OnLive now FREE and WORKS in the UK!

Exergy said:
Finally able to give it a go now that they have added the continue button and I am very impressed. Sure latency was a little high and the image quality wasn't great but it was still playable even at this early stage.

It really is staggering to think of the techincal hurdles that they needed to jump over to get this running in the polished form that it is.

They also seem to have got a lot of developers on board as most games seem to be slightly customised to fit into on live.

Regarding the image compression people have been mentioning, I remember the CEO stating that one of the key components of the tech was the algorithm/codec they developed to stream. It is highly variable, and dependent on connection speed and latency. So its logical to assume that the faster your connection and the closer your location to an onlive data centre the better the image quality.

Obviously it won't increase above 720p for quite some time, and frankly given their target audience (users who have low resolution laptops, or are only used to the current 720p consoles) it is perfectly adequate.

Its definitely not going to replace my lovely PC, but it is impressive, useful, and very innovative. I think they have answered most of the critics.
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Finally got it working myself and I have to say I agree with everything you said. Sure, there is some input lag but it's nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Very impressive TBH.
 
I was testing this since yesterday, here from Czech Republic, it works really well (25mbit cable connection). I wonder where does it get its data, UK already?

Anyway, I tried all AAA games there (I already own all of them in boxes, so I could compare). Image quality is not great but watchable, input lag is bad in fps games (although they are still playable), third person games are fine on x360pad.

It is all extremely impressive, considering the server is who knows where, and considering how everyone was laughing at them in the beginning : ). I like how slick and fast it is, and the functions of 30 minutes trial, arena, brag clips..really nice.
 
Bumping this thread because something must have changed with the uk server situation or improvements in the US. I've been playing about with Onlive on my netbook and it has been almost flawless all weekend. Can someone else have a go to confirm? Before I was able to get online intermittently, now it just works. On a BT 10mb adsl line btw.

Will post a bid I just took a little later
 
Mmm, not sure. I just gave Assassin's Creed II a blitz for 15 minutes. (I'm shocked at how janky the game looks considering it's supposed to be on all the highest settings - no different to the console version.) Anyhow, there were a few video artifacts now and again and some hiccups with network errors but overall it was 'decent'. Decent enough to play 30 minutes for free but I wouldn't buy a game if today was launch day.
 
Can confirm that I too am seeing improvements in performance.

A lot less lag meaning I'm pulling off headshots in the Just Cause 2 demo.

I'd also heard somewhere that the video quality is scaled based on performance and it definitely looks to be improved since I last tried it.

Still getting a warning about latency issues at the start though.
 
Thought I'd give this just a wee bump as the Micro Console has been confirmed to cost $99 and come with a full free game.

Available for pre-order here: http://www.onlive.com/game-system

Still not the news we've been waiting for in Blighty though. We want British servers damit! :)

Actually, I've just notticed what you're getting for you money with this... that's a console, controller AND a game for $99... They sell the games themselves for ~$40 for newer titles at the moment. That's fairly impressive if you ask me.

No obvious inclusion of a headset though, for complete and simple MP setup.
 
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i just tested out this service, obviously this is the future of console gaming, just not for the present.

lag and framerate issues, as soon as we have servers nearer and fatter QoS internet pipes its a winner :)

very nicely done, looking forward to using this after 5 years :) the technology will obviously be swallowed up by a bigger fish and integrated into the next gen consoles.
 
The simple problem being, if it doesn't work for all games, and doesn't really work out any cheaper, and any time the nets not working for you, or anything goes wrong, game ends.

Stupid basically at this point, so you can save money and play half your games on it, but want to play any FPS properly, and you still need to buy a decent computer, making it entirely stupid anyway.

But prices of games makes a difference, GOTY edition of Borderlands $50 to essentially "buy" the game to be able to play anytime, $30 for Just Cause 2 which is like £8-12 all over the place at the moment.

It seems to mimick console pricing of games, which has always been WAY higher than PC pricing of games, 10 games over two years, £10 extra a game, thats a 5770 right there anyway. Buy 20 games and get them at launch, you've spent £300 more on the games than buying PC games from cheaper sources, and that 5850/460 + a cheap quad core has paid for itself.

This is excluding the fact that it will always be a better experience without lag, always. Is there any chance of multiplayer with onlive, at all, because thats a huge part of many games you simply wouldn't get. Lag for onlive would essentially double.

