The future. Tis upon us. And once again, it’s gaming that’s paving the way.

This week at E3, Bethesda Softworks announced Orion. What’s Orion? It’s “a patented collection of software technologies that optimize game engines for superior performance in a streaming environment.”

For gamers, this brings ‘imperceptible latency’ to, not just one game engine but, any game engine. Even more, it brings it to the highly-anticipated, yet-to-be-release Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud. It’s all coming together in what Jessica Conditt over at Engadget has rightly called “The Era Of The Stream”.

“Wasn’t Netflix the Era of the Stream?” Well, perhaps it started there. Google and Microsoft are bringing it to gaming. BUT, where those streaming platforms are reliant on the bandwidth, Bethesda is bringing the streaming capability to the players, so it doesn’t matter how far you are from a datacenter or how slow your internet is.

How can they do that? How can they get around bandwidth being throttled? They are incorporating Orion technology at the game engine level making it possible to stream game content up to 20% faster per frame and 40% lower bandwidth. That’s significant. And, it can be ‘easily’ integrated by game developers with Bethesda’s Orion SDK.

My question: Will the Era of the Stream include 3D Modeling/Rendering/Simulation software? Would 3D software benefit from this technology?

Some will argue it already does. Some will say ‘streaming’ isn’t needed for 3D design software like it is for 60 fps/4k gaming. Some will glare and re-install their favorite 3D modeling software on their desktop that’s completely disconnected from anything resembling a data port.

But what if all the design process did take advantage of technology that reduced any latency in loading, rebuilding, transferring, shading, simulating. Better yet, what if it was a technology that could be easily integrated by any 3D design software developer?

Author

Josh is founder and editor at SolidSmack.com, founder at Aimsift Inc., and co-founder of EvD Media. He is involved in engineering, design, visualization, the technology making it happen, and the content developed around it. He is a SolidWorks Certified Professional and excels at falling awkwardly.