Onlive Demo: Crysis on a laptop

[CptStern]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lqkz5UJHbY

GRID on a TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7fq8NmiV8U


if this picks up momentum it could be a huge turning point in how video games are delivered/played

 

[Wanted Bob]

That was one awkward fight they had in Crysis

Anyways, consider my curiosity piqued.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Wow that's pretty cool. Shame my net connection sucks so i won't be able to use it.

 

[jondy]

The Eurogamer article has made me massively sceptical, unfortunately.

 

[stemot]

The Eurogamer article has made me massively sceptical, unfornunately.

Yeah, until it's proved that this is all legitimately running through a broadband connection, I'm sceptical too.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

There's no way to eliminate the latency. I just don't see it working as well as they claim.

 

[CptStern]

here's Steve Perlman's response to the latancy issue/server costs. You'd have more luck making heads or tails of his comments than I would Pi:

perlman's comments are based on this comment:

One critic, Richard Leadbetter of EuroGamer, said that the latency ? delays based on distance ? will be so long that it will be impossible to play fast-action games on the OnLive network. He also said the server costs will be prohibitively expensive since the company will need one server for each game player.

He?s confusing compression latency (1ms) with frame time. The frame time is NOT 1ms (which would imply 1000 fps). It?s 16.7ms (which implies 60fps). Just as linear video compression time is much HIGHER latency than one frame time (e.g. 500ms latency does NOT imply a 2fps frame rate), interactive video compression is much LOWER latency that one frame time.

Regarding server costs, he does not understand server economics. It doesn?t matter how many subscribers you have per server. It matters how much revenue you earn per server. Most web services are ad-supported and CPM-based and need to have thousands (if not millions) of users per server over the course of a month in order to pay for the server because they earn a tiny fraction of a cent per user.

OnLive servers earn many dollars per user each month (many orders of magnitude more than a CPM-based business), and when one user is offline, another user is online, so even a server that is only serving one user at a time (e.g. for Crysis), is reused by many users each month. The useful life of a server is probably around 3 years. so, if you amortize the cost of a server over 36 months, you quickly realize that on a monthly basis, the cost per server is very low. And lastly, the cost of a server is much less than a home gamer PC: we don?t have the case, disk drive, optical drive, etc. And we don?t have to worry about retail markup, customer service, etc. Long story short, the revenue per server per month is much higher than the cost of the server. It makes OnLive a very healthy business.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Heh, he neatly ignored part of the question there. There is going to be latency between you and the server, no matter how marvellous the compression is. I'm talking about control latency. There's going to be a noticeable delay between you moving your mouse and the screen POV turning to reflect it. It's not something you can code around, or avoid, and it's going to make it distinctly unfun.

 

[Gargantou]

Funny thing is, on the playable booths they had setup at GDC, the servers were less than a kilometer away, and still people reported latency issues with the demos.

So I don't really see this working.

Of course Perlman will be uptight about defending his little project, he has gotten several quite wealthy and influential people to invest in it, he wouldn't want those to withdraw their support, doesn't matter if the concept is bound to fail.

 

[Mutley]

They said 50miles I think.

But still, if this is going to be for a wide audience, then they aren't going to have servers every 50miles...

 

[OmegaX]

Looks pretty amazing. What kind of games does it play? PC games only? Or does it play all the different console games as well? If it works properly without lag I would buy one. If it only plays PC games then I wouldn't see a reason to. My PC can handle them just fine.

 

[Gargantou]

I have seen the supporters of OnLive, I mean financial supporters, claiming it is going to change gaming forever, I somehow doubt it.

 

[Mutley]

I have seen the supporters of OnLive, I mean financial supporters, claiming it is going to change gaming forever, I somehow doubt it.

