{"id":3931,"date":"2025-04-07T07:39:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T07:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/3931\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T07:39:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T07:39:13","slug":"microsoft-releases-ai-generated-quake-ii-demo-but-admits-limitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/3931\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft releases AI-generated Quake II demo, but admits \u2018limitations\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft has released a browser-based, playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a tech demo for the gaming capabilities of Microsoft\u2019s Copilot AI platform<\/a> \u2014 though by the company\u2019s own admission, the experience isn\u2019t quite the same as playing a well-made game.<\/p>\n

You can try it out for yourself<\/a>, using your keyboard to navigate a single level of Quake II for a couple minutes before you hit the time limit.<\/p>\n

In a blog post describing their work<\/a>, Microsoft researchers said their Muse family of AI models for video games allows users to \u201cinteract with the model through keyboard\/controller actions and see the effects of your actions immediately, essentially allowing you to play inside the model.\u201d<\/p>\n

To show off these capabilities, the researchers trained their model on a Quake II level (which Microsoft owns through its acquisition of ZeniMax<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch to our initial delight we were able to play inside the world that the model was simulating,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe could wander around, move the camera, jump, crouch, shoot, and even blow-up barrels similar to the original game.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the researchers emphasized that this is meant to be \u201ca research exploration\u201d and should be thought of as \u201cplaying the model as opposed to playing the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

More specifically, they acknowledged \u201climitations and shortcomings,\u201d like the fact that enemies are fuzzy, the damage and health counters can be inaccurate, and most strikingly, the model struggles with object permanence, frequently forgetting about things that are out of view for 0.9 seconds or longer.<\/p>\n

In the researchers\u2019 view, this can \u201calso be a source of fun, whereby you can defeat or spawn enemies by looking at the floor for a second and then looking back up,\u201d or even \u201cteleport around the map by looking up at the sky and then back down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writer and game designer Austin Walker was less impressed by this approach, posting a gameplay video in which he spent most of his time trapped in a dark room<\/a>. (This also happened to me both times I tried to play the demo, though I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m extremely bad at first-person shooters.)<\/p>\n

Referring to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer\u2019s recent statement that AI models could help with game preservation<\/a> by making classic games \u201cportable to any platform,\u201d Walker argued this reveals \u201ca fundamental misunderstanding of not only this tech but how games WORK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internal workings of games like Quake \u2014 code, design, 3d art, audio \u2014 produce specific cases of play, including surprising edge cases,\u201d Walker wrote<\/a>. \u201cThat is a big part of what makes games good. If you aren\u2019t actually able to rebuild the key inner workings, then you lose access to those unpredictable edge cases.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft has released a browser-based, playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2284,507,2285,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-3931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-copilot","9":"tag-microsoft","10":"tag-quake-ii","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}