Google Stadia instead of next gen console??

[gangzoom]

Want to avoid spoilers, but the story elements of Cyberpunk is fab, even more amazing is I can run through them on my S9 smart phone whilst keeping half an eye on family stuff!!

Is a screen grab off my S9, quite unbelievable you can get level of graphics detail on a nearly 3 year old smart phone in realtime gameplay!

Forget about graphics cards and CPUs, the future is having a rock solid broadband/network connection.

Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 12th December 15:32

[gangzoom]

Oakey said:

You'd get that level of detail if you fed it into a 30yr old CRT, it's just a video feed, it's not rendering anything on your phone.

Its also fully 'interactive' and just works on just about any device.

To be honest I don't really care about how/why it works, as long as it work, and means I can play games without having to spend £££ upgrading hardware. I pay for high speed broadband anyways for TV/work, so the only additional cost to me is literally the games - some of which is crazy cheap, I paid £1.57 for FarCry 5!!

Investing £££ in local hardware for the sake of running games now just seem mad with services like Stadia around.

[gangzoom]

Oakey said:

This 20yr old Sony Trinitron disagrees with you

I actually did my GCSE art project on one of those, fantastic screens, actually much better motion handling than most LCD screens I've used. From memory the max resolution on them was actually quite high, most graphics cards at the time struggled to run them. The display quality am 100% sure is better than anything a Xbox One or PS4 can output when trying to run Cyberpunk .

Just checked, native resolution on the 19inch was 1600 x 1200, far far better image quality than most LCD TV/monitors sold today.

Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 12th December 17:11

[gangzoom]

Oakey said:

I think people forget or don't realise that prior to 720p and 1080p becoming the standard for the masses when LCD TV's started taking off circa 2005-2006 we already had higher resolutions than that on PC.

But the hardware to drive those resolutions were no existent. I seem to remember trying to get UT to run well at XGA was hard even on high end machines, forget trying to drive the game at native 19-20inch CRT resolutions. Lets not forget the 100ms latency on 56k modems, still didn't stop people getting head shots from across the map.

[gangzoom]

noopets said:

Just redeemed my code. Can’t wait for it to arrive

Me too. I'm quite keen to see how well it runs in 4K and HDR on the TV. Currently I don't have a device that can output 4k/HDR with Stadia, if I like the results I'll probably sign up to the 'pro' subscription.....£8.99/month isn't terrible and the games library is looking OK with access to all the previous pro games I "claimed' before like Grid.

[gangzoom]

My ChromeCast is been dispatched so will be here tomorrow, not that I'll time to play on it due to work.

I'm just working out if I should stop been tight and pay for Stadia Pro - providing 4K streaming works OK. According to Stadia I've actually managed to put in about 90hrs of gaming time since the summer, which is alot more than I thought!

Goes to show if you can turn the odd free 30 minutes into gaming time you can still enjoying gaming even with family + work life going on and you aren't tied to a single desk/TV for gaming.



Getting Pro would also get me access to games like Grid/Tom Raider which I claimed on Pro before but its included anyone, in addition to all the current games on Pro - EverSpace looks interesting, but effectively Pro subscription would give me access to more games than I have any free time play.

I put together some short clips I captured on Stadia, but essentially Stadia just letting me enjoy gaming again without any hardware worries, which ultimately is all I care about. The fact it's essentially 'free' apart from paying for the games is nuts.

https://youtu.be/PsFyYQQtYXo

Edited by gangzoom on Sunday 13th December 11:01

[gangzoom]

hotchy said:

Could you imagine using games like warzone on it though. 100s of millions not only playing online, also loading every single frame from the internet at the same time.

How many people access YouTube/Netflix at the sametime and the servers don't crash? The delivery of the content is the same. I've had no issues with game play on Stadia.

[gangzoom]

Oakey said:

I think the bigger issue would be the amount of computing power required to render millions of instances of something like Cyberpunk 2077 at 4k.

This is Google we are talking about though, if anyone can leverage/access processing power its them. Even Microsoft I think will struggle to compete on that front, Sony has zero chance.

From the amount of flak the developers of Cyberpunk has taken I can see in the future Google may find it easy to tie up exclusives. Why spend effort trying to develop one title for multiple platforms if you can just develop it to run on Google hardware which than pushes it out to the market?

I'm happy to pay for games on Staida if I know they will work and work well, which at present Google is delivering on.

[gangzoom]

Oakey said:

No, I think Microsoft has bigger market share in cloud computing than Google.

Regardless who does it, when done well it clearly works. It'll be really interesting to see how developers take to it. Sony/Microsoft with their hardware shortages and software not working well on current consoles may have shown why Google is invested in Stadia now.

What matters though is what we get as consumers, competition is always good. I've not tried Xcloud but its suppose to work just as well.

[gangzoom]

blueST said:

Before I ordrdered I just tried playing Hitman via Chrome on my ancient 2012 Mac mini over Wi-fi. Only a 1080 monitor, but it was smooth, seemed to function properly with responsive controls. Using a keyboard and mouse was not ideal so I didn't playfor long. Looking forward to trying again when the controller gets here.

Suggesting you rather play a game that started out in life as a PC FPS with a controller when you have a choice to use a mouse + keyboard.......Oh the humanity .

