Since the first time EVE Online developer CCP Games showed off its VR dogfighter EVE:Valkyrie, players have dreamed of having the directly controlled fighters fighting alongside massive ships in the real political wars of EVE Online. PvP battles in EVE Online can reach unparalleled scale thanks to its supercomputer server and a feature called Time Dilation that slows the game down under heavy load, earning the game the Guinness World Record for largest PvP battle for January 2018’s 6142-player Siege of 9-4.
Now it seems that CCP Games is experimenting with pushing the limits of current scalable server technology to bring the massive scale of EVE Online to a new arena. In partnership with Hadean and its Aether simulation engine, CCP Games is due to show off a new EVE: Aether Wars tech demo at GDC. Hadean originally announced this 10,000 player battle test in January, and since then has been working with CCP Games to use EVE Online‘s assets in the demo.
Aether Engine is powered by Microsoft Azure and designed for creating incredibly large-scale cloud-native game applications, and CCP will be using it in future to explore large scale simulation in its current and future games. Players can sign up now to be part of the 10,000 pilot test that will take place during GDC. While this is just a tech demo and may be used only for simulation purposes, it could also serve as a technology platform for future projects by CCP Games.
