I find their current library of games is rather shallow. Its really only like a dozen games. Now some of them will benefit more from spectators and stuff like that like UT3, but eh... some games like Bioshock... not so much.
This is the silliest argument to make. This was a demo of big names from their major publisher partners.
seriously, that and the fact this tech isn't even OUT yet. The fact is, if this works, they are gunna make $$$ and attract the attention of every 3rd party dev out there.
Tasteticle on
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Yeah. I think for me right now the input lag thing worries me way too much. The beta will tell, though.
I think this is where gaming is going - it's the logical point we're travelling to with all our DRM troubles and whatnot - but it's not going there yet.
Frankly I think this is where everything is going
Netflix's Instant Movie dealie has convinced me that in the future, everything from movies still in theaters to DVD releases to game betas to game releases will be delivered digitally over the internet directly to our computers and TVs
But I really didn't expect something like this to show up for years
One wonders if there is any plans for a uk or europe dedicated server farm and how long after it will be introduced, we have got better broadband (Least fecking france does) and less plans which are capped at all
I have concocted an elaborate scheme to be accepted into this beta. I have given them my american cousins Postal code, and thus, if they have to send out hardware or anything, I will get my cousins to mail it back to me in the chilly north.
All of this is based upon me being accepted though.
everything is moving towards digital distribution. This service is just providing the next logical step. Will it take off the first time? We'll see. It took steam a while to take hold.
Tasteticle on
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
Scaling graphics based on my web connection sounds lame as hell. I have a pretty good connection currently, but in my next apartment I might not be so lucky.
Also a max resolution of 720p is just not up to par with playing games on a PC, and hasn't really been standard for a few years. My monitor's native res is 1680X1050 and I run every game I own except Far Cry 2 at the resolution.
I don't think I would want to give the graphical fidelity up just so I can have my games in the cloud.
I have concocted an elaborate scheme to be accepted into this beta. I have given them my american cousins Postal code, and thus, if they have to send out hardware or anything, I will get my cousins to mail it back to me in the chilly north.
All of this is based upon me being accepted though.
Sure, I mean, Comedy Central can figure out how to block Canadian IPs, but there's no way these guys who have developed a potentially revolutionary low-latency gaming technology will know how to do anything like that.
:P
wasted pixels on
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Scaling graphics based on my web connection sounds lame as hell. I have a pretty good connection currently, but in my next apartment I might not be so lucky.
Also a max resolution of 720p is just not up to par with playing games on a PC, and hasn't really been standard for a few years. My monitor's native res is 1680X1050 and I run every game I own except Far Cry 2 at the resolution.
I don't think I would want to give the graphical fidelity up just so I can have my games in the cloud.
But in a year or two, when that fancy pants graphics card is about to give up the ghost, and most games are hard to run on it anyway, if Onlive is still around and succesful, odds are shit would be cheaper on that service than buying a new card and/or processor and new games and all
Personally, I can see using this service a lot, but at the same time I can see using my PC for games I can still run or that I want to mod or that I want to tweak or customize to get better graphics out of, but in the future I might not want to spend money on buying a whole new PC just to play some new games at a decent FPS with a decent resolution
Hulu isn't aimed at replacing TV, DVDs and Blu-Ray.
Yet somehow, that's just what it does for me.
Which is fine, but no TV executive ever sat down and said "This shit could replace everything tomorrow!" For every person like you who uses Hulu, you will have people who might look at it, and decide that they much prefer using Tivo, buying some season boxed sets, etc.
Just because a service can provide a comparable product to another product/service, does not mean that it is intended to replace the alternate products/services. It's a technological evolution of means to media consumption. We still read the goddamn newspaper and listen to the radio.
the main issue is though that all your doing is renting a game via subscription, the game wont work if you dont have a subscription, so in effect your spending £40 + the subscription fee a month to play the game
the main issue is though that all your doing is renting a game via subscription, the game wont work if you dont have a subscription, so in effect your spending £40 + the subscription fee a month to play the game
But that cost includes the other features of the service and is much less than buying a high end PC and upgrading it.
agoaj on
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
the main issue is though that all your doing is renting a game via subscription, the game wont work if you dont have a subscription, so in effect your spending £40 + the subscription fee a month to play the game
But that cost includes the other features of the service and is much less than buying a high end PC and upgrading it.
