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[ChrisJSY]

Surely as the speed goes up the latency will come down, I understand it is never going to be instant, there will always be latency but I would have thought it will get to a point were it is so low that it is almost instant. I may be wrong as I am not an expert in this area.

Bandwidth and Latency are two separate(but entwined) things, do not get the two confused.
Since 2000 my pings have stayed relatively the same, except last year I went from 2Mb to 8Mb which put me on the next generation network in Jersey, using a new submarine cable laid to the UK, it slightly improved however my ping to a server in texas for ARMA1/ARMA2 went from 170(always was 170) to 130.

What matters most is how the data you send and receive is handled by all the, for a lack of words and to make it simple, "hops" it takes.
You could have the best latency you'll ever get to a location but if someone between you and them decides to perform poorly, then it will suffer.

However, when latency does come into effect when your bandwidth begins to saturate, if you are using all of your bandwidth to download say a film and then decide to play a game of Counterstrike online, the data required to have decent ping is going to be fought over, unless you've set up Quality of Service(QoS) to allow programs you want, have priority.
Beyond a certain connection, no more will help unless switching to a higher speed puts you on a better network.

I'm no expert either but I know enough to explain it simply

 

[richardirv]

Fair play, I did not know that, just thought it was more speed lower lag. I get a ping of around 45-55 on my line but a friend on 50mbit gets 20-25. There must be something in the speed.

 

[RoyMi6]

Lines that support faster speeds will generally have better pings but only due to the quality of the connection. If your friend was to drop is service down to a 10Mb option he'd probably have the same ping.

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/speedtests/a/network-speed.htm
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/speedtests/a/network_latency.htm

 

[ChrisJSY]

Fair play, I did not know that, just thought it was more speed lower lag. I get a ping of around 45-55 on my line but a friend on 50mbit gets 20-25. There must be something in the speed.

Location and everything in between matters. This is anything from your PC, down to the /socket/wiring/routers/ even being on a different ISP can matter. There are so many factors contributing to the final result.

 

[richardirv]

Still, from what I have just seen today it is still quite impressive to say it is a crappy 4mbit line.

 

[ChrisJSY]

Yeah I am impressed too, especially the ease of signing up, installing and playing in all of under 5 minutes. Quality is acceptable, I even like the feature of the arena.

I could see myself using it for some point and click games, a service like this for movies/tv too would be great.

 

[richardirv]

Yeah, I rekon this could be the future for consoles, as they seem to be only thing holding back graphics in games to me, At least onlive will be contantly evolving to keep up with game developers.

 

[ic1male]

You've got until 5AM this morning (18/5/11) to get Amnesia: The Dark Descent for nowt. Buy the game using the software but at checkout use promo code THANKYOU and it will be yours for $0.00

 

[iamTakeo]

Got it running VERY impressed, on a 4mb line.
Amnesia was great, not 100% definition you'd get playing it locally, but 80% or 90%, it still looked great, feels responsive.
Also, played UT3 with 32 bots, the remote computer seemed to handle everything fine, but the fast paced action shows up the minute lag a bit more. Still, I won, didn't find it hard to move, jump and kill.

This won't replace the way I play games, but I can definitely see the appeal on laptops and also for instant Demo's.

 

[dmxdex2020]

On live sounds like it will be the future. Obviously right now our net speeds are not good enough yet.

 

["andy"]

just had a blast on Dirt 2 and it was working great for me

obviously for you lot with gaming PCs it looks poorer than it should but as a hackintosh user with a crappy graphics card this was great

sold my xbox recently and id be well interested in something like this depending on costs

 

[Jongo]

Had a play on this with my laptop, it works surprisingly well on a 20mb connection over wi fi, was able to play fear 2 and dirt 2 fine, there were some points in fear where it would be noticeably laggy but apart from that it was very good.

Really shocked by how well it works. Recommend people give it a try.

 

[norm]

It is a really good concept but the latency kills it. I don't see how they can work around that.

I tried Metro 2033 and the delay just left me feeling disorientated.

 

[Amnesia]

was pretty impressed with it but saying that im playing on my home rig with a decent wired connection. im guessing it wont be as smooth on the laptop.

 

[gazzab]

Last I tried it was shocking...

I know where they could really make a killing though... Korea! Open a hench data centre or two there, problem free, dosh incoming.

The nature of the compression and decompression of data means graphical quality varies massively throughout the game and from connection to connection... I watched a programme about it but can't seem to find it on youtube

I can see this eventually being the way forward, but to be honest, I'd miss upgrading and messing with my rig and to an extent, I'm guessing the framerates will still vary massively between computers. You only have to play a facebook game on a Mac/low powered PC vs. a gaming PC to see what I'm on about. The lack of responsiveness may not just be down to latency

 

[sniffy]

Surely as the speed goes up the latency will come down, I understand it is never going to be instant, there will always be latency but I would have thought it will get to a point were it is so low that it is almost instant. I may be wrong as I am not an expert in this area.

Information cannot possibly travel faster than the speed of light so the fastest you could send information half way around the world is 67 milliseconds. If you factor in practical aspects such as the transport medium's refractive index (how much it slows down light) and data having to go through multiple devices between two points it's reasonable to say that things aren't really going to get much better in terms of latency.

 

[bhavv]

My internet is too sucky for something like this. I can just about manage to play MMOs.

 

[JimAroo]

Just had a look around to see what people say about this and wow.. 1.6GB of bandwidth within just 30 minutes. :/

 

[kEn_sct]

this whole idea is epic fail... responce time is the key in most games, well the ones i like. games even worrie about the latency of there mouse! now if you mouse signals have got to travel even a mile before a computer processes the information... ofcource its guna be a laggy peice of crap. if your using fiber optic the dta has to be processed 10 times before it gets displaced on you screen, your coumputer, modem, exchange, their modem, their computer, back to their modem, echange again, your modem again, then your computer again then finaly your monitor. also fiberoptics has to have a signal booster every 25miles (i think cba looking it up) which further increases latency. a ping of over 5ms input lag you be unaceptable imo

only games i can see this working for a turn based games, point click etc. basically not shooting games

 

[kEn_sct]

Information cannot possibly travel faster than the speed of light so the fastest you could send information half way around the world is 67 milliseconds. If you factor in practical aspects such as the transport medium's refractive index (how much it slows down light) and data having to go through multiple devices between two points it's reasonable to say that things aren't really going to get much better in terms of latency.

its much worce than that about 100ms with fiber obtics not acounting for relays. 2000000/ 2x10^8 = 100ms