onlive - Is This The Future of Gaming?

You can see how laggy this would be... at BEST case if you have a copy of quake 3... join a server and use cl_timenudge 100, com_maxfps 24, g_synchronousclients 1, cg_nopredict 1.
 
[URL="http://uk.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/"]http://uk.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/[/URL]

Watch the video conference of it, you might have to click the link on the left of the page >

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/965/965787p1.html

Or the live blog from ign.

Sounds fairly good, I know the live demo had to be impressive without lag so they are probably on 100000MBs per second or something but with all those partners and all the research they have done means it must have something going for it.

I think no matter what they do they are going to issues but for myself on a solid 16MB connection it should be fine ;)

Also the bloggers seem to be fairy impressed on what has been shown off, good luck to them!
 
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Thing is, latency is to do with much more than internet speed; system load, distance from the server, congestion on the line, all of these add up to increase latency. The best pings i've ever gotten were 20-30ms when i first got broadband (when the lines weren't over subscribed and over congested), even then this system would double that latency. But it gets worse, because latency in online games at present does not affect your input into the game, just the output that others can see, you'll appear 30ms behind where you actually are to other people online, which is fine and can easily be accomodated for with a smart netcode. What we'll have here is input latency, as the signal from your pad will have to be sent to the server and then the reaction processed at their side and the result sent back to you. At best this'll mean a slightly delay between you pressing a button and the game actually reacting which will still ruin fast twitch shooters.
 
Seeing as my ISP struggles for me to download files at much more than 16 KBp/s i dont see that it being able to stream HD res graphics or My controller back for that matter..

UK ISP's suck.
 
I think what Streeteh said is right, the games won't be any different from playing locally on your PC as when you play CS online you have 20-150ms (depending on server location and your ISP) which are all very very playable. But as for controller lag to be 20-150ms I think you might notice it at times but I don't think it would actually be that much different from using a control on a console. As the video decompresser is 1ms that shouldn't add anything and I think if you have a really good ping 20-60ms (based on a UK server) you shouldn't notice the lag much at all.

The main problem is most UK ISPs use interleaving I believe? To give you a more stable connect but yet a higher ping, I'm on Sky boradband at 16mb with a ping of 35 (pinging google).
 
maxilive said:
I think what Streeteh said is right, the games won't be any different from playing locally on your PC as when you play CS online you have 20-150ms (depending on server location and your ISP) which are all very very playable. But as for controller lag to be 20-150ms I think you might notice it at times but I don't think it would actually be that much different from using a control on a console. As the video decompresser is 1ms that shouldn't add anything and I think if you have a really good ping 20-60ms (based on a UK server) you shouldn't notice the lag much at all.

The main problem is most UK ISPs use interleaving I believe? To give you a more stable connect but yet a higher ping, I'm on Sky boradband at 16mb with a ping of 35 (pinging google).
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You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. Just imagine Quake 3 with Killzone 2 SP aiming. Killzone 2's response time in MS is 120 or so on SP. Imagine that being the standard for all games played over Onlive - now imagine all the complaints that go along with it just as we have seen with KZ2 before Guerilla patched it. That's just the input latency - what about streaming the actual game?

It's just not going to work feasibly. Maybe if we all had 10mbit connections - but we don't. The UK is incredibly gimped for this kind of thing, and a lot of the world's the same.
 
I'd rather just buy the games and have the physical copy in my hand, especially when it comes to consoles...
Say no to Phantom-esque comedies!

Getting close to April 1st.
 
I haven't even mentioned about servers having a heavy bias towards pipelined tasks (meaning relatively long period of time spent doing predictable work) and how hugely ineffective they are for game processing but based on the quality of a lot of the replies I don't think it's worth the effort :(
 
PiKe said:
This can't possibly work.
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fact.
my 8 meg BT connection has problems streaming ANYTHING

THINK OF THE LAG!

also bandwidth caps for the lose!

this is before you even think of how good your games are going to look on that quad xeon server (not)
 
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KNiVES said:
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. Just imagine Quake 3 with Killzone 2 SP aiming. Killzone 2's response time in MS is 120 or so on SP. Imagine that being the standard for all games played over Onlive - now imagine all the complaints that go along with it just as we have seen with KZ2 before Guerilla patched it. That's just the input latency - what about streaming the actual game?

It's just not going to work feasibly. Maybe if we all had 10mbit connections - but we don't. The UK is incredibly gimped for this kind of thing, and a lot of the world's the same.
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Ah right sorry, Thats why I put "I don't think" as I'm just thinking out loud hehe.

I wonder if they are doing anything different with the controllers then? Suppose their isn't anything they can do as minimum 20ms for a really amazing connection then add the ping of the server and all the other hops and its going to get bad. But with all of that publisher support there must be something behind it?

As you mentioned it might just feel like Killzone 2, although that was to do with the deadzone I believe? But every game feeling like that! urg X.x
 
It's not the deadzone, otherwise all PS3 games would feel the same. It was a deliberate design decision by Guerilla that eventually got toned down in a patch after mass complaints raised by owners of the game.

It was an example of how it would feel to control games over OnLive. It's incredibly important that feedback on games are instant, otherwise it'll just feel slow and lethargic, taking away a lot of the enjoyment. If a lot of us struggle to stream flash movies at 640x480 without seeing it buffer once in a while, there's no chance OnLive will work properly either. The bandwidth involved is colossal.
 
The real question is will there a resolution limit and so on for example, if i have a 1920x1080 screen then it would be streaming 1080p video which i cant see happening to be honest.
Also technically the game would have to be compressed videoim guessing? so wouldnt there be a lot of lag between the computer their side rendering the game and it being compressed?
 
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a lot of people have said it, even if your have the 10mb download speed to stream this thing properly what about your ping? This service is going to be very region centric to begin with, with regards to where they put the servers.

I know having input lag from my controller to what I was seeing on screen would annoy the crap outta me, FPS games would be headwrecking, so much so I'd just go back to playing the game on my PC.

It sounds like a cool idea, and if it actually works it's something I wouldn't mind turning on my TV every now and then for, but even if it does take off/work it'll be years, nigh on decades before I can use it in my country with our crummy broadband.
 
Eliot said:
The real question is will there a resolution limit and so on for example, if i have a 1920x1080 screen then it would be streaming 1080p video which i cant see happening to be honest.
Also technically the game would have to be compressed videoim guessing? so wouldnt there be a lot of lag between the computer their side rendering the game and it being compressed?
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Watch the video, it says that there would be a 720p limit
 
So this is the "future" of gaming but it can only run at 720P?

Add that on top of the compressed stream and the input lag, yeah sounds fantastic! :D

You just know this will be dead in the water by later this year.
 
If it works, I would love it. Currently I have a low power system on chip running linux as my main PC, and use, what by now days you can find a rubbish bin of a system to play a handful of games.

It is barely able to play most titles that are couple of years old, and that system seems like a good answer assuming it works. Take your content anywhere? Yes please!
 
rsatd said:
Take your content anywhere? Yes please!
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Anywhere with a fast broadband connection without other people using it at the same time, good luck with that!

Emlyn_Dewar said:
We can live in hope. I'm all for new technology but this just seems like a downgrade from what we already have.
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I'm not worried, it's gonna fall on its face and I'm glad it will, if this was to become the norm it would murder competitive gaming.
 
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