Its a nice idea, it could work but on a MUCH more local setup. IE every community gets a huge data centre and you all connect remotely, even more short term, each computer has one computer in the house in a cupboard and you just have a screen/keyboard/mouse in every room you want access.

Places in Sweden I think it was use a HUGE datacentre for one thing or another and reclaim all the heat and use it heat a couple thousand local houses.
 
drunkenmaster said:
The simple problem being, if it doesn't work for all games, and doesn't really work out any cheaper, and any time the nets not working for you, or anything goes wrong, game ends.

Stupid basically at this point, so you can save money and play half your games on it, but want to play any FPS properly, and you still need to buy a decent computer, making it entirely stupid anyway.

But prices of games makes a difference, GOTY edition of Borderlands $50 to essentially "buy" the game to be able to play anytime, $30 for Just Cause 2 which is like £8-12 all over the place at the moment.

It seems to mimick console pricing of games, which has always been WAY higher than PC pricing of games, 10 games over two years, £10 extra a game, thats a 5770 right there anyway. Buy 20 games and get them at launch, you've spent £300 more on the games than buying PC games from cheaper sources, and that 5850/460 + a cheap quad core has paid for itself.

This is excluding the fact that it will always be a better experience without lag, always. Is there any chance of multiplayer with onlive, at all, because thats a huge part of many games you simply wouldn't get. Lag for onlive would essentially double.

Its a nice idea, it could work but on a MUCH more local setup. IE every community gets a huge data centre and you all connect remotely, even more short term, each computer has one computer in the house in a cupboard and you just have a screen/keyboard/mouse in every room you want access.

Places in Sweden I think it was use a HUGE datacentre for one thing or another and reclaim all the heat and use it heat a couple thousand local houses.
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It wouldn't double in the sense that I think you're thinking of, as there would be no reason you'd be handeling mp packets locally.

Since the game would be running from a datacentre in london (or w/e) then the game would be speaking to dedicated servers probably 1-3ms away. In theory the multiplayer lag would be near enough the same as to what you'd normally experience via the usual dedicated server communication.

It seems possible that people with good pipes could enjoy this without really thinking about it, it's just that most people don't have pipes that good / stable / not throttled as soon as used.
 
As you said that's based on the servers being in a data centre. Games such as Unreal Tournament, Quake, TF2, etc. would be running all over the world adding additional latency. You could restrict it, in theory, to use only local servers but then that reduces the playerbase.

It's a good idea, I mean if I could stream my PC to my TV / Upstairs PC / etc. then, for me, it would make more sense as I'd be able to stay on the couch and play games, surf, etc. but until they have dedicated connections going straight into there data centre, which will be blooming expensive, I can't see it taking off.

For it to take off it has to be at least as cheap and equally as good as what we already have out there - this falls short by a long shot.



M.
 
m4cc45 said:
As you said that's based on the servers being in a data centre. Games such as Unreal Tournament, Quake, TF2, etc. would be running all over the world adding additional latency. You could restrict it, in theory, to use only local servers but then that reduces the playerbase.

It's a good idea, I mean if I could stream my PC to my TV / Upstairs PC / etc. then, for me, it would make more sense as I'd be able to stay on the couch and play games, surf, etc. but until they have dedicated connections going straight into there data centre, which will be blooming expensive, I can't see it taking off.

For it to take off it has to be at least as cheap and equally as good as what we already have out there - this falls short by a long shot.



M.
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You're already pretty limited to playing games, from .uk, .nl, .de servers from the UK in most games (exceptions exist such as client side registration), as thats where the only resonably pinged data centres are hosted. If you're the type of person who plays in US based servers, you really aren't that fussed about lag as it is anyways.

Datacentre to datacentre communication, if done correctly, will trump your local connection and make things quite playable, more of the issue as the above poster stated, input lag will be annoying, but as far as online gaming anyone with experience knows thats its all about what the server thinks is going on, so in most games you should already be leading your shots which online will have the same consequences.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it will be as good. I'm one of those people who goes to LAN and sits with their 150hz crt and 500hz mouse trying to remove every ounce of input lag that I can find, but when I think about it this could possibily offer almost as good reg on local servers, and even better to distance servers.

I'm highly skeptical that they'll pull it off, but I don't see how its not perfectly feasible assuming their datacentre costs are manageable.
 
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