OnLive - the future of gaming?

[Chap]

This is just awesome.


http://cdn.onlive.com/images/1/how_onlive_works.png

Powerful Gaming Made Easy
Connect to OnLive with your TV, PC or Mac and start a game

Your game runs in a state-of-the-art OnLive game server center
OnLive connects you to game servers through the Internet, instantly sending your controller actions upstream and the results back downstream at blinding fast speeds
Enjoy ultra high-performance gameplay on your TV or entry-level PC or Mac

In short: you can play ANY game on a low-end PC or mac, or even on the TV!
No downloads, no waiting, no lag. Just click and play.

Click HERE (http://i.gizmodo.com/5183416/onlive-demos-streaming-games-yes-thats-crysis-on-integrated-graphics) for a over 50 minute long demonstration, held yesterday at the GDC. :)

Read much more info here (http://tinyurl.com/c96k3k).

[flaggwalkstheline]

I just read an article on yahoo about this, apparently its only as good as your internet connection, It's a good idea but I think it will be a while before (or if) it becomes good enough erase the idea of consoles as we know them

[Iwritecode]

I just read an article on yahoo about this, apparently its only as good as your internet connection, It's a good idea but I think it will be a while before (or if) it becomes good enough erase the idea of consoles as we know them

Considering the number of people that are playing these games online already, I think they'd jump at the chance at not having to pay $2000+ for a "gaming" computer to play them on.

[valtr0n]

I'll believe this when I see it on store shelves.

Streaming will never, ever trump console gaming, at least not for at least another decade. If this catches on, expect to see ISP's raise their rates significantly and expect to see even more of them take on a tiered system with no "unlimited data" package.

If they think the streaming video revolution hurt them, wait til streaming HD video games becomes popular. The infrastructure just isn't in place to see this ever adopted in as widespread a format as the console gaming we know today.

I'm a pessimist, sorry.

[CPU]

Yeah, I'm a little skeptical too. Seems like I remember a company in the 90's that claimed they had some super-video compression doohickey that would let you watch TV over 56k..lol. Anyway, it was not true obviously, but they did manage to BS a LOT of industry insiders and investors. Hopefully that's not the case here, but I find it very, very hard to believe that this tech is anywhere close to being ready.

If I'm wrong I'll definitely signup though! :lol:

*EDIT*
Oh, and I almost forgot. The thing that I really find hard to believe is that they would have to render all the frames on the server and then stream the rendered frames to your PC, or TV. Ever connect to a sever via VNC, or RDP and try to play a game? Even on a LAN connection it's virtually impossible..

[Chap]

I think all of you should watch the video I linked to before being so negative ;) they answer practically everything you're saying here.

For standard definition games they recommend (not require) 1.5mb connection.
For high definition games, the recommend a 5mb connection.

And the servers they will be providing are custom made to handle this, and they are only used for this. They don't rent a few at a server park and say "go!", they make their own.

but yeah, watch the video, it explains and shows it :D

They show a guy playing Crysis Wars on his mac, against another playing on the TV.

[flaggwalkstheline]

I think it has real possibility, however its going to take a while get there, think of how crappy the internet itself was in the mid 90s when it was just getting started

[valtr0n]

Chap, you realize they're not going to tell you about how it might not work in their own video, right?

And any demos they show you can guarantee are being "streamed" from servers less than 20 feet away through gigabit cabling. Any demo they show is going to be under absolute optimum conditions, nothing less. Even if they use a piece-of-crap PC to demo it's capabilities, you can bet the network infrastructure behind that PC pushing the stream is going to be significantly more high-end. It doesn't matter how great their servers are when they're pushing the data, if the infrastructure isn't in place after it leaves their servers then it's a moot point. When it hits the average joe's $40 Linksys router and $20 ethernet cable it'll be a whole different game.