[gangzoom]

Chromecast arrived today, was surprisingly easy to setup via wired Ethernet (Powerlink) and controller via Wifi (router 10 meters away in a different room.

Gameplay was flawless but before ponying up the £8.99/month for 4K I wanted to see how much difference it makes. I have ‘Pro’ subscription running on a spare Stadia account and thought I test the visual difference on Hitman 2.

These are done with one using my laptop at 1080p and one with Chromecast at 4K.





This is the screen shot at 4K, the 4K version has more resolution but the texture details are identical – and in some cases not as good as Xbox version of the game.







So thanks Goolge for the ‘free’ Chromecast and controller, love been able to play Cyberpunk on my TV without connecting the laptop and the controller isn’t bad at all. But I wouldn’t be signing up to ‘Pro’ subscription, yes you get higer res but not higher quality textures, and when your sitting a few meter back 1080p even on a 50inch screen looks absolutely fine!

Overall very happy with Stadia and Cyberpunk with Chromecast ultra ☺

[gangzoom]

blueST said:

I had to do it on my iPad instead.

I got really excited about it working on iOS, as it means I can use the iPad - apparently my increased usage of the laptop during 'family time' has been noticed .

Sadly it looks like a 2013 iPad isn't quite as useful as a 2013 MacBook......Good thing xmas is around the corner!!

[gangzoom]

blueST said:

What’s Grid like?

Not great at all, I was hoping for TOCA but nothing close.

Very odd as F12020 is so much better.

[gangzoom]

Drink, fire, Cyberpunk 2077, hope everyone have a great Christmas and look forwards to 2021 been better than 2020

[gangzoom]

Doofus said:

Maybe next year, you could buy a table and a chair.

Maybe with the money saved by not having to buy a new laptop/games console I will be able to afford a table and chair .

[gangzoom]

Having tried Stadia on various devices phones, laptop, TV, and ChromeCast Ultra I always got the impression for whatever reason the games streamed via ChromeCast just looked 'better' on the TV than any other device, however the ChromeCast played badly with my TalkTalk Router and only worked well with ethernet. Today I managed to setup a cheapo Mesh WiFi setup for the house and the data stream does suggest the the ChromeCast pulls far more data than my laptop when streaming at the same 1080p resolution for the same game (F1 2020).

With the ChromeCast ultra running on the mesh network, it was consistently over 35Mbps pulled with occasions hitting nearly 50Mbps.



With my laptop peak was under 30Mbps, with average figures of around 20-25Mbps. I than checked the WiFi speed on the laptop to make sure that wasn't a bottleneck, and it wasn't, with speeds of over 60Mbps on my mesh setup.

So Google may say Stadia works at 10Mbps, but if even if you don't want 4K/5.1 surround sound, with a Chromecast you need well over 30Mbps to have an enjoyable experience, which might explain why Stadia doesn't work well for some people. And Stadia work very well with a mesh Wifi seup, even a cheapo one (£110 for 3 nodes) .

[gangzoom]

hyphen said:

Without, they are targeting gangzoom like people, who own old laptops. ....

.......Google accountants are in charge, and not convinced by the Stadia business plan.

And getting £££ out of me is like getting blood out of a stone .

I'm still really enjoying Stadia, finally managed to complete 1 season of F1 2020, and about done with FarCry 5 which I picked up for £1.50.

If Stadia does stop I will have got more than my share of gaming time - Still got Assassin's Creed to start which I got for £15 and Cyberpunk to complete.

The technology is amazing, it runs beautifully with no hardware on the user end, but the backend hardware costs to Google must be massive. Cannot see my self getting another console, but apparently XboX live runs on my smart phone? Haven't tried it yet though as 4K OLED panel running games looks too lovely

Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 2nd February 11:21

[gangzoom]

So apparently if I can run Xbox live using my phone using Samsung DEX.....

https://youtu.be/MI1nptc6dCg

I don't have a Xbox live account, but DEX does run fine, for photo editing/word and even Carmageddon - wirelessly.



So what happens if I try to Cyberpunk via Stadia. To confirm this is Cyberpunk running on a Google server, sent to my router, than to my phone, than to my TV, with information than needing to go back the otherway.

Well it works, its not pretty, not quick (around 1/4 second lag), but the phone told me to expect lag and asked me to connect wired if possible. So if I got a USB C hub for the TV, with ethernet/power/HDMI connection than in theory my phone can essentially act as a gaming hub, inaddtion to all the other stuff it does. Need to think about how all this can work interms of actual work work to replace my laptop when the time comes, but this tech really is mad.

[gangzoom]

I've finally completed FarCry 5....talk about depressive endings almost as bad as Spec Ops.

Now starting to get into Assassins Creed, even without paying for 4k and HDR streaming on a 4K OLED panel it looks fabulous!

Hopefully by the time am done with it Cyberpunk will be updated and more balanced - I stopped playing it when even at early/mid game I could literally run through a level without even using any gun by hacking everyone.

Also waiting for Hitman 3 to go sale sometime later this year before 'buying' it.

[gangzoom]

sbarclay62 said:

Got to say i'm very very impressed with it.

The tech is fantastic, I'm really getting into Assassin's Creed - amazing not to have to worry about storage space or specs of the machine.

Google just need to find a way to make money from it, because they really aren't making much money off people like me!!