Interesting Article, Nvidia Cloud Computing and PS2

[Bull]

Now just for FYI, I am currently in Afghanistan and haven't been able to play PS2 yet. Just been reading articles, and forums to get an understanding for how the game has been fairing since release. I will be going on leave soon, so I am really looking forward to finally trying the game out!!

While trying to reach the end of the internet one day , I came across this article:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/com...-start-1080546

It's from earlier this year, but if lag, rendering, and latency are as big an issue as what I have read so far, maybe this could be a possible solution?

If anything, it was a very interesting article regarding where gaming is going. But all I could think of was huge battles being rendered with the responsiveness of a console, while allowing everyone to see ultra setting visuals regardless of system specs!

[Mastachief]

I firmly believe that cloud computing is the future of gaming BUT not for atleast 10years. The internet isn't ready for it yet.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Bull

Now just for FYI, I am currently in Afghanistan and haven't been able to play PS2 yet. Just been reading articles, and forums to get an understanding for how the game has been fairing since release. I will be going on leave soon, so I am really looking forward to finally trying the game out!!

While trying to reach the end of the internet one day , I came across this article:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/com...-start-1080546

It's from earlier this year, but if lag, rendering, and latency are as big an issue as what I have read so far, maybe this could be a possible solution?

If anything, it was a very interesting article regarding where gaming is going. But all I could think of was huge battles being rendered with the responsiveness of a console, while allowing everyone to see ultra setting visuals regardless of system specs!

Onlive and Gaikai tried and multiplayer games have too much input lag to make this system work.
Yes, even at an optimal ping the input lag is noticeable and very annoying for games like shooters.

The technical facts are that you have to stream the data somehow and bandwidth is the biggest issue here. There is no magic involved and if you stream pre-rendered frames, or a simplified CPU/GPU routine it will not reduce the lag of your input/output perception.

Currently the speeds of commercially available internet connections are great, but they achieve a noticeable disconnect between what you see and what you do.
There is simply no replacement for reliable client-side interaction yet.

Even web-browser games based on Unity that stream content dynamically from the net do their calculations client-side.

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

I firmly believe that cloud computing is the future of gaming BUT not for atleast 10years. The internet isn't ready for it yet.

Metered Internet will kill it. Every major ISP in Canada moved to metered Internet in 2012, with some allotting as little as 20GB for $90 with a $10/GB overage charge and no max monthly charge. I read yesterday that over 60% of Internet users in the USA have data caps. Netflix? Twitch.tv? Nah, I'd rather pay a $15 game subscription than a $400 Internet bill.

Streaming high definition video to play a game simply does not make sense when ISPs are going to charge for data usage. This concept is dead in the water until this issue is resolved.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

I firmly believe that cloud computing is the future of gaming BUT not for atleast 10years. The internet isn't ready for it yet.

Worse. People on the internet aren't ready for it yet.

[maradine]

We acquired a number of fleeing engineers in the wake of the OnLive implosion - they were not enthusiastic about the viability of the concept.

[MrBloodworth]

Meh.

This has been tried so many times.

[basti]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

Meh.

This has been tried so many times.

No, it hasnt tried once actually. Not the proper way at least.


The streaming services that existed and already exist were just crap compared to whats actually possible. They just tried to replace your home PC with their own PCs, but didnt even fully account for lag, and the lack of modding support.
True cloud gaming would still leave you with your own install of the game, up in the cloud. You could still mess with it in every way you want, but all processing would happen in the cloud.



And that where its going to go.

[Sifer2]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Metered Internet will kill it. Every major ISP in Canada moved to metered Internet in 2012, with some allotting as little as 20GB for $90 with a $10/GB overage charge and no max monthly charge. I read yesterday that over 60% of Internet users in the USA have data caps. Netflix? Twitch.tv? Nah, I'd rather pay a $15 game subscription than a $400 Internet bill.

Streaming high definition video to play a game simply does not make sense when ISPs are going to charge for data usage. This concept is dead in the water until this issue is resolved.

Indeed. The ISP's want to pretend bandwidth is a non renewable resource lol. And streaming high definition anything uses a crap ton of bandwidth. So the whole concept of streaming games is not viable in many places right now where they have no unlimited data plans.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Mietz

Onlive and Gaikai tried and multiplayer games have too much input lag to make this system work.
Yes, even at an optimal ping the input lag is noticeable and very annoying for games like shooters.

Actually from Michigan to their Chicago server there is a 5-8 ms latency round trip on my work's fiber line. When I played with OnLive this translated to a nearly perfect experience. Was able to play twitch shooters easily and it felt 1:1 like a game on my computer.

Gaikai is very similar when I alpha tested it. In an optimal setup it's perfect. (Played Dead Space 1 for about 30 minutes. No perceptible latency).

That said what these systems need are exclusive games. Games designed for their platform to take advantage of the architecture. I mean say they have a Nvidia rendering cluster mixed with Xeon Phi processors computing physics. It would mean nearly unlimited physics capabilities. The way OnLive work's as basti said is naive. The game is programmed to run on a single GPU and use a few threads. In a cloud system like the one's proposed in a few OnLive talks and Nvidia research papers I've read all computation is done once. You have 1 physics simulation, not a separate one for every user. You have no n^2 networking issue. It's linear. The actual complexity of rendering in such an architecture is drastically reduced, but OnLive and Gaikai can't take advantage of them and there are no developers designing games for the architecture.

That and the US lacks the infrastructure. OnLive requires a 5.5 mbps connection for the best looking latency with a constant latency of less than around 15 ms to look flawless. To do this they distributed their rendering cluster across the US; however, only around 30% of gamers have over 6 mbps and probably less have the latency which usually requires no copper lines and a direct fiber to the home connection. Very rare still. Google fiber users would have no issue as shown in the many google fiber demos with OnLive.

Also when I talked about exclusive games PS2 wouldn't work well. Ideally you'd want to be extremely optimized. Forgelight is for all purposes a DX9 engine that doesn't utilize any new features of the GPUs. Basically an exclusive title would probably be DX11 only utilizing compute shaders heavily for post-processing and other modern methods as to not waste GPU or CPU processing. (You wouldn't put PhysX on say Xeon Phi for instance and expect it to be optimal since it isn't programmed to use the new instructions and is horrible, as I was told, at using multiple threads). Maybe for Planetside 4.

[MaxDamage]

Cloud computing is a horrific prospect where your files and personal information you store is held on remote hardware.

It can be used beneficially but it is also the scariest invasion of privacy that governments and businesses can and will utilise, simply by working with and providing services that people deem "necessary" - people who sign off on the small print due to a software giants monopoly.. and because "who reads that shit anyway".

Cloud console gaming, maybe..
Cloud computing? Fuck no.

It is not the future for us, it's the future for 3rd world countries maybe.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by MaxDamage

Cloud computing is a horrific prospect where your files and personal information you store is held on remote hardware.

It can be used beneficially but it is also the scariest invasion of privacy that governments and businesses can and will utilise, simply by working with and providing services that people deem "necessary" - people who sign off on the small print due to a software giants monopoly.. and because "who reads that shit anyway".

Cloud console gaming, maybe..
Cloud computing? Fuck no.

It is not the future for us, it's the future for 3rd world countries maybe.

I work for an enterprise business ISP. We have a number of data centers. There's this thing called "encryption", maybe you've heard of it? The irony here is that it's generally much easier to steal data by hacking into someone's LAN through the numerous security holes that their clueless IT admins have left all over the place, than to hack into our data center and break through the encryption we have in place.