The 10 coolest technologies for gamers at this year's E3

No new consoles debuted at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). But we saw plenty of new technology that reminds us that the hardware that hosts games could, until recently, be described as a supercomputer. For sure, we always get excited about games, but it’s a sure bet that your favorite title has some really cool tech behind it. And some new technologies may even enable a whole new generation of games.

E3 did have some no-shows. Valve’s Steam OS and the Steam Machines from its partners were missing in action because of delays that pushed the products into 2015.
Here’s GamesBeat’s perspective on the best new technology demos that we saw at E3 2014. For the sake of comparison, here’s our list from last year.

Above: Jacob Navok, Tetsuji Iwasaki, and Yoichi Wada of Square Enix

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

1. Square Enix Project Flare. Any description of Project Flare has to start with “If it works….” That’s because the “cloud-gaming 2.0” technology, first described in November, is still in the tech demo stage. But Square Enix chairman Yoichi Wada has a team of 20 working on enabling a gaming revolution, putting a web-connected supercomputer at the hands of gamers. It could make possible virtual game worlds that have 17 times the playable area of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the 2012 award-winning fantasy title. By using a more efficient blend of web-connected data centers and software designed for the cloud, Square Enix believes it can replace consoles with virtual supercomputers. You can log into huge game worlds, play both single-player and multiplayer experiences in the same space, and see huge numbers of game characters all governed by individual artificial intelligence.
A single game map could cover an area of 32 kilometers by 32 kilometers, with dozens of players hosted on a single graphics processing unit (GPU) in the cloud. And the cloud could support vast numbers of players because it can have vast numbers of GPUs in a server farm. Square Enix says the worlds can be massive and would require no loading times. Everything in the world will be calculated, rendered, and deformable. But a single player will receive a stream of video that shows only what the player’s camera view can see. Networking, patching, hacking, and pirating will be gone. You’ll be able to fly like Superman through a world filled with huge numbers of objects such as trees, mountains, and rivers. It sounds too good to be true. But if it works …. — Dean Takahashi.

Above: Playful’s Lucky’s Tale

Image Credit: Playful

2. Oculus VR showed some real games in development from its partners. The company has shown off a lot of progress since it first debuted at E3 two years ago. Now the company has a lot more credibility, as it is about to be acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. Last year, the company showed off its 1080p Oculus Rift virtual reality headset development kit. In January, it took the wraps off version two of that development kit. That version went a long way toward eliminating motion sickness, as it had positional tracking and it deleted the blurry frames that made us nauseous. This time, Oculus VR showed off demos such as Playful Corp.’s Lucky’s Tale, a platform game in three dimensions; Alien: Isolation, a virtual reality version of Sega’s upcoming console game based on the Alien franchise; and a demo dubbed Superhot by the Superhot Team where you could freeze the action in a 3D game in order to dodge bullets.
Brendan Iribe, chief executive of Oculus VR, acknowledged in an interview that Oculus needs to deliver on its roadmap and get a real product out the door. He also said the company is working on new input systems that work well with the visuals as well as sound. Overall, Oculus wants to ship a full platform for virtual reality, rather than just a headset. It’s a long way before that happens, but based on the progress that we’ve seen, we’re excited that it will . The next version of Oculus Rift should get rid of the “screen door” graphics, where a grid appears across all of the imagery, Iribe said. And with the full backing of Facebook to take care of the bills, we can expect that it will happen on a large scale for the mainstream consumer market. It’s another “if it works” situation, but we’re reasonably confident based on the track record that Oculus is serious. — Dean Takahashi

Above: The luge demo for Project Morpheus from Sony

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

3. Sony’s Project Morpheus. Sony’s virtual reality headset is running a little behind of Oculus Rift, in terms of the quality of its demos. But Sony executives say they’ve been working on the tech for the new medium of virtual reality for four years. With their current development kit, they can show off virtual reality demos with a 1080p high-definition display and a 90-degree field of view.
Sony unveiled Project Morpheus at the Game Developers Conference in March with a couple of demos that included a shark attack scene, where you stand inside a steel cage and get lowered into an ocean and surrounded by water. Then a Great White shark swims around and shows its teeth at you.
Sony showed a couple of more demos at E3. I got to try out a Luge demonstration, where I lay comfortably on a bean bag. I put the Morpheus headset over my glasses and strapped it tight. Then I looked at my legs and feet, which seemed like they were extending into the screen. The luge started moving down the hill on a curvy mountain highway. I passed cars and had to dodge them by maneuvering the luge back and forth with my head. If I moved to the right, the luge moved with me. It was a little mis-calibrated, but it worked reasonably well. I smashed into an occasional car coming in the other direction. With demos like these, Sony has the right idea. As they are experiences that you can’t get on a traditional console. — Dean Takahashi