I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms against Google over this, when Microsoft (xCloud) and NVIDIA (Geforce Now) are also going after the same thing.
Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
61–70 of 92 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#62Having been mobile / traveling a lot. I tried using multiple cloud gaming services. I didn't want to lug around a gaming laptop. The biggest issue I've had is internet. Outside of my own home the internet has been slow, laggy, or compressed the image to much. It's generally unplayable. In between being able to afford a gaming device. I used parsec, and rented a machine to play games. FPS online multi player games wer…
What do you mean with "I... rented a machine to play games"? Is it a online service? Would you mind talking a little bit more about that?
Parsec, allows renting of cloud computers with quadros. Either via amazon or paperspace. It's rented per the hour. Storage costs additionally flat each month. I usually spent about 10 to 20 a month. For several nights a week with an hour or two gaming.
I'm still a fan of the service. I'm using their software for hosting my in home network gaming setup.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#63Lag will always be an issue. I used to play a lot of competitive games like street fighter, tekken, starcraft. There is zero chance of a fighting game like Tekken ever being popular on Stadia due to lag. Distance from LA to New York: ~4500km. Time of light speed to travel 4500km: ~30ms Time of 1 frame at 60fps: 16.7ms There are moves in Tekken ('just frame') that require 1 frame precision to pull off. For a while it…
This isn't a solution for every game nor is it meant to replace all forms of gaming.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
John Carmack is of a completely different opinion and if there's someone I trust regarding this stuff it's him.
Link? I don't accept third party "sources" like this.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
John Carmack is of a different opinion regarding 2.
This (repeated) comment would carry more weight if it included a citation, i.e. a link to the source.
I'm not sure that he agrees that streaming games is a good idea.. i mean, at least from his twitter..
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1108144741932249088
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#66I'm wondering if Google will use this as a way to expand their compute footprint into more POPs / edge network locations.
Everyone is hung up on latency, which is true. So if Google deploys their game rendering boxes at edge networking locations, like internet exchanges, that will result in lower latency to end users. Once Google has their rendering boxes there, they might as well sell other computing services as well. Why not sell to the game makers themselves, too - if they put their matchmaking/host servers in the same place, then latency is lowered even more.
IIRC Google already has the largest private network (most fiber-miles) with the most POPs compared to other cloud providers. The more POPs you have, the better you can do CDN and other geographic-sensitive computing since you are physically closer to your end users.
Having mini-datacenters at edge network locations could also be an interesting bet on future/emerging technologies that are also compute-heavy and latency sensitive, say VR or AR. Imagine being able to deploy code to thousands of locations (for a price) compared to the traditional couple dozen regions * a handful of availability zones where the huge datacenters are.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#67I don't think it will work for multiple reasons. 1. Google doesn't have gaming in their corporate DNA. They will commit a bunch of faux pas that will alienate the gaming community. 2. Streaming games adds latency. Latency problems ruin the experience. 3. Gamers are a very fickle community and if they don't feel your company 'gets' them, they will not engage with you.
1 and 3 are basically the same reason are they not? Yet corporations like EA and Ubisoft are still very successful despite having famously horrible reputations amongs the "community". Moreover, Google looks willing to fix any lack of expertise/culture/"DNA" just by acquisitions (if such a thing is possible). As for 2, Digital Foundry tested how bad the latency of Google's services was (though not in a home setting),…
Yeah 1 and 3 are related but a little different, let me clarify. 1 is about how Google will inevitably goof some stuff up because they don't know the space. 3 is about how gamers will react to these goofs way harsher than your average user.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#68Lag will always be an issue. I used to play a lot of competitive games like street fighter, tekken, starcraft. There is zero chance of a fighting game like Tekken ever being popular on Stadia due to lag. Distance from LA to New York: ~4500km. Time of light speed to travel 4500km: ~30ms Time of 1 frame at 60fps: 16.7ms There are moves in Tekken ('just frame') that require 1 frame precision to pull off. For a while it…
Render the next 60 possible frames (and recursively the next 60 of each 60 to that frame), send them to the client, then based on controller input, it knows which frame to choose next.
Use AI to determine the "most likely futures" and process those branch further.
It could dynamically increase and decrease the "possible futures" sent depending on how fast a person is going and how many input choices they have at any given moment. Compression (combining like elements of different future frames) can happen strongly on frames further into the future that have more time to be decoded.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#69I don't think it will work for multiple reasons. 1. Google doesn't have gaming in their corporate DNA. They will commit a bunch of faux pas that will alienate the gaming community. 2. Streaming games adds latency. Latency problems ruin the experience. 3. Gamers are a very fickle community and if they don't feel your company 'gets' them, they will not engage with you.
"gamers" are a small portion of the game buying community, especially very profitable more casual games.
What percent of mobile game sales do you think go to "gamers?"
Conversely, gamers are probably a high percent of the medium-high end hardware community. Those companies manufacturing physical products do need to cater to gamers.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia?
#70I don't think it will work for multiple reasons. 1. Google doesn't have gaming in their corporate DNA. They will commit a bunch of faux pas that will alienate the gaming community. 2. Streaming games adds latency. Latency problems ruin the experience. 3. Gamers are a very fickle community and if they don't feel your company 'gets' them, they will not engage with you.
"gamers" are a small portion of the game buying community, especially very profitable more casual games. What percent of mobile game sales do you think go to "gamers?" Conversely, gamers are probably a high percent of the medium-high end hardware community. Those companies manufacturing physical products do need to cater to gamers.
Casual games are a huge market, but Stadia is marketing itself as being for "playing AAA video games" and using graphics processing power as a selling point. It doesn't appear to be targeting the causal market.
A pretty sizable subset of AAA games are heavily effected by reaction/latency time. It could be a solution for some kinds of MMO games though, where high latency is already designed for, and not having to distribute content updates would both be a plus for the players and allow the developers to keep "secret" content/events secured before they were intended to be made available.