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Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

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Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#131

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #10
Waterluvian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Nvidia GeForce Now. I'm wildly impressed by Nvidia's streaming solution.

I remember when Nvidia first launched GeForce Now in 2015 with their attempt at mobile gaming using the Android Shield. It was a good idea in principle, so I was sad to see it not do as well. Glad that Nvidia is pivoting to moving the service back to a full computer setting. The Shield while cool, really could have done with a better screen.

One of my friends has a Shield, and let me play with it for a while (on and off). I really liked it- everything was so snappy and it was so powerful.

I wish nVidia would bring it back, TBH.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#132

Post by borkt »

Xixi wrote: post #90
davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

I have no idea how reliable it is, but quoting wikipedia [1]: "Testing has found that overall "input lag" (from controller input to display response) times of approximately 200 ms are distracting to the user. It also appears that (excluding the monitor/television display lag) 133 ms is an average response time and the most sensitive games (fighting games, first person shooters and rhythm games) achieve response times…

I can easily notice the difference between 20 and 40 ms in FPS games. I have gotten out of FPS's due to keeping up with the hardware requirements, but a streaming service like this could make it possible. That being said, if they cant stay below 50ms I probably wouldn't waste my time.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#133

Post by readams »

davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

Also keep in mind how important multi player is for most big titles now. If you add up player -server-player latency it's actually the same. Given more consistent performance on the rendering/frontend side it's quite possible the overall experience will turn out better.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#134

Post by ClassyJacket »

ehsankia wrote: post #114
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I just don't get why every single time there is discussion about game streaming, the topic of lag as a potential show stopper comes up, and every time it's a hypothetical discussion, which doesn’t make sense at all - the solutions are out there! Don’t assume - just verify it. And when you do, you will find out that there isn’t any actual issue. I’ve played games like The Witcher 3 via streaming over three ye…

Yeah, speed of light is actually a lot faster than people think. Honestly things such as controller and display lag are probably bigger than the round trip latency. And experimentally, anyone who has tried Stadia at GDC or I/O has said that latency wasn't an issue. The bigger limiting factor I think will be bandwidth, especially in America with the awful internet provider situation.

"Yeah, speed of light is actually a lot faster than people think"

This would only be relevant if you had a direct fibre link in a straight line from your house to the service. It's packet switching\routing etc. that introduce latency. And even if you DID have direct fibre, the worst case scenario for distance - server on the other side of the world, but with no other latency accounted for - is about 200ms, even half of which would be noticeable in many games.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do game streaming, but you can't just divide the distance by the speed of light and say it's low. That's not really the issue.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#135

Post by ClassyJacket »

pathartl wrote: post #111
alwaysdoit wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a networked multiplayer game, the total amount of network lag is effectively the same, except that the network lag is moved from between client and server to client and "display". Now that the server and client are now just one instance, there is zero lag there.

Except, that's not actually the case as you still have latency between servers.

This is only relevant if you're deliberately splitting the game across multiple servers (MORE work) so that people living in different cities can play against each other and have low latency to their own server. Other than that there's no reason to run one multiplayer game on more than one server.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#136

Post by davemp »

Xixi wrote: post #90
davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

I have no idea how reliable it is, but quoting wikipedia [1]: "Testing has found that overall "input lag" (from controller input to display response) times of approximately 200 ms are distracting to the user. It also appears that (excluding the monitor/television display lag) 133 ms is an average response time and the most sensitive games (fighting games, first person shooters and rhythm games) achieve response times…

I followed up on the wiki article. The citation was a just eurogamer article that had little to with human perception of latency. It did have this nugget: “Criterion said it was aiming for 50ms latency [for burnout paradise]” which agrees with what I’ve heard making handheld electronics. The goal was always Personally I noticed a significant improvement switching to a 165hz monitor in basically every first person game. The only difference here is going from 16ms to 6ms frame granularity (10ms off the worst case). I’m not sure how much is visual smoothness or latency, but I’d gladly take refresh rate/fps over UHD.

I’m definitely in the enthusiast group though. I didn’t even realize that console players dealt with such high latency. It will be very interesting to see how the market plays out.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#137

Post by manfredo »

jeremyjh wrote: post #127
manfredo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of games were played? Whether or not latency is an issue is hugely dependent on the title. A game like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice where the bulk of the game play revolves around precision timing is going to be killed by any significant amount of latency. Unless it does something smart like trying to compensate for the latency on the client end (e.g. make a block succeed even if it was late, if it suspects th…

I’ve played a lot of Sekiro on XBox One. I’ve played Bloodborne on PS Now and it works great. They have a free trial you should check it out.

Bloodborne on PS Now? That sounds like hell. Plenty of later bosses have very narrow dodge windows. I already have a physical PS3 and PS4 so there's no reason for me to get PS Now. A couple co-workers of mine used it and none of them liked it. It works okay for RPGs, especially turn based RPGs where there is zero emphasis on timing or reactions.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#138

Post by ClassyJacket »

bredren wrote: post #24

Will the most powerful titles white label or use their own custom cloud gaming? For example, Dota 2 or what pubg did with its App Store. Removing the end user capital expense of a gaming rig sounds like a huge change. Would drastically reduce the cost of VR setups as well.

Viable interactive VR will not happen over streaming (video sure). It's already tough to reduce latency to an acceptable range when games are played locally.

John Carmack has some good blog posts about this if you're interested in the details.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#139

Post by mrmuagi »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #109
davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

Honestly I just don't get why every single time there is discussion about game streaming, the topic of lag as a potential show stopper comes up, and every time it's a hypothetical discussion, which doesn’t make sense at all - the solutions are out there! Don’t assume - just verify it. And when you do, you will find out that there isn’t any actual issue. I’ve played games like The Witcher 3 via streaming over three ye…

Mind sharing what the solution you referenced?

From a hard theory network perspective, having higher bandwidth, lower latency, lower error rate on transmission path combined with closer geographical proximity to servers seem to help mitigate increases in latency.

However, if you argue the problem is solved by your empirical evidence gained by playing Witcher 3 of all games, I disagree with your point. Play a real time strategy game, a MOBA, or a first person shooter. 70ms~ (a report for Stadia reported 70ms-130ms, may be stale data) of lag is noticeable to people. On the other hand, I don't mind streaming a turn based game.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#140

Post by cududa »

shmerl wrote: post #60
cududa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has been working on this ~2008. Google only started a few years ago.

Yet MS is clearly uneasy now, since Google kicked them with Linux+Vulkan choice which will erode MS grip on gaming development.

Absolutely not. Game developers have deep deep knowledge in making games for Windows and PlayStation type OS’+hardware. Studios aren’t going to spend years having their devs relearn nuances specific to Google’s Linux implementation
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