Hey,

So, obviously, most of us here are into video games. And I am sure that almost all of us have a PC (if you don't, then why do you have a lfs account?). Anyway, I was reading about this new thing that is being created: OnLive.

To tell you the truth, I think that this may be the future of gaming if it really can do what it promises. Basically, it promises to let people play games through their servers without having to download anything. Also, since the game is playing through the server, computer system requirements wouldn't really matter. So, theoretically, a high-end game would work on low-end computers.

But what I think is the problem is that there will be a lot of lag. And think of the amount of bandwidth it would take.

Anyway, here is the site: http://www.onlive.com/

What do you guys think?

Btw, this service is only going to be released in the US (as planned so far), but I want anyone's opinion!

Thanks,
Shashdev

promises, promises.

Regardless, my PC is going to need an upgrade for any 1 title of these games

Read about it the other day... lag isn't as bad as you would expect, apparently:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5184502/o ... ames-hands+on-impressions

I definately like the concept, as it would rid us of the need to upgrade our hardware. But sadly, that's why it's not going to prevail IMHO, as the huge interest group of hardware manufacturers will most likely have a thing or two against that.

Also, I imagine the costs being horrendous actually, as they themselves need very powerful machines to run, especially as they won't have a computer for each user, but their machines are required to run multiple instances of games. Additionally, the networking costs will be enormous. Thus I don't think it'll pay off.

Still, a nice new way of handling things.

Fine as a concept, but practically?, with the current telecoms system in many countries? not a snowball in hells chance of it working.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Read about it the other day... lag isn't as bad as you would expect, apparently:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5184502/o ... ames-hands+on-impressions

"The game was running 50 miles away on a server in Santa Clara, and load times are pretty much the same as running the game on your PC."

This is pretty much the best possible scenario for someone who is playing on the Onlive system. Chances are its not going to work as well for the rest of us.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

Also, I imagine the costs being horrendous actually, as they themselves need very powerful machines to run, especially as they won't have a computer for each user, but their machines are required to run multiple instances of games. Additionally, the networking costs will be enormous. Thus I don't think it'll pay off.

Still, a nice new way of handling things.

That is another thing that I had been thinking about. Do you guys think that it would be possible for the service to be free for the gamers, and they just pay for the games?

I don't think this is lilkely, but with large companies backing them up, they would get a lot more people looking at the service if they did that. Your thoughts?

There's a very good reason why distributed computing superseded mainframe computing - it's better.

Of all the different applications which might benefit from a return to mainframe computing, the LAST on the list of them is gaming. The user experience has to arrive at your computer somehow, and that requires bandwidth. That requires downloads.

What makes this concept worse is that, after playing an evening of profound bandwidth consumption, you still have nothing downloaded or installed. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the single most irresponsible waste of bit streaming I've ever seen to date.

As an example: how many video-streams do you know that work a)in a very high quality, and b) without hiccups? So how successful do you think this service will be?

Apart from the servers that would have to come straight from space/hell to manage it on their side, think about how big the textures and how detailed the models have become - we're talking Gigabytes in a matter of minutes...

Or as someone on another forum said: "Great, now you can enjoy your lag even in singleplayer!"

I guess everyone knows that at some point this concept will be very viable. However, I don't think its time has come just yet.
I'd definitely pay 20€ a month if it enabled me to play every sort of modern game without having to bother with upgrading hardware. Add to that the price of the game licenses. I think that's still a good deal for me because it'd mean that I could keep my current laptop and desktop PC for 4 years before upgrading. That's easily worth 250€/325$ per year. Add to that all the bother I save myself with reading up on hardware, reinstalling windows and driver updates, etc.

However, right now about everyone I know once in a while has issues with his internet-infrastructure. Be it random disconnects, ping spikes or WiFi issues - all these issues make gaming via stream next to impossible.
The time of gaming via cloud computing will come. But I don't think the concept will work before 5 years have passed.

Vain

You'll still need hardware upgrades. The user experience is bottlenecked at your computer, regardless of where the computing is happening. It doesn't matter what framerate a remote server is sending you, or if it's capable of delivering superFandango Phyzx v9 graphics, if your own computer can't serve that rate to you and/or in that quality, your user experience will suffer. Upgrading the remote server won't improve it.

This entire concept has been scaring me for a long time. We've known it's coming, and they're going to try again and again until we buy into it, and I know sooner or later consumers will. It has been bothering me from before Google threw a crude office application online.

The problem that I see, is it is a matter of control.