Yeah, the spectating and video capturing and various community features, plus the ability to rent and buy games instantly is worth a subscription, I think
the main issue is though that all your doing is renting a game via subscription, the game wont work if you dont have a subscription, so in effect your spending £40 + the subscription fee a month to play the game
But that cost includes the other features of the service and is much less than buying a high end PC and upgrading it.
Yeah, the spectating and video capturing and various community features, plus the ability to rent and buy games instantly is worth a subscription, I think
But maybe not, we'll see just how expensive it is
I can't remember which of the articles it was in, but somewhere said it would be comparable to Xbox Live subscription fees. I would be willing to pay that to play Crisis on my Macbook/TV.
the main issue is though that all your doing is renting a game via subscription, the game wont work if you dont have a subscription, so in effect your spending £40 + the subscription fee a month to play the game
But that cost includes the other features of the service and is much less than buying a high end PC and upgrading it.
Yeah, the spectating and video capturing and various community features, plus the ability to rent and buy games instantly is worth a subscription, I think
But maybe not, we'll see just how expensive it is
I can't remember which of the articles it was in, but somewhere said it would be comparable to Xbox Live subscription fees. I would be willing to pay that to play Crisis on my Wifi Connected Toaster.
So basically... you pay for the privilege of a glorified SlingPlayer version of your game, which you do not own, running on some computer far away, and you have to pay in addition to your own bandwidth costs? Doesn't sound like a winner to me. I can see some applications, but only on a subset of games. Just as some people love playing Flash games and some people love playing console games and some people love playing traditional PC games, there will be a market for this idea... but it's the business aspect that I'm finding a bit fishy. You can't play your game without an internet connection, either... that pretty much guarantees that it is a supplement to existing media avenues rather than taking over.
This thing. It obsoletes gaming PCs. You will not have to EVER upgrade your computer to play the shiniest newest game that comes out. 10 years from now, you could be playing Half-Life 3 on the PC you have right now. Or on your dinky decade old MacBook, at a Starbucks.
Assuming they have actually surmounted the technical hurdles they claim they have, this is going to take over the gaming industry. This thing - again, assuming it works as well as advertised - is huge.
If it works like they claim, and it doesn't have significant troubles that they can't overcome in its first six to twelve months, it will be huge. If it fails for any reason, it's going to set this particular application of streaming media back another five years.
Just because a service can provide a comparable product to another product/service, does not mean that it is intended to replace the alternate products/services. It's a technological evolution of means to media consumption. We still read the goddamn newspaper and listen to the radio.
Sure, not every technology is meant to replace another. But sometimes, it can get pretty darn close. It's usually not immediate either. The web has been around for a while now, but it's relatively recently that magazines and newspapers are really starting to shut down or change their business model. Will that happen with OnLive? Who knows? There's certainly a lot of examples of technology not changing anything either. We'll have to see in a few years to know for sure.
This thing. It obsoletes gaming PCs. You will not have to EVER upgrade your computer to play the shiniest newest game that comes out. 10 years from now, you could be playing Half-Life 3 on the PC you have right now. Or on your dinky decade old MacBook, at a Starbucks.
Assuming they have actually surmounted the technical hurdles they claim they have, this is going to take over the gaming industry. This thing - again, assuming it works as well as advertised - is huge.
I'm glad that someone is as excited about the ramifications of this as I am
If this thing takes off in a big way, the next few years of video games are gonna be crazy
I hope this is real, that it takes off, and that they start dropping these like Google drops datacentres.
One of the big things for console developers is that they can be far more sure of how their game will be experienced than a user on a PC. Put it in, play. PC user? Put it in, play with graphics settings, possibly set some option wrong and end up without shadows, or gimp FPS, etc. This could help reduce (or remove) that for a segment of the PC gaming market.
MMOs could really benefit from this, essentially being able to optimise your server clusters with resources that are impractical to use for a standard client/server MMO.
I highly doubt you'll be able to play at a Starbucks with a Macbook. Starbucks isn't known for having a wide bandwidth solely devoted to high-speed gaming, with low latency. And other users are likely to want to actually use the bandwidth.
Somehow, magically your actions are being shoved into the world of "Broadband Internet" and magically appearing at their servers, which is streaming back through "Broadband Internet" to your screen.
