How long do people think it will be until we have dummy terminals?

[iron_monkey]

If you have a reasonable internet connection a fluid 60FPS 1080p is very achievable but there is no hiding the latency including encoder and your connection. For single player it isn't terrible but I wouldn't choose to do it, for multi-player you have to be a sucker for punishment or have really bought into the whole thing to ignore the negatives.

Yeah i thought as much, im about to try it out with atomic heart after the install got corrupted and ive had to delete it. Hoprfully it works alright and my save file is still there as i dont want to redownload 85GB again.

 

[mattyfez]

But if it comes to the PC, how do the think it will change PC hardware?

It has, they are called Chromebooks

 

[GGizmo]

I forgot to list the current example of hardware incompatibility in action currently.

New Windows updates cause UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR blue screens

Microsoft says the August 2023 preview updates released this week for Windows 11 and Windows 10 systems are causing blue screens with errors mentioning an unsupported processor issue.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Apparently it's been caused by MSI motherboards.

MSI: Recent wave of Windows blue screens linked to MSI motherboards

MSI has officially confirmed the recent surge of blue screens of death (BSODs) encountered by Windows users after installing this week's optional preview updates is linked to some of its motherboard models.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

It seems to have been from an optional windows update. Microsoft blaming the manufacturers.

The solution, if this blue screen as happened to someone, is to go to the MSI website and download a program that will downgrade the current bios version.

This assumes the user still as some way of accessing windows to do this.

How many non-tech people are going to be able to do this? I think they are going to struggle.

 

[iron_monkey]

Well i tried the streaming on gamepass with atomic heart, compared to downloading the game its terrible, but if its your only choice i guess its ok, no keyboard and mouse support , 1080p and some lag. At least my save was still there.

 

[russ9898]

I cant really see it happening in the near to mid-term. Gaming tech will continue to develop but with local solutions rather than remote hardware. Whilst FTTP is starting to become reasonably common in the UK, there are still large parts of the UK, let alone the rest of the world where gaming using a copper connection whether that be ADSL or FTTC is common place. Those technologies simply don't have the required bandwidth available to offer a seamless experience.

 

[Scrutinize]

You can already game on a 4080 with geforce now...

Don't really see it happening, it's already been available for a number of years (e.g. Stadia) but has never really taken off mainstream.

Not to mention that compute costs in the cloud are pretty expensive. Costs don't typically shrink over time, the compute just gets more powerful.

I don't see it happening soon, but I do think it will eventually happen. There's already some hybrid games, and we'll start seeing some more like it.

Infrastructure will need to be a lot better before fully possible though

Has anyone actually tried streaming a game, i imagine atm it's not great, with low Res and high lag, but I've not tried it so I'm just guessing

I know I mentioned it earlier, not tried it myself but Geforce Now ultimate over FTTP seems do-able.

The subscription cost versus buying a top end GPU gets you the top end GPU for 6 years.

However you get to utilise the next 5080 on release.

Nvidia's GeForce NOW Ultimate tier is actually surprisingly good and I only have a 70-80 Mbps connection at the moment (I plan to upgrade over the next few months).

Link to the other thread where it is being discussed but GeForce Now has finally reached the stage, esp with Games Pass links over last few days, where this isn't just an option but seriously solid solution.

OcUK Thread Here

My recent testing below from that thread:

I have the mid RTX subscription to Geforce Now.

Here is me gaming in my local this morning.

Playing X4 off my Steam Library on my Microsoft Surface 9 Pro. Using my phone as a mobile hotspot.

Gives me a RTX2080 and all settings on Ultra. Silky smooth.....

This game has brought all my gaming laptops to their knees over the years and/or drained the batteries super quickly. In fact historically, the only way to play X4 at sensible performance on a gaming laptop was plugged in.

With GFN; I can play the thing on a MS Surface, on battery, without compromising battery life.

I've tried a couple of GP games this morning too and it's just as slick.

No latency that causes me issues.

On mobile it's tethered on a Vodafone Unlimited plan and varying from 20Mbs 4g to well north of 100Mbs+ on 5g.

Was getting c50Mbs and 50ms ping this morning reporting as 4g for the above.

 

[ltron]

Well i tried the streaming on gamepass with atomic heart, compared to downloading the game its terrible, but if its your only choice i guess its ok, no keyboard and mouse support , 1080p and some lag. At least my save was still there.

Game Pass cloud is terrible compared to GeForce NOW Ultimate with a 120+ FPS stream (that latter part is crucial). Microsoft's cloud service is almost unusable on my connection while GeForce NOW Ultimate is surprisingly close to native. Microsoft are leagues behind Nvidia.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

The principle of mega powerful “virtual desktops” hosted in huge data centres is an interesting one.
The benefits should be similar to those for businesses, ie:
- economies of scale for maintenance
- hot swap capabilities, eg for storage
- even less requirement for the end user to have any technical ability
- “follow the sun” usage patterns. Chances are that peak usage is different at different time zones in the world, meaning that you could “flex” resource capabilities to optimise usage
- I’d expect that it would result in a significant reduction in electricity to not only run (as you could actively disable unused resources) but also for cooling, by building the data centres in optimisedications

So in theory, yep.
- a key issue already mentioned is lag. There’s unfortunately no way to avoid the speed of light, so there will always be some additional lag. However, the more centralised it becomes, the more viable it would be to have regionalised DCs
Additionally, some games are less impacted by lag (eg digitised board games), with FPS at the other extreme. So there’s no reason why you couldn’t use cheaper servers that are further away for lag friendly games and more expensive region specific ones for lag critical games

To get there? Personally I’d see the starting point being to more away from x86 code based to Arm based. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to provide additional virtual cores to software that.faster individual cores, but of course needs the software to be designed to support that.
The upcoming Windows for ARM might well be the catalyst for that.

 

[Calin Banc]

I've been in to gaming world since the 1980s and seen gradual improvement in technology over the years.

I was around when the PC broke up the Amiga vs Atari ST fight and booted them to the retro era.

But one big issue with PC's is the many combinations of parts. Choice is a great thing. But not good when it comes to wanting to run cutting edge games on them. It takes games companies a lot of time to run a game on all the main potential builds, and even then major bugs can appear in a game, even the AAA games.

As our broadband connections improve new technology, speed increases and low pings are gradually becoming more common how will this chance how we play our games?

I think when the change happens I suspect that the integrated motherboard graphics might come back in to play for the desktop, and then we sign in to servers that have the most powerful graphics cards around.

I've noticed many of the consoles have some sort of cloud gaming feature. But if it comes to the PC, how do the think it will change PC hardware?

You're asking for a console, but online. No, thanks.

 

[GGizmo]

You're asking for a console, but online. No, thanks.

I think eventually PC's and consoles will merge, or at least consoles will disappear (at least Sony and Xbox).

 

[ltron]

You're asking for a console, but online. No, thanks.

GeForce NOW is much more like a PC in the cloud. My only real criticism on the technology front is that they are using Zen 3/Zen 2 Threadrippers which creates quite the CPU bottleneck in some (generally poorly optimised) games with an RTX 4080 equivalent GPU (but you do get 24GB of VRAM which is a lot more than the desktop 4080).