41–50 of 577 posts
For example, Valve will keep updating/supporting/hosting events of CSGO even if it has <1Mil active users on PC, but I can totally see Google pulling plug on it and burn dedicated followers.
So, uh, the controller has a microphone, and connects directly to the Internet over Wi-Fi. I guess it's nice this time they told us upfront? Really curious what the network performance requirements would be for 4K or 8K game streaming. Haven't heard them admit to that.
..and I'd bet competitive gaming is out (need for low latency).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be so sure. Competitive games already need to compensate for latency in the network. This system technically won't have any "additional" latency, it will just move where it happens. The amount of time between you hitting a button and a server somewhere registering the command and sending it to other players should be roughly the same (or close enough not to matter all that much for the vast majority). Sure…
Latency hiding in "traditional" multiplayer games basically works by doing computations for other players locally (even if it's as simple as dead reckoning and extrapolating a few milliseconds into the 'future'), and only apply corrections when this diverges too much from the server because of network hick-ups. Unless Google invented some new magic, that's not possible with a video stream (but hmm, who knows, maybe t…
I know things like the Oculus Rift does some fancy processing to kind of "smear" frames to compensate for head movement while the PC renders a new frame. I'm wondering if this service is going to be doing a bit more than just "streaming video to the user". Like including some metadata and allowing the client to make cheap adjustments to various parts of the scene to compensate for lag?
Either way, I really want to see some people play things on this and talk about how it feels, because I can't imagine Google would just release a gaming platform that's nothing more than streaming video. Especially since it's been tried multiple times before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a "gamer", I have a 2080Ti and I hope it's the last 1500$ gaming equipment I ever have to buy. It sits idle 95%+ of the time and it is tied to only one of the all the screens in my house. I want this to work.
Sounds like you want a Steam Link.
Rewrote this a few times. Overall I think this would be really bad for the gaming world. Not buying consoles would be nice, but the natural business model will be ads or pay per hour or pay per MB. This is going to further drive the industry to towards mass multiplayer and grindy games I think. More accessible but worse content. Indie shops would probably struggle even more under this model. The cost per user will va…
This is not a first service that tries to do that. And as before it all ends up with how close the gamer is to the server node, how stable user connection and whether connection is metered or not. I just pinged my google.com server node - and it's over 16ms. Which means no 60fps.
If all the players are in this service, it means lag is much easier to deal with for developers, since its only input lag. All the players actual compute/rendering would be on a very low latency network. you no longer have to deal with all the other networking problems between the client software, and server software.
The computer scientist in me is giddy with excitement. If it is as good as it sounds, we are in a new age of gaming. Kudos Google.
So, I work in the games industry and I don't think this will be successful. This has been tried before (multiple times), gamers haven't wanted streaming services. PC gamers already have Steam and this doesn't offer anything compelling over using Steam, and more casual gamers are playing on Ps4 or Switch or mobile. Also, the hardcore PC gamers are never going to accept the latency associated with playing on remote ser…
They haven't fundamentally solved the latency issue, 50-100ms of ping is brutal and the people who could be a target for this generally won't have a fiber internet connection.
Network gameplay works via misdirection, predictable simulations and knowing how to converge a divergent state(including rewinding in time to re-play hittraces and the like). Streaming gets you none of that.
It'll work for high-latency sensitive singleplayer games but not seeing it scaling out wider.
I saw the OnLive demo. It was very slick, and the concept seemed more than viable, it was inevitable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, I work in the games industry and I don't think this will be successful. This has been tried before (multiple times), gamers haven't wanted streaming services. PC gamers already have Steam and this doesn't offer anything compelling over using Steam, and more casual gamers are playing on Ps4 or Switch or mobile. Also, the hardcore PC gamers are never going to accept the latency associated with playing on remote ser…
Huh, how can you compare this to Steam? Google aims to obviate the need for gamers to own top-of-the-line hardware. Steam does not offer that feature.
Even for people that don't have gaming computers or consoles, you can put a decent one together that costs less than one of Google's phones
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be so sure. Competitive games already need to compensate for latency in the network. This system technically won't have any "additional" latency, it will just move where it happens. The amount of time between you hitting a button and a server somewhere registering the command and sending it to other players should be roughly the same (or close enough not to matter all that much for the vast majority). Sure…
Latency hiding in "traditional" multiplayer games basically works by doing computations for other players locally (even if it's as simple as dead reckoning and extrapolating a few milliseconds into the 'future'), and only apply corrections when this diverges too much from the server because of network hick-ups. Unless Google invented some new magic, that's not possible with a video stream (but hmm, who knows, maybe t…
That is, in fact, how video compressors work. It's called motion estimation.