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Activision has shared an open-source data set compiled from Call of Duty: Warzone's Caldera map for non-commercial use.
The "near-complete" geometry of the Caldera map is now available on GitHub. The 4 GB data set includes more than five million meshes, 28 million primitives, more than one-billion-point instances, "which can also represent scene metadata such as volumes that we use for lighting processing," as well as in-game character pathing and time samples showing how players behave on the map.
Caldera isn't available in Warzone anymore, but it remains one of the biggest and most complex in the entire Call of Duty franchise's history, and it's also the first major asset in the series' history to be open-sourced. Activision's aim is multi-pronged; the publisher hopes the data set will be a valuable resource in academia and training, support AI development, and speed up the evolution of authoring tools.
"This initiative represents Activision’s commitment to innovation and growth in multiple fields, including AI learning, within the communities of academia and research, while propelling the advancement of game development," the company said. "It brings to life the colossal and carefully crafted map that was home to many epic brawls in Call of Duty: Warzone and is production-proven and battle-tested."
Caldera's release to the open-source community will have a ripple effect that goes beyond Call of Duty and even the video game industry. In a press release, the chief technology officer of Disney's Pixar said the data set "marks a significant milestone for the industry," adding, "this initiative not only paves the way for groundbreaking research in environmental geometry and scene construction but also exemplifies the collaborative spirit essential for innovation in our field.
"By making such data available, Activision is empowering developers and researchers alike to explore new frontiers in 3D rendering and simulation, ultimately enriching the creative process across the board."
In a blog post, Activision said the data set can be used by students, educators, and professionals for training, demonstrations, and experimentation. It also said the release will support AI development by providing a playground to facilitate the training of AI models and help evolve authoring tools by testing them against complex geometries and environments.
For its own part, Activision fellow software engineer Michael Vance said "innovations that come from this data set release could give more freedom and flexibility for our content teams to find the most engaging scenarios for our players," and they could even pave the way for game files that take up less hard drive space. "We are excited about what the academic community will produce based on Caldera and look forward to seeing new techniques that we could never have imagined."
With any luck, the best Call of Duty games are still to come.