Here's a quote from a recent article about it:
"One downside of the latency issue is that you can't live more than 1,000 miles from a data center. Rearden's hoping its initial five-server launch will give it a large enough footprint, but we'll have to check in with someone remote to see how their mileage varies. Another downside is that it might suck up your entire bandwidth when gaming: OnLive requires 1.5 Mbps for standard def gaming, and 5 Mbps for high def. Again, it's entirely unclear how well this will work once the pieces are all fitted together."
Five servers... 1000 miles from a data center. With a massive bandwidth requirement of 1.5 Mbps needed for standard def gaming, and 5 Mbps for high definition (so, when something bigger than 1080p comes along, you're screwed? What about sharing a connection with, say, roommates or the rest of the family? If two people wanted to play OnLive at the same time, you've just doubled the downstream bandwidth requirement).
Yeah, as John Carmack once said, "The speed of light sucks."
Even if your bandwidth is excellent, there's only so much latency one can get out of the Internet. Or heck, out of geography + speed of light.
I do think this may work quite well for games that won't have as much of an issue with input lag, such as non-action games, or even games like shooters which have projectile motion which can be predicted in software (a la QuakeWorld).
This thing. It obsoletes gaming PCs. You will not have to EVER upgrade your computer to play the shiniest newest game that comes out. 10 years from now, you could be playing Half-Life 3 on the PC you have right now. Or on your dinky decade old MacBook, at a Starbucks.
Assuming they have actually surmounted the technical hurdles they claim they have, this is going to take over the gaming industry. This thing - again, assuming it works as well as advertised - is huge.
I really hope that there is some sarcasm in this post.
Okay, so the purpose of this sort of service is to let me play a super high-end game (let's say Crysis or whatnot) at max settings on my mid-range PC? Alright then. Sounds neat.
Until you factor in all of the technical limitations involved in the transfer that would limit me to a lower resolution, lower FPS, poor on-the-fly compression with no buffering, etc. I have a hard time beliving that I wouldn't get better performance out of just running the game at lower settings on my own box, so the purpose is defeated right out of the gate. And that's not even going into latency issues.
The infrastructure required for this service does not exist. Not in most of the USA, at any rate.
OK, I'm a bit less skeptical about them actually being able to do the technology, apparently like half of the top CS graduates from my school last year went to go work for them, and they're pretty smart people.
Spoit on
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
I highly doubt you'll be able to play at a Starbucks with a Macbook. Starbucks isn't known for having a wide bandwidth solely devoted to high-speed gaming, with low latency. And other users are likely to want to actually use the bandwidth.
Somehow, magically your actions are being shoved into the world of "Broadband Internet" and magically appearing at their servers, which is streaming back through "Broadband Internet" to your screen.
Here's a quote from a recent article about it:
"One downside of the latency issue is that you can't live more than 1,000 miles from a data center. Rearden's hoping its initial five-server launch will give it a large enough footprint, but we'll have to check in with someone remote to see how their mileage varies. Another downside is that it might suck up your entire bandwidth when gaming: OnLive requires 1.5 Mbps for standard def gaming, and 5 Mbps for high def. Again, it's entirely unclear how well this will work once the pieces are all fitted together."
Five servers... 1000 miles from a data center. With a massive bandwidth requirement of 1.5 Mbps needed for standard def gaming, and 5 Mbps for high definition (so, when something bigger than 1080p comes along, you're screwed? What about sharing a connection with, say, roommates or the rest of the family? If two people wanted to play OnLive at the same time, you've just doubled the downstream bandwidth requirement).
They did sort of address this in that presentation they did
Apparently they've tested this in lots of homes and even managed to get Onlive running on two or three different devices at the same time on the same connection. Apparently the downstream bandwidth requirement is not quite as big as it would seem
And when something bigger than 1080p comes along, I'm pretty sure they'll be working on a way to get that on their service
Not that I'm saying I trust them completely, they haven't done any sort of serious stress testing of this service yet, and who knows how that will affect it, but to compare this thing to the Phantom, after what I've seen, is ludicrous
Except it isn't vaporware seeing as 9 major publishers have seen it, tested it both in a demo environment and in their own environments and signed up in a major way. Warner has come out backing this.
