Reply to: OnLive games service 'will work'

[Clippy]

It's questionable whether this technology will immediately be problem free as it's currently in beta for final tuning with a release planned for winter 09, but with Take-Two Interactive Software (NASDAQ:TTWO) currently hovering around $10 after previously being at $25 this time last year..at that price I'm feeling it's a good long term punt that could potentially turn out to be massive if it does wipe out the console market.

I suppose a similar analogy would be the MP3 market and CD sales.

Perhaps this accounts for why the latest iterations of games consoles have moved more into being an entertainment hub.

Personally, I'm not convinced it will have much of an efect on the gaming market.

[Churchill]

Have a look at what "DisplayLink" are up to. http://www.displaylink.com/

[Durbs]

But the boxes at the client end are dumb Ethernet<->Display. In order to render the scene they'd need some form of (presumably powerful) hardware.

Was reading about this yesterday. As well as the whole communication issue, a new high end game would require a dedicated GPU per-instance. That is a dedicated GPU for every single person running a copy of the game off that server. Thats a lot of hardware.

Until they create graphics cards that can run something like Crysis at high res with all bells and whistles switched on and not remotely break a sweat then i cant see it working. It'd probably work as long as you are happy to see the game at 640x480. So the only way they can do it is to dramatically drop the res and i cant see gamers going for that.

[dinker]

The only piece of software that can record this sort of gameplay is FRAPS, because it outputs raw, uncompressed data. The video for this ten minutes of gameplay was 6GB.

[dinker]

Here`s me playing Half-Life 2, how static does the background look to you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb3ApjgMO_s

[TheRefactornator]

It's questionable whether this technology will immediately be problem free as it's currently in beta for final tuning with a release planned for winter 09, but with Take-Two Interactive Software (NASDAQ:TTWO) currently hovering around $10 after previously being at $25 this time last year..at that price I'm feeling it's a good long term punt that could potentially turn out to be massive if it does wipe out the console market.

[Incognito]

It's a Remote display protocol question. These guys won't be using RDP or the likes. I'm imagining they'll be using a solution similar to Teradici although I don't know if it's hardware or software based. Whether or not it'll work or not is going to be dependent on the latency on your link.

[chicane]

I think he means the basic structure of the 'map' doesn't change even though the players perspective obviously does, the trouble is we were moving towards dynamic destructible environments with 50+ players, I can't see how this could cope with all that.

As I understand it, the amount of processing power required to run the game engine/game environment isn't the issue here. What's being disputed by the cynics is the ability of current infrastructure to push a HD video stream over the Internet at 60fps.

If the player's perspective is constantly changing as per most FPS and racing games, it means that the vast majority of pixels on the screen will also be changing on every single frame. The demands on the connection bandwidth and video codec will therefore be similar regardless of the amount of work being done by the server.

2-3 years from now it'll be possible. With current technology, I have my doubts.

[DaveB]

I think he means the basic structure of the 'map' doesn't change even though the players perspective obviously does, the trouble is we were moving towards dynamic destructible environments with 50+ players, I can't see how this could cope with all that.

Those arn't the games they are punting on it at the moment. The launch line up is current, all games you can go out and but today if you wanted, but not what you would call Cutting Edge new releases.

Bioshock, Mirrors Edge, Lego Batman, Hawx, Tombraider Underworld, UT 3, Wheelman, Burnout Paradise plus a few others.

Single player games or games with limited multiplayer numbers.

[b0redom]

Actually they would be easier as the backgrounds tend to be static, prerendered images, as do the player avatars and vehicles.

Eh? This wasn't true even on Gran Tourismo 3 on the PS2.

[b0redom]

But the boxes at the client end are dumb Ethernet<->Display. In order to render the scene they'd need some form of (presumably powerful) hardware.

[gingerjedi]

I think he means the basic structure of the 'map' doesn't change even though the players perspective obviously does, the trouble is we were moving towards dynamic destructible environments with 50+ players, I can't see how this could cope with all that.

[chicane]

Actually they would be easier as the backgrounds tend to be static, prerendered images, as do the player avatars and vehicles.

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

[DaveB]

Oh dear. An 80 millisecond lag would be unworkable for most racing and FPS games.

Perhaps they're intending the future of gaming to be a pleasant game of chess over a streaming video link.

"We usually see something between 35 and 40 milliseconds."

Which is perfectly acceptable.

[DaveB]

BUT in a FPS or racing game, pretty much the whole screen would be changing all the time.

Actually they would be easier as the backgrounds tend to be static, prerendered images, as do the player avatars and vehicles. The stuff that causes problems are the effects such as explosions, environmental effects like smoke etc but as a precentage of the screeen real estate it's still a relatively small amount that is changing each frame. Doing it in custom silicon will make a big difference as well compared to the conventional software processes.

It still may not work, but I dont think it's as much of a non-starter as is being made out.