Control of the application itself, well that's a matter of ethics and i'm not going to touch it. No piracy, a good thing I guess although it will meen reduced sales but ho hum what do I care.

End user computers gradually moving to a more console role, ultimately the end of the personal computer...

Worse though. The bit that I hate most of all....

The death of independent development.

This is the single worst technology ever to hit the free market, because ultimately it's purpose is to destroy it.

With control of software distribution channels comes the end of innovation.

It's why I dont own a console (ludicrous development costs), I havn't got Steam, and i'm dreading the arrival of this technology. I cant really be bothered to fight it though because too much money is involved, and the money meens that therefor it is going to arrive sooner or later.

Quote from SamH :

You'll still need hardware upgrades. The user experience is bottlenecked at your computer, regardless of where the computing is happening. It doesn't matter what framerate a remote server is sending you, or if it's capable of delivering superFandango Phyzx v9 graphics, if your own computer can't serve that rate to you and/or in that quality, your user experience will suffer. Upgrading the remote server won't improve it.

I know nothing about this technology, but what is the 'server' sending back to the 'client'? Is it just video and audio (and other effects if needed I guess)? If so presumably something that can display that on day 1 won't ever need upgrading?

that's correct pb, I think sam didn't read the text properly, basically they send you a video stream either in 720p (about 5mbit connection needed) or a lower 2mbit stream. If you've got a computer that can play back video and a broadband connection you will be able to play this, there was a video on some blog about the whole thing, was quite interesting to watch.

found it:

http://gdc.gamespot.com/video/ ... ive-press-conference?hd=1

Ah yeah that reminds me of the other thing I dont like about this technology.

See I dont have broadband capable of streaming video. I live in the country, they call it broadband, but iPlayer is out of the question. I watch You Tube by pausing the signal and waiting for it to buffer.

The issue i'm raising here, if this technology gets mainstream then accessibility is going to be an issue.

Altough the price that is necessary to pay to keep my PC up to date is driving me pretty mad, I'd rather stay paying such money than entrusting my gaming to someone providing service like this one. It seems to me like a modern era of the software communism. Can you imagine you being totally out of control with you PC-console working only as a stupid client, fully dependant on the provider? I pretty much agree with Becky on this...

Hopefully I believe this won't work for the next couple of years at least. At our uni we have a Sun-based server-client PC classrooms with five SunRay servers and about 80 clients (100MHz CPU, 1 MB VRAM, the only thing this tiny little box does is sending user inputs to the server and recieving a reply just like your PC would when using this OnLive). The working environment is set to be extremely lightweight running CDE as a desktop environment and I can tell that having a lesson there is quite an ugly experience. Not even a web browser works at a reasonable speed. Now imagine thousands of people playing hi-end games with all that fancy graphics and physics included.. no way, show me a PC able to handle this Also consider the ping times, average ping on a good network is about 50ms if the server is close enough to you and it can easily exceed 200 when something goes a bit wrong. Your input would be delayed by 100 ms, servers response as well... go and play CS, I'm sure you'd become insane in a matter of minutes

So, what happens if 10 thousand people start playing Crysis or whatever game is the most demanding these days? You need one very high end PC to run one of these. Are they buying 10k very high end PCs just for those games? Where are they keeping the PCs? What about the other games?

Note: I haven't read anything other than the posts here.

Lack of predictive clients will just kill it. The only way you can play online games at the moment is that you presonally, as a character have a near-instant input to your client, wheras the client will try and predict the other players (who's instant reaction isn't as necessary from your point of view) movements a few milliseconds into the future to account for the lag.

Can you imagine playing something like LFS if the car waits even a few fractions of a second before reacting after you turn the wheel?

Quote from de Souza :

So, what happens if 10 thousand people start playing Crysis or whatever game is the most demanding these days? You need one very high end PC to run one of these. Are they buying 10k very high end PCs just for those games? Where are they keeping the PCs? What about the other games?

Note: I haven't read anything other than the posts here.

I am not sure about this, but I think that since the games run through their servers, our computers don't have to be completely hi-tech. And also, I don't get how this is a video and audio they are just transferring. I can't play games on youtube. So, if they were just transferring video and audio, isn't that what it would be? Anyone care to explain?

THEY would need a high end PC because they are doing all the computing at their end.

They are also feeding your keypresses, over the internet, into their PC at a datacentre - it spits out the graphics, which are piped via the internet back to you.

I stopped reading when they reckoned they'd got a 1ms Ping over the internet.