Renzatic on 2/1/2010 at 21:50
Damn, Subjeff. Way to fuck up the rotation and make me edit my post. :mad:
Quote Posted by Dethtoll
While on the one hand that has the potential to bring high-end PC gaming to everyone who isn't Malygris, until we get a nigh-instantaneous infrastructure, even 10ms lag is going to put a damper on a lot of peoples' expectations for this.
At 10-50ms latency, you could easily learn to compensate for that amount of lag with most FPS types games. Hell, I used to play Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament at 200ms halfway decently. After awhile, you learn to trail and follow ahead of your targets. Not exactly ideal, but it's doable.
I'll tell you what will suck absolute balls though...fighting games. There is no way you'd force me to play something that requires split second maneuvers without any margin for error like the Street Fighters or Virtua Fighters through Onlive. Any amount of lag would kill the fun of those games.
Quote Posted by SE
I don't think its quite like streaming high def video, nor is it a video clip you get.
Well, like I said, I don't quite understand all the technology behind it. But from what I do understand, it feels like it's a close enough comparison to get away with.
Quote Posted by SE
One problem I see with it is if the servers have a technical issue lots of people wont be able to play. Its not like your PS3 breaking.
Technical issues are the big issue of the whole service if you ask me. Like has been said before, that extremely highly compressed supposedly near-lossless video algorithm you mentioned has to be capable of miracles to supply a whole bunch of people a whole bunch of information without taking up the bandwidth equivalent of 5 big ISPs. I think the thing occasionally going down and breaking will be the least of Onlive's problems.
Quote:
In addition I'm not that keen on relying on distant hardware rather than a physical box I own
Neither do I. At least not exclusively. But as an alternative, it's a great idea. I mean sure, I'll go out and buy a game off the shelf when it's out. Same as I do now. But if I want to play Crysis on my netbook, it's great to have the option.
MustardCat on 2/1/2010 at 22:17
Quote Posted by Renzatic
At 10-50ms latency, you could easily learn to compensate for that amount of lag with most FPS types games. Hell, I used to play Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament at 200ms halfway decently. After awhile, you learn to trail and follow ahead of your targets. Not exactly ideal, but it's doable.
I'll tell you what will suck absolute balls though...fighting games. There is no way you'd force me to play something that requires split second maneuvers without any margin for error like the Street Fighters or Virtua Fighters through Onlive. Any amount of lag would kill the fun of those games.
According to them they did testing and up to 80ms lag is imperceptible.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Technical issues are the big issue of the whole service if you ask me. Like has been said before, that extremely highly compressed supposedly near-lossless video algorithm you mentioned has to be capable of miracles to supply a whole bunch of people a whole bunch of information without taking up the bandwidth equivalent of 5 big ISPs. I think the thing occasionally going down and breaking will be the least of Onlive's problems.
Did you watch the video at: (
http://tv.seas.columbia.edu/videos/545/60/79?file=1&autostart=true)?
He explains most of the technical and logistical details pretty well.
Jason Moyer on 2/1/2010 at 22:30
Quote Posted by catbarf
50ms of lag isn't something you can easily see on a screen but can definitely be felt. I think I'll need to try a demo to judge but I sure as hell think it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Keep in mind there's a difference between lag and throughput. 50ms of input lag doesn't necessarily translate into a game running at 20fps, it could be running at 100fps there would just be a 50ms delay between your input and the response from the game server. The framerate would be limited by bandwidth rather than latency.
Have you ever watched digital cable? That's been around for 20+ years now, and when it first came out and the available bandwidth for the signal was shit they didn't show TV programs at 5 FPS.
50ms seems like a high estimate anyway. I have scraping-the-barrel $20/month 1 megabit dsl and I get 25ms pings to most places in the US regardless of location.
Renzatic on 2/1/2010 at 23:17
Wow. It's actually more impressive than what I originally though. Provided everything they're showing off works as well as they're claiming, a 600k a sec constant stream (for the high def service) to even a couple million people is pretty doable if the ISPs are involved. All they have to do is keep up with demand and make sure things stay running.
Course now I have to wonder how much the hardware costs to run at least 50,000 instances of Crysis and still have enough computational power left to compress and broadcast the video to 50,000 different people in realtime. Whatever Onlive ends up being, it probably won't be cheap.
Myagi on 3/1/2010 at 16:53
Quote Posted by Renzatic
At 10-50ms latency, you could easily learn to compensate for that amount of lag with most FPS types games. Hell, I used to play Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament at 200ms halfway decently. After awhile, you learn to trail and follow ahead of your targets. Not exactly ideal, but it's doable.
There's one difference there though, the 200ms lag wasn't between you moving your mouse and seeing a response on screen. The client instantly applies player movement input, it's "only" the shooting and error compensation that is affected by the actual network lag.
A sluggish mouse look is much more noticable, and annoying. With analog sticks on a gamepad I guess that effect can be hidden somewhat, but I have doubts this will work well for FPS played with mouse, except perhaps under the most ideal net conditions.
