Atomontage launches first test of Virtual Matter voxel-based game dev technology (2024)

Deep tech startup Atomontage announce that the first real test of its Virtual Matter game development platform is now playable for free in the Atomontage Client app.

The tiny app is available without sign-up on both iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store), and also instantly accessible in any modern web browser without the need to install or sign up for anything.

The Atomontage platform’s groundbreaking Virtual Matter microvoxel streaming technology unlocks entirely new and emergent gameplay possibilities, with persistent worlds that can be built and destroyed over weeks of both synchronous and asynchronous cross-play by many players, on whatever device they prefer: browser, desktop, laptop, phone, tablet, virtual reality, or mixed reality.

With Virtual Matter, anyone can easily create their own destructible game assets by simply taking a single picture with their phone, or uploading any model from other games, tools, or 3D scans. They can also easily make detailed art and environments from scratch, or remixed from other assets, with the built-in “Photoshop-for-3D” tools.

Seamless integration with partner Common Sense Machines’ Cube 3D generative AI platform allows users to upload any single 2D image by drag and drop or share/take any photo on their phone to automatically transform them into easily editable Virtual Matter 3D objects.

Any Virtual Matter object can then be grabbed in the playable First-Person-View game test and used to both repeatedly place/build and also dig/carve with. They can therefore become parts of the player’s avatar, adorn a home base, and soon their vehicles too — Mad Max style.

In conjunction with the new gameplay capability made public today, the Atomontage team is also announcing its partnership with the indie game studio Data Realms, in the form of a project to make a 3D version of the award-winning classic 2D indie game IP, Cortex Command. A prototype of Cortex Command 3D will be built in public over this summer of 2024, as the first real game concept realized on the Atomontage Virtual Matter platform.

Watch the Playable Game Test and Cortex Command 3D Announcement Here:
YouTube | Download

The original Cortex Command won the Independent Games Festival Audience- and Technical Awards in 2009, was one of the first Early Access titles (inspiring Markus “Notch” Persson to also adopt the business model for Minecraft), and has enjoyed a highly creative modding community for over two decades.

The Atomontage platform’s unique cloud persistent deep simulation of its fine-grained Virtual Matter lends itself perfectly to the concept of Cortex Command: The game revolves around the building of underground brain bunkers, mining for gold in destructible terrain, reusable (or crashable) space rockets, and brutal physics-based combat that leaves wreckage and broken bodies permanently scattered across its ever-changing battlefields.

As seen in popular video games such as Minecraft and Tuxedo Labs’ simulation game Teardown, voxels allow for deep player simulation and emergent gameplay, with worlds and objects constructed by blocks, or “volume pixels” — voxels.

Atomontage’s microvoxel technology, Virtual Matter, offers the same kind of deep interactivity but at an extremely fine granularity while also being far less demanding on hardware requirements than textured polygon meshes used in traditional game development.

Experiences built on Atomontage’s Virtual Matter microvoxel data is also much faster and easier to get into for users since it is streamed progressively via the cloud to many different devices, allowing anyone on desktop, mobile, or XR headsets to immediately access and socially interact in the same high-fidelity 3D worlds.

The full game development environment of Atomontage is to be released publicly in the coming months, including the Lua scripting environment, rigid body physics, audio streaming, particle systems, and more. This is to eventually make it a fully-fledged game development and distribution platform in one, similar to Roblox – but with the deep simulation and emergent gameplay of Minecraft, plus the high-fidelity 3D made possible by its unique Virtual Matter™ technology, which is based on patent pending breakthroughs from 20+ years of R&D.

Atomontage is the creator of a breakthrough microvoxel technology that has been in R&D for more than 20 years and launched an early minimal viable product for visualization into open beta in 2021. Once fully built out, its volumetric platform will streamline the capture, creation, editing, distribution, and consumption of all forms of interactive 3D computer simulation and graphics – including commercially viable games.