Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service • Hacker News Board

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#171

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

Scramblejams wrote: post #112

vvanders wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1, ex networking+tools gamedev here and have almost the exact same thoughts. 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 th…

And when all the clients and the server are sitting in the same DC? Now you can program your clients and server like they’re all on a LAN. And now you can trust the client. (The client, not the inputs.) Those are huge reductions in complexity. This makes delivering good multiplayer easier, not harder. But I do agree that input/display latency is going to be a thing. Results may be highly variable and you’ll probably…

[deleted]

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#172

Post by synaesthesisx » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

Isn't this similar to Nvidia's GeForce Now service? I've been impressed with Nvidia's beta; with a good connection you can play a ton of games at maximum settings with just minor input lag.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#173

Post by minimaxir » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

Other comments have suggested this might fail like OnLive/Nvidia/PlayStation Now because the economics of streaming on the business end don't work out.

This case is different. Stadia is the first video game streaming product made by a cloud computing company, and also a cloud computing company which developed a video codec (VP9) just for high quality/low latency streaming.

The economics are much different on all sides; it all depends on how Google prices the service. (it'll be curious how Microsoft's xCloud competes. Maybe Amazon will get in on the fun too.)

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#174

Post by tanilama » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

b_tterc_p wrote: post #39

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…

I think your worry is overblown.

This is going to be an alternative for some types of games.

And quite on the contrary I think it would awesome for indies, since they tends to be pretty short. And it is much easier for them to gain consumers, if they went viral over streaming, many of which are, like horror games.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#175

Post by rasz » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #97

djanogo wrote: post #41

I give this 2 years before Google removes all references of "Stadia" from it's product lineup. They have never stuck with a product which, relative to rest of their products, has smaller but dedicated adoption. 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.

> They have never stuck with a product which, relative to rest of their products, has smaller but dedicated adoption. Google Books (14 years old), Google Finance (12), Google Scholar (14), Google Fonts (9), etc.

>Google Books

broken and abandoned http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-badly-is-go...

>Google Finance

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-finance-as-you-know...

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#176

Post by justfor1comment » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

I participated in the beta and was pleasantly surprised to see how the entire experience came together. I only experienced one small technical issue. The game runs in real time on Google's servers. If you have some lag on your network, the client will drop all the frames during that time. Instead I expected behavior like Youtube where you will see a small loader and the game will continue before the lag started. This was specifically a problem when playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey cause in the cutscene the characters would say something like "Go to the * lag * and meet * lag *" and then I had no idea what I had to do next. Lag was still a rare thing during my experience. It's just that when it occurred the timing was unfortunate.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#177

Post by diminoten » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

b_tterc_p wrote: post #39

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…

Why are you sky-is-falling this announcement? Where in their release did they say anything about per-MB or ad based business models? Did they say anything at all about personalized costs in general?

No, they didn't, and every single thing you've suggested about their gaming platform is also true about every other streaming platform, and yet none, literally none, of those platforms have tried any of the things you're complaining about.

You basically just made up a bunch of things to complain about because nothing in the actual release was objectionable. Yours is not a helpful way to react, my friend, though it is a popular one.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#178

Post by sbov » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

Scramblejams wrote: post #112

vvanders wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1, ex networking+tools gamedev here and have almost the exact same thoughts. 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 th…

And when all the clients and the server are sitting in the same DC? Now you can program your clients and server like they’re all on a LAN. And now you can trust the client. (The client, not the inputs.) Those are huge reductions in complexity. This makes delivering good multiplayer easier, not harder. But I do agree that input/display latency is going to be a thing. Results may be highly variable and you’ll probably…

The joystick and display device are just the clients now. You have the same problem just moved around a bit. Without the benefit of being able to use techniques to hide latency, such as client side prediction.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#179

Post by ehsankia » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

hex12648430 wrote: post #162

I really hope the latency we've seen in the live demo was due to the venue's poor internet connection because otherwise this will make some games unplayable. They mentioned that Doom Eternal will be available and that it would be a good benchmark for the service's latency but I'm waiting to see some independent reviews to believe it. Also I don't really understand who's the target audience for this, I doubt people wh…

Latency: Project Stream has been in beta since January, and there are a lot of testimonials out there. Other than fighting games and fast pace shooters, the latency seems to be imperceptible, assuming a good connection.

Target audience: Probably people who used to own consoles/gaming rigs, but no longer do for a variety of reasons. The fact that you can play anywhere and on any device (chromecast, phone, laptop), makes it competitive with devices such as Nintendo Switch of Nvidia Shield.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#180

Post by penagwin » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

gagege wrote: post #79

Ronsenshi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is following: you have a character standing in a world. You click "w" - at which point character has to move. Right? On local machine that's what you will get. Not so much with the streaming - first you input goes to the google, being processed there, returns to you and only now you see that character is moving.

Yes, even with a Steam Link over Ethernet in my house there's a slight but noticable input lag. Most games are playable but it doesn't feel quite right.

It's one of those things that's fine for many games (especially games were you use a controller) such as rocket league, single player games, etc.

The moment we're talking about CSGO or any decently fast paced shooter and it's a no-go for sure.