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ABOUT US

Activision’s game studios focus on delivering the best possible games without
compromise. Our Central Tech R&D team works alongside our studio specialists as
we apply our research to evolve our products and keep ahead of where the
industry is going next.

People at Activision have a long history of publications in conferences,
journals, and magazines, and of collaborations with academic and private
research groups. This website is the first time that the work has been collected
and presented in a single place, a hub for sharing that will host blog posts,
articles, and presentations from research within Activision. Its intended
audience is developers, researchers, and anyone who is aspiring to become one.


JOIN US!

We are looking for talented people to explore and problem-solve with us.


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Hemispherical Lighting Insights

THOMAS ROUGHTON, PETER-PIKE SLOAN, ARI SILVENNOINEN, and PETER SHIRLEY

This tech report discusses optimal encoding methods for AHD and IrradZ
lightmaps, introduces two new IrradZ-compatible and runtime-blendable
hemispherical lighting models, and shows how to efficiently apply hemispherical
or cone occlusion to volumetric spherical harmonic lighting at runtime to
improve the appearance of AO and prevent light leaking.
May 20, 2024
Learn More
Read Article
ZH3: QUADRATIC ZONAL HARMONICS

Thomas Roughton, Peter-Pike Sloan, Ari Silvennoinen, Michal Iwanicki, & Peter
Shirley

This presentation introduces the ZH3 lighting model, which sits in between
linear and quadratic SH in quality but requires only one extra coefficient over
linear SH. It describes how to solve for the ZH3 coefficient, how using a
luminance axis can mitigate color shifting, and how RGB ZH3 can be encoded in
only 16 bytes. Additionally, it shows how ZH3 coefficients can be hallucinated
from the ratio of the bands in linear SH, improving on linear SH in quality with
no extra storage.
May 10, 2024
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Read Article
Call of Duty Matchmaking Intel

Call of Duty Staff

The design of Call of Duty matchmaking is driven by our goal to create the best
experiences for our player community.
Apr 04, 2024
Learn More
Read Article
Challenges in Moderating Disruptive Player Behavior in Online Competitive Action
Games

Rafal Kocielnik, Zhuofang Li, Claudia Kann, Deshawn Sambrano, Jacob Morrier,
Mitchell Linegar, Carly Taylor, Min Kim, Nabiha Naqvie, Feri Soltani, Arman
Dehpanah, Grant Cahill, Animashree Anandkumar, & R. Michael Alvarez

In a collaboration between Caltech and ABK, we identified six challenges related
to handling disruptive behaviors in competitive action games through analysis of
Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® II data and stakeholder feedback. We discovered
challenges omitted by prior work, such as handling high-volume imbalanced data
and ensuring the comfort of human moderators. We also offered a discussion of
possible technical, design, and policy approaches to mitigating these
challenges.
Feb 23, 2024
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Read Article
Task Graph Renderer at Activision

Charlie Birtwistle & Francois Durand

Originally presented at the Rendering Engine Architecture Conference 2023, this
presentation explores the render graph technology we use at Activision.
Jun 05, 2023
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Read Article
Remote Administration Payload Malware Analysis



Journey into the malware analysis and reverse engineering process of a
multi-staged remote administration payload.
May 04, 2023
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Read Article
Scaling Databases at Activision

Greg Smith, Vlad Kovacik

Originally presented at KubeCon 2023 Amsterdam, this talk explores how Demonware
adopted Vitess/Kubernetes to run MySQL databases at a significant scale. The
talk describes MySQL operational and scalability difficulties we had and how
Vitess helped to solve them.
Apr 21, 2023
Learn More
Read Article
Reversing Anti-Cheat's Detection-Generation Cycle With Configurable
Hallucinations

David Durst, Carly Taylor

Anti-cheat and cheat developers are locked in a cat-and-mouse cycle of detection
and generation. Anti-cheat developers struggle to detect cheating players'
behavior. Cheat developers easily evade the detections by generating different
behavior. This paper examines how anti-cheat developers may reverse the cycle
with configurable hallucinations.
Mar 27, 2023
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Read Article
Shadows of Cold War: A Scalable Approach to Shadowing

Kevin Myers

Originally presented in GDC’s Advanced Graphics Summit, this presentation
explains the system Treyarch developed for Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War to
automatically scale shadow quality.
Oct 11, 2021
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Read Article
The Road to Direct Lookups is Paved with Good Intentions

Alex Boyd, Davide Romani

A MySQL Performance Case Study
Oct 01, 2021
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Read Article
Geometry Rendering Pipeline Architecture

Michal Drobot

This talk covers the general architecture of our render pipeline with focus on
certain novel approaches and provides comparative performance analysis dependent
on specific render scenarios ranging from closed indoor spaces and open world
outdoor spaces to more specific heavy triangle and alpha test overdraw scenes.
Current work in progress and future extensions are discussed.
Sep 17, 2021
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Read Article
The Rust Programming Language for Game Tooling

