Onlive

[Trip]

Browsers? I thought this was a separate application.
I mean, all you really need to do is stream some video one way and some button presses the other way.

I guess I shouldn't expect reasonable program design from the guys who want to stream games over WAN, though.

StreamMyGame uses a separate application, but OnLive uses a browser plugin or the dedicated set top box.

 

[Grisaille]

Well I'll be damned.

I've been following the Pandora handheld for a looooooong time now. I've watched the baby steps all the way up to the first nearly complete prototype. I've read every forum post by you guys. Watched. Waited.

And now, I validated my account for one specific reason - to ask about onlive, and ask if the system could theoretically work if the client was ported to a Linux plat, Windows shell or something.

AND SOMEONE BEAT ME TO THE PUNCH.



In other words, hello all. I'm glad to join the discussion. Consider me extremely excited about the handheld; I'm very interested in the way things are going. I'll purchase one as soon as they are available.

You guys rock, I tip my hat to every developer, coder, and supporter that has helped the Pandora get this far.

I guess now that I have an account, I might as well join in on this discussion =]

 

[(naw)mcx]

Looks awesome ,was looking at videos earlier on.

(also, 5 megabits = 0.625 megabytes)

 

[Nova]

I think this has the potential to change the industry.



That's if it's not the next phantom.

 

[Phawx]

This will never work until everyone has fiber running directly into their systems and you are bypassing any overhead created by TCP/IP stack.

It is VERY easy to discern 1/5 second delay. 1/8 second delay or 125ms latency is annoying to play on because the controls seem to respond, but action buttons you can clearly see something isn't matching up.

The only latency that is tolerable is a maximum 1/10 second delay or 100ms latency. And this is only traveling ONE way. If you want to know what it would be like to use this service if you latency was 100 ms, play KillZone 2. Though, a lot of people don't have problems with it. Please be aware, the latency for controller input is with local games as well as multiplayer. Like just playing campaign and there is 1/5 of a second delay on any movement.

Multiplayer is largely a camp fest.

 

[DavidBowman]

I think this is brilliant. I hope this works out well.

 

[Vimacs]

This will never work until everyone has fiber running directly into their systems and you are bypassing any overhead created by TCP/IP stack.

It is VERY easy to discern 1/5 second delay. 1/8 second delay or 125ms latency is annoying to play on because the controls seem to respond, but action buttons you can clearly see something isn't matching up.

The only latency that is tolerable is a maximum 1/10 second delay or 100ms latency. And this is only traveling ONE way. If you want to know what it would be like to use this service if you latency was 100 ms, play KillZone 2. Though, a lot of people don't have problems with it. Please be aware, the latency for controller input is with local games as well as multiplayer. Like just playing campaign and there is 1/5 of a second delay on any movement.

Multiplayer is largely a camp fest.

well, but a normal ping to a decent server is betwene 5 and 30 over here, so it all comes down to the overhead for the de/en coding of the stream, transmitting the controls back shouldn't cause much lag if the servers are decently connected.
I think its a very great idea, if the tech works out to be usable and the price is completive with normal videogame rental.

 

[Phawx]

Another thing to add is if people are paying a subscription, will they settle for less than 720p with all the bells and whistles enabled?

Considering that when Crysis came out not even the FASTEST machine a single person could buy, could render Crysis at max settings...How much are these machines going to cost OnLive?

You are going to need a serious farm of power to render all this crap and deliver it to many people.

Not only that but they have to transcode whatever the hell is going on screen and send it as compressed video...

Man there is just WAY to much stuff that needs to happen. Between the artifacting that will crop up with transcoding into a video feed, latency that will be hard to secure low enough and no ability to get the maximum bells and whistles, this will have to be a cheap service for a subscription. But man, this will still require a LOT of money to do.

 

[kattle87]

A little Off-topic but:
this service might make sense for a pandora, or any other device that does not support any other way of rendering a good graphics... But why the hell on earth a gamer should do something like that? I mean:
-I love playing a game -> then I buy it, spend 45 € and that game is mine forever (at least 5 years, and I can play it without limitations). If it's on sale I do spend 15-20 € less and I'm happy with it.
-The delay delivered by such a connection is something lethal... You will see stuff happening with a certain delay, while when you play a normal game there's some "predictive" stuff that will adjust what you are seeing in real-time. Far much better! EG: hunter pounce in Left 4 Dead =)
-If your connection slows down a bit... Well you know, 6 mbps is a HUGE internet speed for a lot of people if it has to be kept constant... You might really get screwed up before a bit of lag, since so much data is needed...
-You just can't play some games very well if you can only get a 1.5 mb/s video...

 

[drD20]

A little Off-topic but:
this service might make sense for a pandora, or any other device that does not support any other way of rendering a good graphics... But why the hell on earth a gamer should do something like that? I mean:

Thats the wrong question to ask. What we should ask ourselves is:
Why the hell on earth wouldnt a company do something like that?
If this works this would be the first 100% working copy protection in the history of gaming.
Goodbye DRM. Hello Streaming-only-games.