And regarding your bandwidth arguments; this is exactly the same thing people said about video streaming, and then high def video streaming. The cycle of consumer need, technological advance and commoditization (I probably screwed that word up) will continue to push things like this forward.
Regarding the speed of light argument, the light covers 186.282 miles per millisecond. At 1500 miles that's 8 milliseconds (assuming you have a direct path, so serves as an average taking into account non-direct routing). A roundtrip is then 16 milliseconds. So, to 16 milliseconds add something like half a dozen milliseconds for hop processing on routers, so call it 22 milliseconds round trip. On top of that you add your processing time at your microconsole and at the OnLive servers. At 30 frames a second, a frame is displayed every 33.33 milliseconds. At 60 frames a second, every 16.7 milliseconds.
Posts
seriously, that and the fact this tech isn't even OUT yet. The fact is, if this works, they are gunna make $$$ and attract the attention of every 3rd party dev out there.
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
Frankly I think this is where everything is going
Netflix's Instant Movie dealie has convinced me that in the future, everything from movies still in theaters to DVD releases to game betas to game releases will be delivered digitally over the internet directly to our computers and TVs
But I really didn't expect something like this to show up for years
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Yarp
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
One wonders if there is any plans for a uk or europe dedicated server farm and how long after it will be introduced, we have got better broadband (Least fecking france does) and less plans which are capped at all
He was very interested in the ramifications of digital distribution when Steam came around, I can only wonder what he thinks of this
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
All $985.06 worth of them.
All of this is based upon me being accepted though.
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
Also a max resolution of 720p is just not up to par with playing games on a PC, and hasn't really been standard for a few years. My monitor's native res is 1680X1050 and I run every game I own except Far Cry 2 at the resolution.
I don't think I would want to give the graphical fidelity up just so I can have my games in the cloud.
Sure, I mean, Comedy Central can figure out how to block Canadian IPs, but there's no way these guys who have developed a potentially revolutionary low-latency gaming technology will know how to do anything like that.
:P
But in a year or two, when that fancy pants graphics card is about to give up the ghost, and most games are hard to run on it anyway, if Onlive is still around and succesful, odds are shit would be cheaper on that service than buying a new card and/or processor and new games and all
Personally, I can see using this service a lot, but at the same time I can see using my PC for games I can still run or that I want to mod or that I want to tweak or customize to get better graphics out of, but in the future I might not want to spend money on buying a whole new PC just to play some new games at a decent FPS with a decent resolution
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Hulu isn't aimed at replacing TV, DVDs and Blu-Ray.
Yet somehow, that's just what it does for me.
Which is fine, but no TV executive ever sat down and said "This shit could replace everything tomorrow!" For every person like you who uses Hulu, you will have people who might look at it, and decide that they much prefer using Tivo, buying some season boxed sets, etc.
Just because a service can provide a comparable product to another product/service, does not mean that it is intended to replace the alternate products/services. It's a technological evolution of means to media consumption. We still read the goddamn newspaper and listen to the radio.
But that cost includes the other features of the service and is much less than buying a high end PC and upgrading it.
Yeah, the spectating and video capturing and various community features, plus the ability to rent and buy games instantly is worth a subscription, I think
But maybe not, we'll see just how expensive it is
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
People already pay for MMOs. Lots of them.
I can't remember which of the articles it was in, but somewhere said it would be comparable to Xbox Live subscription fees. I would be willing to pay that to play Crisis on my Macbook/TV.
Remember those fridges capable of going onto the internet with a touch screen browser?
Finally, I can combine my two favorite pasttimes: playing Crysis and overeating!
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
This thing. It obsoletes gaming PCs. You will not have to EVER upgrade your computer to play the shiniest newest game that comes out. 10 years from now, you could be playing Half-Life 3 on the PC you have right now. Or on your dinky decade old MacBook, at a Starbucks.
Assuming they have actually surmounted the technical hurdles they claim they have, this is going to take over the gaming industry. This thing - again, assuming it works as well as advertised - is huge.
Hmm, with newspapers closing and going online-only (or going away altogether), that may not be the best example ...
Sure, not every technology is meant to replace another. But sometimes, it can get pretty darn close. It's usually not immediate either. The web has been around for a while now, but it's relatively recently that magazines and newspapers are really starting to shut down or change their business model. Will that happen with OnLive? Who knows? There's certainly a lot of examples of technology not changing anything either. We'll have to see in a few years to know for sure.
