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Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

asia.nikkei.com

251–260 of 268 posts

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those hops would be on ISP equipment with 10G or 100G interfaces, modern routers forward packets in tens to hundreds of microseconds and switches can do it in a few microseconds, so as long as there is a bit of distance it will account for most of the delay, and SOL is 2/3 of its speed I'm vacuum. Switches can even sends out packets on a port before it has been fully received on the incoming port

> modern routers forward packets in tens to hundreds of microseconds Only when network is underutilized, and there is no throttling/bufferbloat.

True, though routers with 100G interfaces do not have a lot of buffer space. But most ISP's make sure that isn't happening as it its pretty bad for their customers experience. I know some ISP's do not put enough effort into that at all but every single one I worked for did (Europe). In this case Google can put effort into direct peering relationships to make sure that their customers have a good experience.

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

#252
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…

Rather than purely streaming frames, you could push a frontend client in e.g. webgl + wasm on demand, cache artifacts locally, and send view-independent texture/mesh streams down. Doing so is technically more complex than having a rigid client/server split, but if they start with full streaming they can progressively make the client more intelligent, without being burdened with any specific hardware/client infra choi…

Yep, see polystream.com

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

#253
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-30ms seems high? At least in the UK a typical home broadband latency is 6 to 9ms in my experience.

There's a lot of people who can't get fiber when you get outside the cities. I'd be thrilled if I could get under 35ms.

6-9ms is not fibre here - I was referring to copper ADSL that is available pretty much everywhere in the UK (apart from some really isolated tiny villages/hamlets)

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

#254

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.

There are press articles talking about how latency is an issue when they tried it out: https://www.pcgamer.com/i-tried-googles-stadia-and-latency-g...

So not really anyone. And that's in an extremely latency friendly environment where the servers are just up the road.

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

#255
Having tried several video game streaming services over the years, I am not optimistic that streaming games will work for fast action games like shooters. The lag between a controller move and screen response is just not adequate, even when the server is only a few hops away with low ping values on an excellent network connection.

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> server on the other side of the world, but with no other latency accounted for - is about 200ms In practice, it’s a lot worse than 200ms. 500-700ms are typical for servers on the other side of the planet.

That definitely varies greatly from provider to provider. I usually see Average Pings from Digital Ocean regions: BLR1: 251ms FRA1: 129ms SGP1: 206ms

Other sites: yahoo.co.jp: 179ms rakuten.co.jp: 138ms belarus.by: 167ms

As most things go, YMMV.

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

#257
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not latency is an issue is hugely dependent on the title. It's hugely dependent on particular network conditions. I wonder if SpaceX Starlink might have an option to optimize for latency?

It certainly will but it will be premium for high frequency trading.

I'd be quite satisfied with a reasonably priced tier that guaranteed 40ms round trip or better 99.8% of the time. The HFT levels could shave that time off and start stacking 9's for exponentially more money.

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

#258

Why is it that these articles always mention Google's new Stadia service but never mention Nvidia's Geforce NOW, which has been in the cloud gaming space for years now?

nvidia doesn't have the scale to endure years of losses while making enemies of half of the gaming industry in order to pursue this. AFAIK they have 0 exclusives lined up, meaning DOA.

It's been operating for years already. They already have customers. In other words, the "A" has already passed.

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

#259
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy if Valve became a middleperson for AAA titles native on Linux+Vulkan. They have SteamOS and a decent controller ready to resurrect, and everyone to slap on PC hardware consoles again, given a makeover. (Things like Wine are effectively sabotage.)

Wine and Proton are exactly the type of solution that I want. It works and it will get better every year. Linux users can run software without explicit vendor support. (software freedom 0 [0]) It doesn't burden corporations with expensive Linux support. Everyone is happy. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

The FSF is frequently misled by volunteers into bad strategy moves for its goals. RMS's criteria of "is it Free" is insufficient, and also easily exploited, just by spinning your thing to check off the checklist boxes.

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

#260
post #165

I am sad with this threads discussion. Or I'm old. This is a logical step in lock-in disguised as user experience. Back in the day, if you could maintain the data, my 15 physical 3.5 inch rather unfloppy floppies were monkey island. I lost my personal copy, but if I moved the data, I could have my own copy of monkey island right here. I personally failed on my own maintenance there. Then we had - skipping some steps…

I agree with you. I dislike digital distribution in general, largely for this reason. I believe it's likely that as long as I can find (say) a working PS4, my physical media PS4 games will continue to work as long as I would like them to.

Unfortunately, the general public wants convenience over these benefits. Instant gratification.

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