The new "Volumetric Player Animations" in FM25. What we can expect.

16 months ago, in June 2023, SI announced that FM would have “a truer reflection of real-life football with new animation tech” thanks to “new integrations with an exciting partner from the professional world of football”. We now know that what this referred to was something called “Volumetric Player Movements” and the exciting partner from the professional world of football was… the Premier League.

The new partnership with the Premier League will not only let the game show official club logos, kits and player faces, but it will also give SI access to special 3D cameras that have been installed at Emirates, Anfield and Etihad stadiums. These cameras can record every moment in full 360 degrees which lets each moment be replayed from any angle, whether it’s a fan on the pitch, an opposing player or the player themselves. But more importantly than that, from our perspective, these recordings can be processed and fed into the games engine to fully replicate every tiny movement players make on the pitch. Whether it’s the way they run, the way they turn or the way they kick the ball, it can all be replicated in game making it all appear much more realistic.

This technology is already used in FC25 (FIFA). Here’s a very short 10 second clip showing how they’ve fully replicated Haaland’s real life running style thanks to this amazing technology.

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsIZ-uVF3j8SWzz8dIzl0Kd6fYBOM0SDb?si=i_qMNhltIF5QhWl1

But what’s the big difference between EAFC and FM? Realism. I don’t mean graphical realism like players faces, I mean realism of the match. EAFC is alot more arcade like, with fast pasted action where 8 goals can be scored in a 15 minute match. But if you’ve ever attempted to watch a 90 minute match in FM you’ll know it’s VERY realistic. You can sit there and watch a drab 0-0 play out if you wish. That means there’s also a big difference between the two in the realism of the players positions on the pitch, the decisions they make and the areas they cover on the pitch, tactics essentially.

With EAFC when we think of player movements we think of the awesome replays of a player twisting their body to angle the perfect volley. But with FM we think of player movements in terms of areas of the pitch they move in and out of. This is an area volumetric player data could really help with. The new in and out of possession roles coming in FM25, including the new Playmaking Wing Back role thats been dubbed the “TAA Role”, will need to have been implemented into the new engine and SI will now have access to hours of data on every tiny movement Trent makes on the pitch to help fully implement this new role.

It’s not only individual player movements that can be replicated, but the movement of the entire team, whether it’s the natural shift to one side of the pitch for a goal kick, or the quick press from multiple players, the amount of data SI will have could give them the opportunity to replicate a real world football match like never before.

But, and this is a big but, it’s not clear how much they are actually making use of it, yet. The system requirements have jumped up form 7GB to 20GB in storage space, which is a sign of the improvements to come. But considering SI have also boasted about improvements to “stadiums and the surrounding scenes” as well as the user interface, these two alone could account for a chunk of that disk space, so it seems like there’s not a lot left for this level of detail.

Definitely don’t expect the same level of detail as EAFC, the mere fact that the 20GB demanded by FM is merely 1/5th of the 100GB demanded by EAFC should tell you everything you need to know on that front. But to further emphasise this point for anyone still dreaming it’s worth noting that EAFC uses a proprietary machine learning algorithm to feed the volumetric data into their match engine. SI don’t have anything like this. It’s not available in Unity, their new AI tools aren’t even set to debut until October 17th 2024, so SI would have to develop this themselves. I’ve looked at the last 4 years of job positions SI have listed on their website using the wayback machine, not once have they advertised for experts in machine learning or AI.

(On a side not, that also means anyone hoping for Chat GPT levels of player and media interaction anytime soon should be prepared for a long wait).

Furthermore we’ve spoken to a number of researchers for the game and they’ve all confirmed to us that their work is still based entirely on the old system of inputting individual attributes and a very limited set of graphical features such as hair colour and skin tone. There is nothing to suggest that this volumetric data is going to be used to automatically generate a more accurate representation of individual players.

But given that Miles has specifically called out the fact that this volumetric player data “obviously requires considerable investment” you have to assume they are going to be making as much use of it as possible, even if takes longer than this initial release of FM25. It will no doubt be on their minds to eventually begin to replicate individual stars in future iterations. But for now we can only hope they keep their promise that “the way that everything looks and moves will be far more true-to-life than ever before with FM25”.