Latest news with #Inzoi
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. At this year's GDC event, Nvidia showcased all its latest RTX technologies, including Ace, its software suite of 'digital human technologies.' One of the first games to use it is Inzoi, a Sims-like game, and while chatting to Nvidia about it, I learned that the AI model takes up a surprising amount of VRAM, which raises an interesting question about how much memory future GeForce cards are going to have. The implementation of Nvidia Ace in Inzoi (or inZOI, to use the correct title) is relatively low-key. The family you control, along with background NPCs, all display 'thought bubbles' which give you clues as to how they're feeling, what their plans are, and what they're considering doing in the future. Enabling Nvidia's AI system gives you a bit more control over their thoughts, as well as making them adapt and respond to changes around them more realistically. In terms of technical details, the AI system used is a Mistral NeMo Minitron small language model, with 500 million parameters. The developers had experimented with larger models but settled on this size, as it gave the best balance between responsiveness, accuracy, and most importantly of all, performance. Larger models use more GPU resources to process and in this specific case, Inzoi uses 1 GB of VRAM to store the model. That may not seem like very much, but this is a small model with some clear limitations. For example, it doesn't get applied to every NPC, just those within visible range and it won't result in any major transformations to a character's life. The smaller the language model, the less accurate it is, and it has the potential to hallucinate more (i.e. produces results that aren't in training data). While Inzoi's AI system isn't all that impressive, what I saw in action at the GDC made me think that Nvidia's Ace has huge potential for other genres, particularly large, open-world RPGs. Alternatives already exist as mods for certain games, such as Mantella for Skyrim, and it transforms the dull, repetitive nature of NPC 'conversations' into something far more realistic and immersive. To transform such games into 'living, breathing worlds,' much larger models will be required and traditionally, this involves a cloud-based system. However, a local model would be far preferable for most PC gamers worldwide, which brings us to the topic of VRAM. Nvidia has been offering 8 GB of memory on its mainstream graphics cards for years, and other than the glitch in the matrix that is the RTX 3060, it doesn't seem to want to change this any time soon. Intel and AMD have been doing the same, of course, but where 16 GB of VRAM is the preserve of Nvidia's high-end GPUs, such as the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080, one can get that amount of memory on far cheaper Arc and Radeon cards. But if Nvidia Ace really takes off and developers start to complain that they're being restricted about what they can achieve with the software suite, because of the size of the SLM (small language model) they're having to use, then the jolly green giant will have to respond by upping the amount of VRAM it offers across the board. After all, other aspects of PCs/computers have needed to increase the minimum amount of memory they sport because of AI, such as Apple with its base Mac spec and Lunar Lake laptops having 16 GB because of Copilot. It's not often that one can say AI is doing something really useful for gamers but in this case, I think Nvidia's Ace and competing systems may well be what pushes graphics cards to consign 8 GB of VRAM to history. Not textures, ray tracing, or frame generation but realistic NPC responses. Progress never quite goes in the direction you always expect it to. Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and gaming motherboard: The right graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Inzoi is giving eager life simmers another free taste of its gorgeous character creator, with a bonus build mode demo for the architecture nerds
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In less than two weeks, The Sims is finally getting some much-needed competition: Inzoi's launching into early access on March 28. For those who are already foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a more realistic life sim, though, good news. Krafton is giving folk the chance to dive into a couple of its creators before the big release… if you watch a bunch of streamers, that is. Both the Character Studio and Build Studio are opening their doors from March 20, giving players a little taste of what's to come from the full game. The former is the Create-a-Zoi mode that some players will have already had time with during the brief demo weekend back in August. The latter, however, isn't quite clear yet—the announcement page gives a very vague description of "construction". I assume, in that case, that it's a standalone mode letting you put your architectural cap on for designing houses and the like. They'll be packaged together under the standalone Inzoi: Creative Studio, and if enthusiastic life simmers want to grab a key, they'll need to tune into a Twitch stream to do it. Mercifully, you'll only actually have to watch 15 minutes of any stream in the Inzoi category in order to grab a key. If Twitch isn't your thing, you can also watch 30 minutes of the stream at the top of the Inzoi Steam page. And hey, if you're mega anti-streaming for whatever reason, it turns out you can simply wait it out for three days, as Krafton plans to throw the Creative Studio up on Steam for everyone on March 23, regardless of whether you watched a random content creator or not. While it won't be offering any gameplay, the Creative Studio could stand to be a good way to test the waters for just how well this thing is gonna run on people's rigs. Inzoi's system requirements are a little steep—though I guess it's to be expected for how beautiful and sparkly the whole thing is—and while I doubt there'll be anything particularly intensive behind either mode, it's a good initial test regardless. Plus, this is only the second time there's been any sort of public access to Inzoi, and what better time to throw out some breadcrumbs than right before its release? It'll be nice to get some idea of what this game has to offer while we're this close to the finish line. I mean, we don't even know how much the dang thing is gonna cost, though it promises to reveal that in this week's showcase.