The future of gaming

[Mister V]

Has anyone else heard of the Onlive service coming from Cloud later this year? A very real possibility it could hail the end of pc's/consols. As it will allow you to play a game like crysis on a 5 year old laptop on maximum graphics settings!

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/965/965535p1.html

Edited by Mister V on Tuesday 24th March 06:44

Edited by Mister V on Tuesday 24th March 07:00

[Urban_Ninja]

link dont work

[simonrockman]

"If it works and gets proper support from both publishers" That's that dead then.

Edited by simonrockman on Wednesday 25th March 06:17

[deckster]

It's hardly a new idea and the problems are the same as they've ever been -

- bandwidth
- backend processing power
- bandwidth

Effectively they're centralizing computing power, which is great until GTA5 is launched and 50% of the country want to play it at the same time. Are their datacentres going to cope? And given the grief that ISPs are having over iPlayer and the like, it's safe to say that our internet backbones are going to struggle with the kind of bandwidth needed to support a significant number of 1080p feeds. Are you happy with having to coordinate with the rest of the road to decide who gets to play this evening?

It's great in theory, and probably will happen one day, but we don't have the infrastructure just yet.

[Bullett]

Bandwidth is the problem here.

What sort of feed are you going to need? Online gaming works right now because you are sending relatively small bits of info back and forth. The huge amount of data required for whole screens at say 60fps is just not possible at home for most people today. The demo worked over a LAN (probably gigabit) wired connection.

The other problem I see is the ownership model. You will be renting the games. This is positive for the publishers as it kills piracy dead but bad for consumers.

[scorp]

BluRay is encoded in the region of 30mbps, so you would need that.. Although it would take several dual core pc's to encode HD AVC/Mpeg4 motion video for one client in realtime.. so hmmm... I'm guessing it will still have to use the old fashioned way of having the client do the heavy graphics work in some fashion and sending little bits over a network.

[superkartracer]

deckster said:

It's hardly a new idea and the problems are the same as they've ever been -

- bandwidth
- backend processing power
- bandwidth

Effectively they're centralizing computing power, which is great until GTA5 is launched and 50% of the country want to play it at the same time. Are their datacentres going to cope? And given the grief that ISPs are having over iPlayer and the like, it's safe to say that our internet backbones are going to struggle with the kind of bandwidth needed to support a significant number of 1080p feeds. Are you happy with having to coordinate with the rest of the road to decide who gets to play this evening?

It's great in theory, and probably will happen one day, but we don't have the infrastructure just yet.

We are going to be using this SDK, the compression allows the streaming to forward little data. See info below regards speeds needed etc.

What kind of Internet connection do I need to use the OnLive Service?
OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps.

What is the difference between Onlive and other services delivering games via the network?
There isn’t anything like the OnLive system in terms of instant access to the latest games, a media-rich experience, ease of use, and ability to play on your TV, or entry-level PC, or Mac.

These people would not be interested if it did not work -

http://www.onlive.com/partners.html

[deckster]

superkartracer said:

We are going to be using this SDK, the compression allows the streaming to forward little data. See info below regards speeds needed etc.

What kind of Internet connection do I need to use the OnLive Service?
OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps.

What is the difference between Onlive and other services delivering games via the network?
There isn’t anything like the OnLive system in terms of instant access to the latest games, a media-rich experience, ease of use, and ability to play on your TV, or entry-level PC, or Mac.

These people would not be interested if it did not work -

http://www.onlive.com/partners.html

Yes thanks I can read the media hype myself

I didn't say it wouldn't work, I said our current infrastructure won't support it. Saying it only needs 5Mbps for an HD feed is all well and good, but how many home connections will deliver that, solidly, on a contended line at 8pm while somebody else is watching something over iPlayer?

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great and in particular I would love the subscription model (assuming that's the way they go) but I'm not going to bin the XBox just yet.

[Daston]

Personally I cant see this happening. Most MMO's find it hard to cope with a lot of people in the same place or heavy server load now times that by a few million and you will get the load that will hit those servers. I see it as one of those "we can do this but we are not going to". The same way that PC hardware at the moment can cope with near CGI real time rendering but no game developer wants to spend the time or money writing a program for it.

[superkartracer]

deckster said:

superkartracer said:

We are going to be using this SDK, the compression allows the streaming to forward little data. See info below regards speeds needed etc.

What kind of Internet connection do I need to use the OnLive Service?
OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps.

What is the difference between Onlive and other services delivering games via the network?
There isn’t anything like the OnLive system in terms of instant access to the latest games, a media-rich experience, ease of use, and ability to play on your TV, or entry-level PC, or Mac.

These people would not be interested if it did not work -

http://www.onlive.com/partners.html

Yes thanks I can read the media hype myself

Well you are talking to a hi-end developer that uses the the Unreal and Crysis engines producing cutting edge CGI and this is not hype, it's been around for some time only now it's available for consumer use (nothing new) we even heard about this in Germany 4 years ago as it use's a know engine for the content.

We'll be using it for something different to games and it all works well.

If you want the service in HD then you need a decent line, in the US 5meg is very standard, in the UK it should not be much of an issue, in any case, how many people use an Xbox on a FullHD screen? most prob use the lower hd ready format so 1.5meg is fine.

Not sure i understand the Pc hardware/realtime CGI graphics comment? - all game engines run (computer graphics imagery) in realtime? do you mean Photoreal CGI?

At the end of the day, you d/l a demo, if you don't like don't purchase, in our case we will only have a small amount of users accessing a data channel but in the future it will be millions (imagine a full on-line superstore) ;-)

[M@T.R]

I watched the hour long presentation they gave and yes it's a very nice idea/ concept, but I can't see it working on a mass scale. They claim they have the technology and servers for lag free low latency gaming, but even if this is true it means we will just have a bottleneck at our ends. The internet services in this country are not relible enough with peaks and troffs in speed and spikes of latency. It just can't work untill the internet backbone is in place and this is something the developer has no control over.

