Introduction to Caldera Map Data Release
Today, Activision has made a significant announcement. A data set of one of Call of Duty: Warzone’s most intricate maps, Caldera, is now available for non-commercial use. This initiative aims to advance research in environmental geometry and AI learning. This release has been described as a ‘first-of-its-kind data set release for Call of Duty.’ This blog post dives into the details and implications of this announcement.
Details of the Caldera Data Set
The open-source release of the Caldera map includes near-complete geometry and a collection of anonymized time samples showcasing player movement across the map. The data, uploaded to GitHub, is an extensive package of 4GB containing five million meshes, 28 million primitives, and over one billion point instances. These instances mostly represent scene metadata like volumes used by Activision for lighting processing.
Potential Academic and AI Research Applications
According to Michael Vance, Senior Technical Director at Activision, this data set is extensive in world size, scene-graph depth, and geometric complexity. It is intended for academic research and AI training. Natalya Tatarchuk, Activision’s CTO, emphasized that the gaming industry must foster growth, innovate within the industry, and evolve authoring tools. This dataset offers a unique benefit for these goals by providing top-tier data for training AI and advancing content generation techniques.
Benefits for Activision and Broader Implications
While the primary aim is to support research, the move also benefits Activision. As Vance explains, the complexity of their game environments necessitates continuous improvements in play experience. Discoveries and innovations from using this data set could grant more liberty and flexibility to Activision’s content teams, ensuring engaging scenarios for players. Notably, this release comes on the heels of another calculated risk by Activision—a secret experiment with lowering skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) for 50% of players, yielding a comprehensive report on its impacts.
Overall, the release of the Caldera map data set heralds a new era of collaboration and innovation, promising advancements not just in academia but also in the quality of gameplay experiences.