Dan Olson

The Rust programming language has been quietly taking the tech world by storm,
but adoption has been slower among game studios. Treyarch has been gradually
integrating Rust into our tools and pipeline since 2018. This session leverages
that experience to explore both the opportunities and challenges that Rust can
give to the game tools programmer and examine the ways in which Rust can be a
powerful addition to the tools arsenal.
Sep 16, 2021
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Rendering Engine Architecture at Activision

Michael Vance

Learn the “how” and the “why” of Activision’s rendering submission process. A
walk through of how we prepare and submit work, with special attention paid to
the underlying philosophical basis for our decision-making. We examine decoupled
simulation and rendering, memory orthogonality, parallelism in worker command
systems, latency minimization, and hierarchy of work amortization.
Sep 16, 2021
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Read Article
Moving Basis Decomposition for Precomputed Light Transport

Ari Silvennoinen, Peter-Pike Sloan

We study the problem of efficient representation of potentially
high-dimensional, spatially coherent signals in the context of precomputed light
transport. This paper won the EGSR 2021 Best Paper Award.
Sep 15, 2021
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Read Article
Large-Scale Global Illumination in Call of Duty

Ari Silvennoinen

A presentation describing the key techniques behind the large-scale global
illumination system in Call of Duty. Explained is a new precomputed lighting
compression technique that enables high-performance and seamless reconstruction
directly from the compressed lighting data. Visibility-based sampling of
precomputed volumetric lighting, and a practical method for computing
constrained spherical harmonics representations, are also discussed.
Sep 15, 2021
Learn More
Read Article
Boots on the Ground: The Terrain of Call of Duty

J.T. Hooker

Over the last couple projects Treyarch developed a new terrain system that's
been seen in Black Ops 4, Warzone, and Black Ops Cold War.
Sep 14, 2021
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Read Article
Model Collision: Balancing Speed and Size in Black Ops Cold War

Andrew Shurney

This presentation is a technical deep dive into the process of optimizing the
high-accuracy model collision in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Sep 13, 2021
Learn More
Read Article
Cheating Cheaters: Malware Delivered as Call of Duty Cheats



This report examines a hacking tool being promoted for use against gamers by
masquerading as a cheat for Call of Duty: Warzone.
Mar 31, 2021
Learn More
Read Article
Controller to Display Latency in Call of Duty

Akimitsu Hogge

Reasoning about controller to display latency can be non-intuitive in modern
game engines where multiple independent timelines are running in parallel. In
this presentation, we analyze the path that data flows through each of these
timelines, from the input sample out to the video scan-out hardware. By
identifying and measuring segments on this path, a dynamic throttle can be
implemented to squeeze the input sample as close to the end of the frame as
possible without dropping frames. Special attention is placed on how latency is
introduced in the interaction between the GPU and display scan-out timelines
when Vsync is enabled.
Nov 06, 2020
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Read Article
Contoller to Display Latency in Call of Duty

Akimitsu Hogge


Nov 06, 2020
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Read Article
Raytraced Shadows in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Michal Olejnik, Pawel Kozlowski (NVIDIA)

This presentation describes how ray tracing can be integrated into a modern,
forward+ engine with minimal-to-no content changes. Also discussed: how to
approach the ray tracing of multiple local area lights, and how to efficiently
clean up any resulting noise.
Oct 16, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Precomputed Lighting Advances in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Peter-Pike Sloan, Ari Silvennoinen

This talk covers extensions and improvements in the precomputed lighting
pipeline used in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Sep 21, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Lima Oscar Delta! Scaling Content in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Rulon Raymond

Call of Duty is well known for its 60fps frenetic gameplay. To achieve a high
level of graphical fidelity at this frame rate across all target platforms, a
suite of finely tuned content scaling techniques must be employed.
Sep 21, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Software-based Variable Rate Shading in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Michal Drobot

This lecture covers a novel rendering pipeline used in Call of Duty: Modern
Warfare (2020).
Sep 21, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
The Design and Evolution of the UberBake Light Baking System

Dario Seyb, Peter-Pike Sloan, Ari Silvennoinen, Michal Iwanicki, Wojciech Jarosz

We describe the design and evolution of UberBake, a global illumination system
we have used in multiple AAA games, which supports dynamic lighting changes in
response to certain player interactions.
Sep 21, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Deringing Spherical Harmonics

Peter-Pike Sloan

Spherical Harmonics (SH) are a convenient basis for representing various signals
in computer graphics, with lighting and visibility being the most common.
Mar 12, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
ATVI-TR-19-01: Practical Real-Time Strategies for Accurate Indirect Occlusion

Jorge Jimenez; Xian-Chun Wu; Angelo Pesce; Adrian Jarabo

In this work we introduce a set of techniques for real-time ambient occlusion
targeted to very tight budgets. We propose GTAO, a new formulation of
screen-space ambient occlusion that allows the composited occluded illumination
to match the ground truth reference in half a millisecond on current console
hardware.
Mar 09, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
ATVI-TR-19-02: Separable Subsurface Scattering: Expanded Technical Report