[deckster]

superkartracer said:

Well you are talking to a hi-end developer that uses the the Unreal and Crysis engines producing cutting edge CGI and this is not hype

Let's not get into the willy waving eh. I'm a technical architect specializing in enterprise-scale systems delivering software-as-a-service over the net. I know a thing or two about networks, data rates and the problems associated with getting large amounts of data around the public internet.

superkartracer said:

We'll be using it for something different to games and it all works well.

So...it works well for things which aren't games? Or things which are games?

superkartracer said:

If you want the service in HD then you need a decent line, in the US 5meg is very standard, in the UK it should not be much of an issue, in any case, how many people use an Xbox on a FullHD screen? most prob use the lower hd ready format so 1.5meg is fine.

Read your own post again! It's 1.5Mbps for SD, 5Mbps for 720p. Given that 1080p is ~3 times the pixel count of 720p, that means we're looking at 15Mbps for full HD - although I agree that's not an issue at the moment as almost nothing supports it. I will bet you a decent sum of money though that 1080p games become standard before the average line speed in the UK is 15Mbps

And again I say - ignore the headline, ideal-world figures. Look at typical usage patterns. Look at what will happen when five people on the same street want to play games at peak time. Look at how the servers are going to support big game releases. Look at how it's going to coexist with iPlayer, Skype and Johnny down the road with his BitTorrent habit.

My prediction: if this is going to work in the short term, it will need support from the big ISPs. Virgin Media and the like are going to need to install OnLive servers on their own networks to make it remotely viable within the next 5 years.

Edited by deckster on Wednesday 25th March 14:12

[superkartracer]

Hi deckster

No waving, just letting you know i deal with 3d content and very large complex projects, we also have to deal with network as well as off-line assets, and we have problems with a 5meg file.... hence this is somthing we are very interested in.

Games use the same assets as any other 3D realtime situation, so going on the amount of polys we are pushing using dynamic lighting and other ticks you should see some very cool graphics on the platform, we also use the same engines that will power onlive, they supply an SDK giving access to the various tools needed for integration etc.

Regards the HD info, it streams enough information for HD to work over 5megs (tested) i guess the spec on the site is assuming many connections (in our case this works well) so you are right regards

The (system) users a new compression method that makes data very small per asset, they also use a mesh combine method to batch assets together depending on camera view point so this speeds rendering, this would also take into account pixel and vertex lighting -

MeshFilter filter = (MeshFilter)GetComponent(typeof(MeshFilter));
filter.mesh = MeshCombineUtility.Combine(instances, generateTriangleStrips);
renderer.material = (Material)de.Key;
renderer.enabled = true;

Similar to above but complex (the MeshCombineUtility)

We use Eclipse and see no issues with speed on an 8meg standard line at peak times, 24 meg available if needed (depending on exchange as you know)

Like a said, give it a whirl, whats to lose?

SK-R

[deckster]

Good to speak to somebody who knows the system well!

So where is the rendering done? I had presumed it was all done remotely in the datacentre, but are you saying that there is some local work as well?

Also presumably controller inputs have to be sent up to the main servers as well. We all know how badly lag affects online gaming at the moment, how does OnLive deal with latency on the connection?

Nothing to lose like you say - despite my natural cynicism I'd love for this to work!

[The_Jackal]

This has all been touted around before and besides the technical aspect, people forget that what decides if this succeeds or not is the commercial viability. You will find that from day one they will have to guarantee that so many thousand people sign up and buy an average of 1 or 2 games amonth. And as long as there are xboxes, PS3's and Wii's people will just not sign up for a new virtual gaming platform.
Also, what happen's if you want to play the game you bought over at your mates house?
At E3 5 years ago they were touting a very similar system that they claimed was ready to go (sexy base unit, cool one handed mouse station, and claims of several major games publishers signed up). It never took off because it is all based on them turning over millions from the first day of trading.
Also I fail to see how a 5 year old laptop can even display a maxxed out Crysis on a 1024 res screen.

I think this technology has its future in virtual desktops for offices rather than hi res gaming.

[Urban_Ninja]

tbh, I dont like the idea.

so what, everyone has to by a PC to play games?

if it does come to fruishion, I will be playing all my classic games and everything that I can play on my 360/wii/ps3 and not using this 'future of gaming'

[Funk]

And if your internet goes down, you have no way of gaming..

[Holst]

A few years ago many people sad that streming TV over the internet was impossible due to infastructure problems.
Now we have it working for most people most of the time.

I think it will be the same with remote processing and later gaming.

However, aside from the technical problems there might be other reasons why this wont work in the near future.
Hardware is becoming cheaper and cheaper all the time.

To play these games you are still going to need a box that your controlers plug into that connects to the internet and outputs to your screen. This box is going to need a certain ammount of processing power.
If processors are cheap enough it might be cheaper and more reliable to do more of the processing in the box, rather than in a big server farm.
If the profit is from selling the content then supplying subsidised hardware wont be an issue.

Building a huge server and surrounding infrastructure to set this up is going to be very expensive. Once the internet naturally gets fast enough to make this possible then I can see it happening. But its not quick enough in the UK at the moment.
ISP's are already complaingig about the impact the BBC Iplayer is having on there network traffic.. a gaming system like this will be too much for the existing systems (IMO)
Once we all have 50mg fibreoptic internet then I can see this working.

[M@T.R]

I quite like trading in/ selling my games when I'm done with them, not to mention lending them to mates. I think hard copy games will be around for a long long time.

[riwiho]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7962180.stm