It won't change gaming at all. It will just be another alternative. You won't see Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Nvidia, ATI, Intel, AMD etc suddenly stop and let OnLive take over a really competitive hardware market.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Another problem with this that I haven't seen mentioned: Never in a game before would there have been the problem of a game's popularity actually destroying the game's playability. Excluding WoW launch / patch days, of course. Say 1,000 people within a server region want to play a new game that comes out. What if they only have enough hardware to support 500 simultaneous games for that title? Unless I'm missing something here, I think this could be a serious flaw.

 

[giant384]

Another problem with this that I haven't seen mentioned: Never in a game before would there have been the problem of a game's popularity actually destroying the game's playability. Excluding WoW launch / patch days, of course. Say 1,000 people within a server region want to play a new game that comes out. What if they only have enough hardware to support 500 simultaneous games for that title? Unless I'm missing something here, I think this could be a serious flaw.

thats what i thought, eventually the players would catch up to the amount of servers and there will be a point where there is more players then the servers, thus they wont make much a profit if they have to purchase more servers

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Another problem with this that I haven't seen mentioned: Never in a game before would there have been the problem of a game's popularity actually destroying the game's playability. Excluding WoW launch / patch days, of course. Say 1,000 people within a server region want to play a new game that comes out. What if they only have enough hardware to support 500 simultaneous games for that title? Unless I'm missing something here, I think this could be a serious flaw.

That's what i'm thinking. They want this system to replace console and PC gaming, and i can't see it handling it. For example how would it cope with something like GTA4 at launch? Millions of gamers playing a high end game at the same time, not a chance. Look at Steam, it's been around a while at it still struggles to handle unlocking games at launch which is a lot less stressful then what Onlive are doing.

 

[Warbie]

if this picks up momentum it could be a huge turning point in how video games are delivered/played

I think so, and it's something i'm all in favour for.

I'm sick of having to spend silly money to play average, buggy games/tech demos. Let the hardware standardise, put everyone on a level playing field (connection permitting), and start focussing on gameplay/depth.

 

[Shakermaker]

Just so I understand, and if I am wrong someone please correct me, the way this thing works is like this:

You push your left mouse button, W, S, A or D. These command signals travel all the way over teh intarboobz to a server. This server then translates it into game data which gets rendered to video. This video gets streamed back over the web to my crappy laptop. And this has to happen within 20ms to keep it playable.

Right?

 

[CptStern]

Just so I understand, and if I am wrong someone please correct me, the way this thing works is like this:

You push your left mouse button, W, S, A or D. These command signals travel all the way over teh intarboobz to a server. This server then translates it into game data which gets rendered to video. This video gets streamed back over the web to my crappy laptop. And this has to happen within 20ms to keep it playable.

Right?

yes the magic input pixies travel down the tubes and highways to that great celestial server in the sky. this is the first step in realising mankinds dream of teleportation/star trek like holodeck nerdvana

 

[Shakermaker]

yes the magic input pixies travel down the tubes and highways to that great celestial server in the sky. this is the first step in realising mankinds dream of teleportation/star trek like holodeck nerdvana

lol yeh, that too, but the 20ms question is bugging me. In order for this to work OnLive has to deliver very localized service. When the physical distance between the crappy laptop and the great celestial server in the sky becomes to big, the lag will kill all suspension of disbelief, be it in a shooter or on the holodeck.

 

[CptStern]

all the servers come installed with KILLER NIC's boards. They're designed with online gaming in mind:

"LLR™ Technology (Lag and Latency Reduction)"


I bought 3 of them in anticipation of this day! my reaction time has improved by 0.000000012%

 

[Shakermaker]

Are you actually enthusiastic or are you skeptical as hell?

 

[CptStern]

a little from column A and a little from column B ..but mostly just gassy atm

 

[Shakermaker]

TMI

I am with you though. It would be great if it would work, but I highly doubt it is possible at the moment. Maybe if 100 mbit lines are common.

 

[CptStern]

it would be great, as warbie put it; they could finally get their gameplay down instead of worrying about ports etc

 

[Mutley]

TMI

I am with you though. It would be great if it would work, but I highly doubt it is possible at the moment. Maybe if 100 mbit lines are common.