Jorge Jimenez

This technical report extends the content of [JZJ∗ 15], by adding some
additional explanations and details, and including new tests with more complex
multilayered materials.
Mar 09, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Dynamic Temporal Antialiasing and Upsampling in Call of Duty

Jorge Jimenez

This talk covers the temporal supersampling techniques created during the
development of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
Mar 06, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Happy New Year From Activision Research

Paul Malin

We had fun making this animation over the holidays. Hope you enjoy it!
Jan 23, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Ray Guiding for Production Lightmap Baking

Ari Silvennoinen

In this paper we present a ray guiding technique for improving the computation
times in the context of production lightmap baking. Compared to
state-of-the-art, our method has better scalability and lower variance.
Jan 11, 2020
Learn More
Read Article
Impulse Responses for Precomputing Light from Volumetric Media

Adrien Dubouchet

Volumetric participating media can significantly impact the realism of virtual
scenes, due to both the subtle interplay between surface and volume-transport
effects and the presence of entities like smoke and clouds.
Jul 08, 2019
Learn More
Read Article
Material Advances in Call of Duty: WWII

Danny Chan

A number of improvements were made to our lit surface shaders in Call of Duty:
WWII, a few of which are described in this presentation.
Aug 24, 2018
Learn More
Read Article
Automated Testing in Call of Duty

Jan van Valburg

How huge games like 'Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare' monitor the progression of
code and assets in terms of functionality and performance.
Jun 26, 2018
Learn More
Read Article
HDR in Call of Duty

Paul Malin

This talk covers a basic introduction to color science, color terminology, and
display standards.
Jun 04, 2018
Learn More
Read Article
Real-World Measurements for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Danny Chan

Our goal for the rendering in COD: AW was to take a small step towards
photorealism.
May 14, 2018
Learn More
Read Article
Emotion Challenge: Building a New Photoreal Facial Performance Pipeline for
Games

Cyrus Wilson

In recent years the expected standard for facial animation and character
performance in AAA video games has dramatically increased.
Aug 21, 2017
Learn More
Read Article
Precomputed lighting in Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Michal Iwanicki

Indirect lighting is an important factor in creating a believable look of game
worlds.
Aug 08, 2017
Learn More
Read Article
Improved Culling for Tiled and Clustered Rendering in Call of Duty: Infinite
Warfare

Michal Drobot

This lecture covers two novel rendering algorithms used in Call of Duty:
Infinite Warfare. The first, z-binning, significantly improves the quality and
performance of volumetric entity-vs-geometry culling as compared to classic
tiled and clustered techniques.
Aug 01, 2017
Learn More
Read Article
Practical Multilayered Materials in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Michal Drobot

This talk presents a practical approach to multilayer, physically based surface
rendering, specifically optimized for Forward+ rendering pipelines.
Jul 31, 2017
Learn More
Read Article
Rendering of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Michal Drobot

This lecture presents a technical deep dive into COD:IW renderer and the
architectural design process behind it.
Jul 07, 2017
Learn More
Read Article
Ambient Dice

Michal Iwanicki

We present a family of basis functions designed to accurately and efficiently
represent illumination signals on the unit sphere.
Jun 14, 2017
Learn More
Read Article
Fast Filtering of Reflection Probes

Josiah Manson, Peter-Pike Sloan

Game and movie studios are switching to physically based rendering en masse, but
physically accurate filter convolution is difficult to do quickly enough to
update reflection probes in real-time.
Oct 18, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
Filmic SMAA: Sharp Morphological and Temporal Antialiasing

Jorge Jimenez

From Siggraph 2016, our antialiasing technique for games.
Sep 07, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
ATVI-TR-16-02: Practical Order Independent Transparency

Johan Kohler

Transparencies have always been a tricky problem for games, to render them
correctly you have to draw them in front-to-back order from the view of the
camera, traditionally this means to sort them when you do this you have to break
apart material batches and sometimes even meshes, which affects performance.
Sep 01, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
Efficient GPU Rendering of Subdivision Surfaces

Wade Brainerd

We present a novel method for real-time rendering of subdivision surfaces whose
goal is to make subdivision faces as easy to render as triangles, points, or
lines.
Aug 26, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
Volumetric Global Illumination at Treyarch

John Hooker

We present a solution for indirect diffuse lighting as an alternative to
traditional lightmaps.
Aug 25, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
Practical Real-Time Strategies for Accurate Indirect Occlusion

Jorge Jimenez, Xian-Chun Wu, Angelo Pesce, Adrian Jarabo

We present new systems for occlusion of indirect lighting.
Aug 24, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
Sparse Shadow Trees

Kevin Myers

Lighting large outdoor scenes continues to present a challenge for realtime
rendering.
Aug 24, 2016
Learn More
Read Article
ATVI-TR-16-01: Practical Realtime Strategies for Accurate Indirect Occlusion

Jorge Jimenez, Xian-Chun Wu, Angelo Pesce, Adrian Jarabo

Ambient occlusion is ubiquitous in games and other real-time applications to
approximate global illumination effects.
Jul 23, 2016
Learn More
Read Article

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