Color me skeptical, at the least. This is a great idea in theory, but like I said, the infrastructure just isn't in place for this to be of any practical use to anybody. I don't care if you're on a 10mb downstream, you're not going to reliably stream and control in real time a 720p game.

Penny-Arcade wrote on this topic today, and I had the same thoughts they did on the OnLive.

"If a man claims to be Jesus Christ, you can bet I'll check the wrists."

[turtlex]

It's an interesting concept, to be sure but I'm a little skeptical too... who "owns" the game software? If you do, how does it get cliented to the game server so others can play?

Also, yeah, only as good as your internet connection.

Plus, I'm a PS3 fangirl.... I wanna know how Lara Croft and Modern Warfare would be ported?!?

ETA: I would think we're at least 5 years away from this being even possible. Hell, dedicated servers at Sony couldn't stay up when a map pack was introduced!

[Chap]

I don't think they would have got major companies like EA on board by tricking their execs. into believing them, not in "todays economy".
And we see streams of people playing live in the menus. They could be sitting in the other room of course, but I doubt it. If they faked something this huge, they would never succeed once the truth is known.

I'm not saying it's going to work great, but it looks very promising and only time will tell.

[turtlex]

I agree completely - time is the key. Time and resources.

And yeah, chipsets and compatibility.

[Chap]

More info:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6206623/index.html?om_act=convert

:)

[CPU]

I do agree that, if true, this product will be awesome. But, I'm still left with the lingering doubts about how they can stream the graphics to your device and process "real-time" commands from a client; especially doing this on a "massive" scale (and handling peer-to-peer connections too!!!).

Consider this:


Consider rendering a 800 x 600 RGB model at 20 frames per second. There are 3 bytes for each image pixel and 4 bytes for each depth buffer pixel. So to transmit an image/depthbuffer pair from one machine to another requires (3 + 4) * 800 * 600 bytes or just over 3MB. For interactive performance at 20 frames per second this requires a bandwidth of 60MB per second which is clearly more than the capabilities of all but the very highest performance networks.
from an article on distributed rendering.
( http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/miscellaneous/distropengl/ )
Now, the article I just quoted is in regards to OpenGL rendering, but the same principles apply regardless of the API in use (OpenGL or DirectX). And this is for 800x600! Imagine the bandwith needed for 1024x768, or god forbid anything higher. Even if you gave each client a dedicated server (no way will that happen) the network bandwidth required to support something like this is incredible.

[valtr0n]

Here's an article by Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article) about how OnLive is pretty much impossible.

My favorite paragraph:

"More than that, OnLive overlord Steve Perlmen has said that the latency introduced by the encoder is 1ms. Think about that; he's saying that the OnLive encoder runs at 1000fps. It's one of the most astonishing claims I've ever heard. It's like Ford saying that the new Fiesta's cruising speed is in excess of the speed of sound. To give some idea of the kind of leap OnLive reckons it is delivering, I consulted one of the world's leading specialists in high-end video encoding, and his response to OnLive's claims included such gems as "Bulls***" and "Hahahahaha!" along with a more measured, "I have the feeling that somebody is not telling the entire story here." This is a man whose know-how has helped YouTube make the jump to HD, and whose software is used in video compression applications around the world."

[Chap]

Only time will tell, it does sound to good to be true, but we can't know untill it has been properly tested :)
lots of norwegian newspaper reporting that it works well. Tiny lag some places, but not bad for pre-beta.

[turtlex]

Hmmmmm.... now there's a question... How to get on the Beta Team!?!

[Chap]

Sign up here (http://www.onlive.com/beta_program.html) :D

[razz]

some things i found that will probably make this fail: (not really my thoughts, i just agree)

-You won't own a Physical copy of your game. no internet = no gaming.
-It REQUIRES a dedicated 5mb download rate.
-All games are streamed from their servers. Yeah... someone hits them with a DDoS and say goodbye to your games.
-You will not be able to sell back your games after you buy them.
-PC games will no longer be able to install mods. This alone will alienate the hardcore players.