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Inzoi's game director teases plans for ghost Zois getting shackled to the mortal realm, karma-starved and seeking redemption if they die with a bad rep
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The early access launch for fresh new Sims competitor Inzoi is just about six weeks away and information about its features—those coming in time for early access and those planned to be developed later—are arriving at a weekly pace now. Over the weekend we got yet more details about Inzoi's life sim features, this time revolving around the afterlife. In his weekly teaser for fans in Inzoi's official Discord server, game director Hyungjun "Kjun" Kim got into talking about the paranormal, specifically ghosts. He acknowledges that Inzoi is mostly focused on realism, which is obvious from its glossy, well-lit visuals but also the features it's chosen to prioritize. Kjun does want to see some fantastical elements make it into the game though. "We want to keep the playability of ghosts fairly limited so it doesn't overshadow the main gameplay, but we also want to make sure the experience is engaging enough when it does happen," Kjun told players in Discord. 'Ghost gameplay' as Kjun's currently explained it revolves around Inzoi's karma system, which we saw a little of during some Inzoi playtests with content creators last year. They showed some karma-affecting actions (like farting?) and a karma score in each Zoi's profile. Kjun says that Zois who die with enough karma points will pack up for the afterlife peacefully, but those with poor karma will remain as ghosts and will need to hang about attempting to restore their karma. Ghosts as they'll be implemented for Inzoi's early access in March will be present but you won't be able to control them. That's planned for later. "Any further development for ghosts will have to come after the release," Kjun says. "That said, our current build allows you to encounter ghosts at set times under certain conditions." As for what's planned for even further down the line, Kjun doesn't count out the possibility of other paranormal Zois. "While we're committed to refining the realistic elements of inZOI first, I'd love to explore more fantasy-driven elements in the future," he added. The majority of life sim players coming from The Sims 4 will be familiar with the popularity of "occult" sims like ghosts, vampires, werewolves, mermaids, etc. They're a whole popular gameplay category, some with their own dedicated expansions packs. As Kim says, that's not really Inzoi's aim, but it's nice to see Inzoi Studio entertaining the idea of dipping into some of those popular fantasy characters. You can keep up with everything we know about Inzoi ahead of its early access launch in March and in the meantime keep track of the other upcoming games like the Sims that we're expecting this year. Sims 4 cheats: Life hacksSims 3 cheats: Classic hacksSims 4 mods: Play your waySims 4 CC: Custom contentProject Rene: What we know
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Upcoming The Sims competitor InZOI will feature ghostly Zoi that hang around after death to fix their karma
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The game director of InZOI, the upcoming competitor to The Sims, has revealed what happens to your Zois after they die. Spoiler alert: some of them may stick around. If you're someone who likes to let your Sims live out a natural life, dying due to old age or an unfortunate accident, congratulations, you're a monster and we can't be friends. I get far too attached to my creations and turn their aging off entirely, but for those of you who prefer to let nature take its course, there is some life after death in Inzoi. As spotted by PCGamer, director Hyungjun "Kjun" Kim took to the game's Discord server to explain some of its upcoming early-access features: "We want to keep the playability of ghosts fairly limited so it doesn't overshadow the main gameplay, but we also want to make sure the experience is engaging enough when it does happen." InZOI has a karma system, and if your Zoi has enough, it'll make its way to a peaceful afterlife when it dies. If it doesn't, it'll hang around after death as a ghost that you can "encounter at set times under certain conditions." They won't be playable right now, but that is planned for later on. "Any further development for ghosts will have to come after the release," Kjun says. Although the ghosts won't be playable yet, InZOI is implementing Nvidia Ace, the company's generative AI that features text-to-speech capabilities meant to make NPCs more life-like. It calls these NPCs "Smart Zoi," and in the video shared by publisher Krafton they sort of just seem like regular NPCs that react to the world around them. I saw the tech used at an Nvidia demo last year (not for InZOI), and wasn't very impressed, but maybe it'll be implemented in a creative way for InZOI. To get a better idea of what this Sims competitor will look like, check out our InZOI preview. You should also check out other games like The Sims if you're a fan of the genre.