 

[kattle87]

Thats the wrong question to ask. What we should ask ourselves is:
Why the hell on earth wouldnt a company do something like that?
If this works this would be the first 100% working copy protection in the history of gaming.
Goodbye DRM. Hello Streaming-only-games.

Yeah, I know. But still, I do hope that the majority of buyers would NOT be happy about depending on something like this for their games, so the damage to the normal user is limited somehow
BTW: it's just me that hates the pay-per-use market model?

 

[lulzfish]

And now, I validated my account for one specific reason - to ask about onlive, and ask if the system could theoretically work if the client was ported to a Linux plat, Windows shell or something.

Linux is only part of the platform issue, the other half is architecture.
Onlive themselves would have to port it specifically to ARM Linux to even get a shot at running it on the Pandora.
If it relies on ActiveX [Again, why can't they just use a video stream and remote controller software???] then that's VERY unlikely.

Another thing to add is if people are paying a subscription, will they settle for less than 720p with all the bells and whistles enabled?

Not only that but they have to transcode whatever the hell is going on screen and send it as compressed video...

Man there is just WAY to much stuff that needs to happen. Between the artifacting that will crop up with transcoding into a video feed, latency that will be hard to secure low enough and no ability to get the maximum bells and whistles, this will have to be a cheap service for a subscription. But man, this will still require a LOT of money to do.

Yeah, I doubt they can get enough customers [out of the subset of people who would even get acceptable latency] to pay for all that graphics hardware AND keep it running with enough extra performance for a video streaming thing to run.

Although they might just be using a hardware encoder plugged straight into a VGA or DVI port. Probably faster than asking the CPU or GPU to do anything like that.

If this works this would be the first 100% working copy protection in the history of gaming.
Goodbye DRM. Hello Streaming-only-games.

Yeah, I know. But still, I do hope that the majority of buyers would NOT be happy about depending on something like this for their games, so the damage to the normal user is limited somehow
BTW: it's just me that hates the pay-per-use market model?


Yeah, a streaming-only game would be impossible to pirate [unless, I suppose, it was leaked to consumers >_>] and require no DRM.
But the Internet isn't really reliable enough for that to be worth it. This whole idea is sort of like taking Steam and also buying the hardware and charging a subscription instead of selling the game.

It is probably not going to work out well, unless there's a huge demand for PC game rentals that I'm not aware of.

 

[Game_over]

@ GDC as I speak


reaction in person....

It's not the next phantom h34r:

 

[DavidBowman]

Thats the wrong question to ask. What we should ask ourselves is:
Why the hell on earth wouldnt a company do something like that?
If this works this would be the first 100% working copy protection in the history of gaming.
Goodbye DRM. Hello Streaming-only-games.

Yeah, I know. But still, I do hope that the majority of buyers would NOT be happy about depending on something like this for their games, so the damage to the normal user is limited somehow
BTW: it's just me that hates the pay-per-use market model?


I'm okay with having physical hardware, but I'm also quite okay with this. I love my ps3, though I barely play it. This sort of thing would appeal to people like me. I mean, I spent over $500 on that ps3, and although I wouldn't get rid of it, something like OnLive would have been a wiser expenditure for me.

What I see as a great advantage to this is that you would virtually eliminate problems like lasers burning out (I'm looking at YOU ps2), Red Rings of Death, etc. Since the hardware on the user's end would be much simpler, then all the headaches caused by losing achievements or paid downloads would be gone. This is, of course, assuming that the server end wouldn't have massive problems, but you'd hope on a project such as this that there would be plenty of redundant backups.

I see this as being too far ahead of its time, which is a shame.

 

[cb88]

@Phaux encoding done with DSPs not CPU... should reduce delay as well... actually I don`t see how they could do it either otherwise

somthing like these
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_DaVinci)


could be doing it with CUDA as well... Quad SLI rigs possibly

Also Phaux is right about latencys... the reason you don`t notice this much is that games are redered locally with only a very few ms latency and motion prediction is used on the server side to improve latency of the other players movements (although you will notice glitches if it gets the predictions wrong... ie guy comes from out of nowhere and shoots you or you shoots someone and they don`t die etc...)

 

[Ksmiler]

:unsure: What about?

• Playing single player games...
• Internet connection download caps
• Not owning the actual copy of the game physically. (When you have bought a game, but the game is not supported anymore from OnLive, but you want to play it... what happens then?)
• Advertising on the service and the games. (Adverts when browsing, adverts when selecting the game and waiting for it to become ready, adverts inside of the game as well maybe?)
• Modding a game to make new levels and stuff, what will happen to that sector?

 

[lulzfish]

:unsure: What about?

• Playing single player games...
• Internet connection download caps
• Not owning the actual copy of the game physically. (When you have bought a game, but the game is not supported anymore from OnLive, but you want to play it... what happens then?)
• Advertising on the service and the games. (Adverts when browsing, adverts when selecting the game and waiting for it to become ready, adverts inside of the game as well maybe?)
• Modding a game to make new levels and stuff, what will happen to that sector?

