game launch. While normal effects particles don’t collide with other things, this allows objects to collide with the physical environment.
- Because the physics systems scaled, we focused on improving the immersive experience by creating more objects and content. Intel worked with technical artists and developed test levels to push the boundaries of the physics system. Crystal Dynamics designed features as a result of these tests. Artists and developers then work on systems like the effects emitter and artists for the debris and destruction.
- The results are more devastating armor destruction where enemy armor breaks into more shards that live longer in the environment. Witness the damage being done: debris is created and doesn’t instantaneously disappear but continues building on the environment where it wasn’t previously possible due to performance limitations needed to show this.
Heroics: By leveraging Crystal Dynamics’ existing technology, Intel helped take advantage of the hardware and features to make each Hero’s signature moves richer and more engaging. Each of the main Heroes’ heroics have an enhanced impact on the environment. With each Thor hammer throw or Hulk-sized smash, a high-end Intel processor lets you see the full effect of the force and shockwave of the Avengers strength ripple across the screen. More detailed rubble and debris fly everywhere and stay on screen longer, making you feel and look as powerful as a Super Hero should.
Reactive Water Simulation: Even the water looks better on high-end Intel powered processors. With the optimal balance of cores, threads and frequency, any interaction with water becomes a richer, more responsive experience. Rolling waves and buoyant boats bobbing on the waves react naturally as they would in the real world. Heavy objects cause tidal waves, ripples and movements have lifelike color, shading and textures. This is fantastically captured when the Helicarrier crashes in the Golden Gate Bridge scene. The optimization of the physics engine makes what was already an incredibly immersive game experience, even more so.
The Intel Implicit SPMD Program Compiler (ISPC) and the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) were used to optimize the Fast Fourier Transformations operations (FFT) in the more advanced water simulation which resulted in reducing the simulation time to hit 60FPS+.
A Better Gaming Experience
At the end, all this work translates to a better gaming experience on Intel’s highest end desktops and enthusiast mobile gaming platforms.
Intel invested in gaming experiences across the product line. From the highest-end CPU with full features and the highest performance to mobile platform playability with Intel Xe graphics. Outside of the game enhancements discussed for higher performance gaming systems, we took this flagship title and made it accessible across multiple types of systems, e.g. ultraportables that are not purpose built for gaming
Teaming up with Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix was a huge opportunity for Intel to become part of the Marvel’s Avengers legacy. As the exclusive PC partner, the new Marvel’s Avengers game has been developed to run on just about any Intel core processors to deliver a richer, more immersive gameplay experience. But by taking advantage of Intel’s newest and fastest CPU architecture and hardware features, it’s with the high-end processor systems you will really see a notable difference in every battle you face.
Join us on this adventure at https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/play-avengers.html
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