Onlive

[Butterman]

My thoughts are... this will never work without serious traffic shaping on the part of ISPs, and cooperation with every ISP in North America.

The servers have to be close or the ping will make it unacceptable.

I have 3mbit DSL. That probably gives me ~480p video. If the nearest server was in Seattle, I'd have about 80 ping from distance or other factors. Now toss in another 10-20 miliseconds for processing the input, rendering a frame, encoding that frame.

100 miliseconds input delay is quite a bit. Most games have no input delay. I imagine these games will be playable, but the difference will be very noticeable.

Almost all online first person shooters have that exact same delay. Your actions are checked against the server before they come into effect on the client. You get that exact same ~100ms input lag. The problem here is the bandwidth.

 

[borgqueenx]

my thoughts? its not a handheld....so no go for me.

 

[failedartifact]

You got to read the article, it talks about the data being 200th its original size, modified internet packets, thats why this works with these types of connections. And by the time its going to launch in europe, your connection is going to be so much better. My broadband package is always changing.. faster speeds, cheaper price...

 

[craigix]

I don't think that system will work on the normal internet, it only stands a chance on private networks like Virgin in the UK (and other cable companies who actually own the wires).

Plus a cable company have done this before with 16bit games, it happened in Newcastle/Gateshead, UK in 1994.

 

[failedartifact]

Reading the other topics of the same posts, it could be in theory possible to get it working on pandora.. i mean, do you really think no one is going to make a good port (or even the developers) for linux? its bound to happen, and when it does, you will be playing Average today's PC games on your pandora in starbucks.

 

[MaxNormal]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-...ly-work-article

Can't possibly work.

Good article above that suggests they are blowing smoke ...

 

[lulzfish]

multiplayer internet games do have the latency, but the game developers take this into consideration and make client-side fixes that basically apply the input before the server has completely echoed it back.

With games that are already compiled, there's not really any way to do this, and the rendering is still on the other side of the latency bottleneck, so you're guaranteed a minimum latency no matter how much prediction is programmed in. There's not even really anywhere to put input prediction.

 

[failedartifact]

I think its going to be a just a see what happens at winter this year, if they pull it off, then, hats off, you got me sold. But i think acutally its too early for any speculation on where its possible. Answers to that article about how its not going to work, well, hes got a point, but do you really think they will be this far in development, and saying its going to come out in Winter if they didn't think that it could handle such demand. Helll this could be just a Phantom repeat.

 

[PoisonedV]

This looks cool, but I'm sure in practice it will never work as good as it says. Wish i still had time to read all the gaming blogs and stuff. i am swamped with way too many rss feeds though so i decided to ditch reading blogs in general.

 

[femngi]

This is snake oil to sell "anti-piracy" to the publishers. Seriously. It doesn't work the way they claim it will, because it doesn't scale nicely like they claim it does.

By far the most sensible post here. At best this will just deliver a low resolution, un-responsive, highly expensive service. At worst it's a venture capital trap.
Also I find the enthusiasm for 'renting' all your games disturbing. It might sound attractive to a casual gamer who plays a few times a week but for someone who has a thing for jRPGs that take 100+ hours to complete the thought of being forced to pay by the hour scares the shit out of me. Since they've been very quiet about how much all this will cost you I reckon an expensive gaming PC might just turn out to be the cheaper option.
Face it, the companies that are so enthusiastic aren't just looking to stop piracy, they're looking to shaft you for as long and hard as they can get away with it. You know I'm right about that.