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
I'm glad that someone is as excited about the ramifications of this as I am
If this thing takes off in a big way, the next few years of video games are gonna be crazy
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
One of the big things for console developers is that they can be far more sure of how their game will be experienced than a user on a PC. Put it in, play. PC user? Put it in, play with graphics settings, possibly set some option wrong and end up without shadows, or gimp FPS, etc. This could help reduce (or remove) that for a segment of the PC gaming market.
MMOs could really benefit from this, essentially being able to optimise your server clusters with resources that are impractical to use for a standard client/server MMO.
This picture alone shows exactly how much of a bad idea this is:
http://www.onlive.com/service/how_onlive_works.html
Somehow, magically your actions are being shoved into the world of "Broadband Internet" and magically appearing at their servers, which is streaming back through "Broadband Internet" to your screen.
Here's a quote from a recent article about it:
"One downside of the latency issue is that you can't live more than 1,000 miles from a data center. Rearden's hoping its initial five-server launch will give it a large enough footprint, but we'll have to check in with someone remote to see how their mileage varies. Another downside is that it might suck up your entire bandwidth when gaming: OnLive requires 1.5 Mbps for standard def gaming, and 5 Mbps for high def. Again, it's entirely unclear how well this will work once the pieces are all fitted together."
Five servers... 1000 miles from a data center. With a massive bandwidth requirement of 1.5 Mbps needed for standard def gaming, and 5 Mbps for high definition (so, when something bigger than 1080p comes along, you're screwed? What about sharing a connection with, say, roommates or the rest of the family? If two people wanted to play OnLive at the same time, you've just doubled the downstream bandwidth requirement).
It seems people don't remember the last time a Vaporware product showed up to completely revolutionize gaming. And failed to do so.
Even if your bandwidth is excellent, there's only so much latency one can get out of the Internet. Or heck, out of geography + speed of light.
I do think this may work quite well for games that won't have as much of an issue with input lag, such as non-action games, or even games like shooters which have projectile motion which can be predicted in software (a la QuakeWorld).
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
Okay, so the purpose of this sort of service is to let me play a super high-end game (let's say Crysis or whatnot) at max settings on my mid-range PC? Alright then. Sounds neat.
Until you factor in all of the technical limitations involved in the transfer that would limit me to a lower resolution, lower FPS, poor on-the-fly compression with no buffering, etc. I have a hard time beliving that I wouldn't get better performance out of just running the game at lower settings on my own box, so the purpose is defeated right out of the gate. And that's not even going into latency issues.
The infrastructure required for this service does not exist. Not in most of the USA, at any rate.
They did sort of address this in that presentation they did
Apparently they've tested this in lots of homes and even managed to get Onlive running on two or three different devices at the same time on the same connection. Apparently the downstream bandwidth requirement is not quite as big as it would seem
And when something bigger than 1080p comes along, I'm pretty sure they'll be working on a way to get that on their service
Not that I'm saying I trust them completely, they haven't done any sort of serious stress testing of this service yet, and who knows how that will affect it, but to compare this thing to the Phantom, after what I've seen, is ludicrous
For one thing, the Phantom never actually existed
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Except it isn't vaporware seeing as 9 major publishers have seen it, tested it both in a demo environment and in their own environments and signed up in a major way. Warner has come out backing this.
And regarding your bandwidth arguments; this is exactly the same thing people said about video streaming, and then high def video streaming. The cycle of consumer need, technological advance and commoditization (I probably screwed that word up) will continue to push things like this forward.
Regarding the speed of light argument, the light covers 186.282 miles per millisecond. At 1500 miles that's 8 milliseconds (assuming you have a direct path, so serves as an average taking into account non-direct routing). A roundtrip is then 16 milliseconds. So, to 16 milliseconds add something like half a dozen milliseconds for hop processing on routers, so call it 22 milliseconds round trip. On top of that you add your processing time at your microconsole and at the OnLive servers. At 30 frames a second, a frame is displayed every 33.33 milliseconds. At 60 frames a second, every 16.7 milliseconds.
So playing for 1 minute takes up 300 megs already?
Yikes.
mbps != megabytes per second.
So what is it?
I'm not too familiar with the terms.