Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

Post by shmerl » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #166

skohan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to graphics programmers. Imagine how much better performance you could expect from games if they could spend their time optimizing for one API, and not making compromises to target a half dozen.

> Imagine how much better performance you could expect from games if they could spend their time optimizing for one API, and not making compromises to target a half dozen. That is not really an accurate statement. Graphics performance is heavily dependent on the actual hardware design of the underlying platform. You can't wave a magic API-wand and have your executable or shader be magically fast on every hardware pla…

Post by shmed » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

darkpuma wrote: post #189

modwilliam wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud gaming probably isn't targeted to people like you, then. When the choice is between not being able to play the game at all (due to lacking sufficient hardware) and cloud gaming, the potential downsides of cloud gaming are worth it.

You're right, it's not for people like him. It's not for people that have been around the block and have learned a thing or two. They're hoping to take advantage of the young and naive.

Post by znconrad5 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 2:19 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #74

iandanforth wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Stadia trial convinced me that streaming is a near-term viable option. Latencies were not an issue. Bandwidth was, but when I got to play on a 50Mbps+ connection any issues I had encountered disappeared. Moreover I was able to play a AAA title on my 2011 Macbook Air and that was fantastic.

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…

Post by _x5tx » Fri, May 17, 2019, 2:47 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #124

shaftway wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless it does something smart like trying to compensate for the latency on the client end This is actually already done in many AAA titles. The idea is to basically always be showing a prediction of what will have happened in ~70 ms, and update your state model accordingly. Given a datacenter to run the games on and all of the announcements about being able to take a snapshot of the state, this doesn't sound super…

But stadia can't use these techniques. The game engine and rendering isn't done on the client side. Normally a network game the client displays the user's actions immediately, and the lag is only seen from other player's perspectives. On a streamed game, all interactions need a round trip before the user sees any response.

Post by p1necone » Fri, May 17, 2019, 3:19 AM UTC

ryacko wrote: post #98

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…

Latency isn't an issue with games that have high time to kill or are purely exploration based, which seems to be something Stadia developers have noticed in the examples. There will have to be local rendering for nearby objects and particles, but this is feasible. DRM isn't totally likely, REnouveau does exist, and basic reverse engineering tools could be created to document the most common game engine functions. Twi…