We can all agree that one of the main immersion breaking things in the game is how empty of zois the world is. The Sims can get away with it because of it’s smaller scale and stylized art, Inzoi can’t. We need crowds, we need vibrant cities, and we need zois in the background just filling the world.
I was reading about the UE 5.8 feature “MetaHuman Crowd”, which will surely help the game in the future, and thinking how the game could manage this.
As I see it there are 3 barriers: rendering, close to the player simulation, and full population simulation.
Full population simulation is really not needed. Why simulate anything for thousands of background zois? They only need their looks, a simplified personality, a daily schedule (home, to work, to restaurant, to home) and it’s all. For zois that are just around you don’t need more. For zois that you just interact once or twice in a coffee shop you don’t need more either. Only after the player deepens his connection with one is when the game should generate a full zoi setup for them, their family, etc. They could be passed as zois that live outside, in the outskirts, in the next city or something. And only if you befriend them then they have a chance to move into the playable city.
Close to the player simulation is similar. I don’t know exactly how Inzoi does it right now for zois you don’t know, but for all these “dumb” background zois you don’t need to simulate their needs, mods, etc. Just a credible match between where their are and what they do is enough. A background zoid in a park is walking or playing, one in a restaurant is eating and talking with another background zoid, etc. It doesn’t matter if he is eating without simulating their food need, until you don’t befriend him that zoid it’s just a filler, and the game doesn’t need to keep track of their interaction record with the other background zoid he is talking with.
Rendering is a question of applying this metahuman crowd feature, nanite, and other optimization features. There are a ton of game with crowds and alive cities, it can be done.
I know this is a lot of work and a fundamental change of how the game works internally, but until we have something similar to this Inzoi is a home life simulation, the city is just a placeholder.