• You can play single player games, but you need Internets
• Good point. The bandwidth and cap limitations have given them a very small potiental customer base.
• You don't buy the games, you pay by the hour or minute to play them. It's like renting. When they stop supporting a game, it stops existing. I don't expect this to happen much, though, since most of the effort is in networking and playing older games shouldn't be hard to do if they pay well.
• They already do this. I suppose you mean like commercials you're forced to watch? That's probably a good idea, since this whole thing would need a lot of money. I've heard television revenue is all from commercials. This is probably less expensive, so they won't need a whole lot.
• It will be one of the bullets for old-school PC gaming [assuming that streamed games gain noticeable market share]

 

[Phawx]

@Ksmiler

Your bullet points clearly bring up why Onlive and "cloud gaming" in general will not replace PC gaming.

At best I would use it if it were cheap enough ($8/month) so that I could get some gaming on during my lunch hour at work. Intel Graphics don't do all that much.

They would have to have stupidly low latencies to actually be playable though.

So I guess we will see what they can pull off

 

[Ksmiler]

:unsure: What about?

• Playing single player games...
• Internet connection download caps
• Not owning the actual copy of the game physically. (When you have bought a game, but the game is not supported anymore from OnLive, but you want to play it... what happens then?)
• Advertising on the service and the games. (Adverts when browsing, adverts when selecting the game and waiting for it to become ready, adverts inside of the game as well maybe?)
• Modding a game to make new levels and stuff, what will happen to that sector?

• You can play single player games, but you need Internets
• Good point. The bandwidth and cap limitations have given them a very small potiental customer base.
• You don't buy the games, you pay by the hour or minute to play them. It's like renting. When they stop supporting a game, it stops existing. I don't expect this to happen much, though, since most of the effort is in networking and playing older games shouldn't be hard to do if they pay well.
• They already do this. I suppose you mean like commercials you're forced to watch? That's probably a good idea, since this whole thing would need a lot of money. I've heard television revenue is all from commercials. This is probably less expensive, so they won't need a whole lot.
• It will be one of the bullets for old-school PC gaming [assuming that streamed games gain noticeable market share]

• The single player game issue to me, is an oxymoron. If you are going to play on the internet, make it a multiplayer game right from the start, with some single player styled missions (no difference from WoW... can be a single player game, but needs an internet connection to play. Playing a game like Myst or LittleBigAdventure through the internet... does not make sense, I should be able to play that any time)
• Until ISPs step up their game and provide a better service for every gamer interested in using this product, then I honestly think it will be a difficult issue to address.
• I hope that it is only a rent-to-play service which means I have to pay like a subscription package to play a field of games. Doing a service which is subscription, and then say "to play this game, please pay additional money" and then removing that game from the service years later... is kinda harsh.
• With Steam, you go to the area which you want to buy your game, and you download it. You can have a shortcut to the game, which makes you never need to go to the steam website and view their adverts. With this service, even to quickly launch the game, I assume you must log in, browse to the game, and play it. Going through adverts on the way. To me, that would kinda suck.
• So not new things like Half Life mods ever again, Yey for Little Big Planet style mods / content? Possibly I guess.. Will be sad to see it go as a budding games developer myself.

I do like the idea of this service... but only for LAN gaming. Gaming stores could have a room for 28 players all using the service... But then why not have a server room which could provide the same thing for each store... Or why not bother, stay at home and play the game in your own time.

Again to me, its like playing HD games on an old TV. Sometimes, to play these games you do need to upgrade something. Same for PC gaming, you do need to update your PC to play uber grphx games. If not, play it on a console.

I think this system will be amazing in the office environment!... Just not gaming.

 

[lulzfish]

Yeah, you'll have to decide whether it's worth the latency, adverts, and subscription fee to get the 'portability' [between Windows systems anyway <_<] and the high-end graphics without buying an expensive computer.

I would rather have adverts, personally. They're a waste of time but my time isn't worth as much as my money anymore.

But it uses ActiveX. I find this strange.
They're planning a streaming game service, and their only audience is people who are probably already capable of playing those games for free by buying the computer and the game, not renting.

If I was going to do this, I'd make it as cross-platform as possible, and target stuff like the Pandora.
You'd have a freaking monopoly. It'd be like, "Hey, wanna play Crysis?" "I can't, my system is the wrong architecture and underpowered" "We'll stream it" "HELL YEAH"

I mean, assuming it would work.
As for removing games, I expect they'll give you a partial refund of any upfront money you spent on it, and a letter saying, "We can't afford to host your favorite game from your childhood anymore, here's 10 bucks, thanks for playing."

edit: But this is all working under the assumption that bandwidth and latency don't ruin the experience. That's part of why I want a cross-platform solution, since things like the Pandora need less bandwidth to stream to than my 1920 by 1200 laptop.

Maybe I'll just set up a Windows computer to do this and tell OnLive "thanks for the idea"