But is it actually down to the transfer?

If you have a 100mbit line with a high latency it will still be jumpy.

 

[Shakermaker]

But is it actually down to the transfer?

If you have a 100mbit line with a high latency it will still be jumpy.

Latency is key, but I'd imagine you need quite a bit of bandwidth up- and downstream to make it work. This won't be possible on a 2mbit download capped line.

 

[Darkangel]

I can't realy see this taking off. Even if they did make it so there was no input lag, I still wouldn't use it because you wouldn't be able to mod any of the games.

Haha imagine this on a dial up connection.

 

[Kyorisu]

I think so, and it's something i'm all in favour for.

I'm sick of having to spend silly money to play average, buggy games/tech demos. Let the hardware standardise, put everyone on a level playing field (connection permitting), and start focussing on gameplay/depth.

That's what consoles are for and you still end up with buggy games. Maybe you should just accept there is an inherent difficulty with making bug free code and hardware is only part of the problem.

 

[Warbie]

That's what consoles are for and you still end up with buggy games. Maybe you should just accept there is an inherent difficulty with making bug free code and hardware is only part of the problem.

As consoles became more like PCs console games became more buggy. Before consoles went online - and lazy developers could rely on patches - it was very rare to see buggy software. They're still less buggy than PC games as they're made for fixed hardware. While I don't imagine hardware will be fixed with Onlive, or some similar service, developers won't have to worry about making games so scalable and compatabile with old tech. Less bugs, far more efficient engines, everyone playing with high settings at decent frame rates for cheaper. We might actually see PC hardware start to realise some of it's potential.

 

[Kyorisu]

While I don't imagine hardware will be fixed with Onlive, or some similar service

Even if they work and are successful you'll still see multiple vendors pushing different hardware. Standardised PC hardware is a horrible thing to be wishing for and would only hurt competition.

everyone playing with high settings at decent frame rates for cheaper.

What you're suggesting would mean this will never happen. If there wasn't any competition between hardware vendors as well as between companies like Sony, Nintendo and MS you'd see the cost of buying hardware sky rocket. Essentially you are describing a monopoly on gaming hardware which quite frankly is the stupidest thing I've heard all day. I'm all for standards they make a lot of things so much easier but on computer hardware configurations?

Competition is good and lastly as I already said standardised hardware will not fix the problem anyway.

 

[Warbie]

I don't want standardised PC hardware - that was a poor choice of words on my part - rather to eliminate scaling for mid/low specs. I still expect vendors to compete, but now only for the high end crown. Every service of this type will to be using the best tech available otherwise they won't be able to compete, and every developer will be designing games for this uber tech. We're going full circle to mainframes and thin clients whether we like it or not.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

all the servers come installed with KILLER NIC's boards. They're designed with online gaming in mind:

"LLR? Technology (Lag and Latency Reduction)"


I bought 3 of them in anticipation of this day! my reaction time has improved by 0.000000012%

I forgot about those cards, they are amazing. You can torrent and play games simultaneously without any ping increase. They're called KILLER's because they are so expensive you can't eat for a month after buying one.

The price of these remote gaming machines is increasing by the second, I need to mop my brow.

 

[The Brick]

720p... 60fps... to streamable video.. that doesn't look like shit? That'll have to be at least a 6000 bitrate (even with x264) if you still want to see your crosshair. Which is about 40mb per minute. That's 750kb/s, or 6Mbits per second. For that to work, an 8Mb connection (taking loss in account). Such video would take a high end cpu (c2d 2ghz or higher) to play. So either they have a magic compression that takes much less bandwidth (and with that, much more cpu power to play), or they'll save on required cpu power and use/make a much more lossy compression that takes lots more bandwidth. This is something for the future, not now. The ping could be less of a problem for MMORPG games.