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GeForce Now: A Review

whatever.scalzi.com

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Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#31

Post by chatmasta »

GeForce Now is great for simulation games like Factorio or Civilization. Unfortunately 2K Games decided to arbitrarily restrict users of GeForce Now from playing Civilization VI, even with a licensed copy from the Steam store. In the beginning, it worked great. I could play on a giant map with 13 AI civilizations who completed their turns in a few seconds. And my laptop didn’t sound like an airplane.

I’m still bitter at 2K about this. If they offered an alternative cloud gaming subscription then I would purchase it to play Civ on a cloud machine. But they just decided to interfere in my choice of which hardware I use to run their software, while offering no alternative.

Super disappointing. I do still pay for GeForce Now though, because it’s a low price and because I have anxiety about what would happen to my save files if I stopped paying.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#32

Post by mupuff1234 »

abridgett wrote: post #23

GeForce Now was/is great. Bethesda though (amongst others) have lost a formerly loyal fan due to pulling their games. Why? I own the games, I paid for them. If I had my old PC still I could play them just the same. Presumably so that in several years they can run their own cloud service. The greed of companies will be their own downfall.

Sadly Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft who are running their own cloud gaming service.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#33

Post by [deleted] »

macNchz wrote: post #5

I tested out GeForce Now and Stadia two years ago and decided fairly quickly to build a desktop machine instead. Turns out that lots of PC games work really well on desktop Linux these days! The author discusses his internet connection, but for me even with a 500mbit connection and ~10ms ping to NYC area data centers I felt the video compression artifacts and periodic stutters were too noticeable. I also had some inp…

[deleted]

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#34

Post by Quikinterp »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #19

GFN is tested to be faster than native consoles in terms of input latency. https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs People are talking about turn based games but my experience is that it's flawless and indistinguishable from native in twitch games like fortnite and counterstrike. But then again I live on the East Coast pretty close to a datacenter and I'm on fiber, so obviously this won't be the case for people in rural areas. But…

That is a crazy amount of input lag 80ms on every single input doesn't sound fun to me for a game with constant motion

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#35

Post by NikolaNovak »

chatmasta wrote: post #31

GeForce Now is great for simulation games like Factorio or Civilization. Unfortunately 2K Games decided to arbitrarily restrict users of GeForce Now from playing Civilization VI, even with a licensed copy from the Steam store. In the beginning, it worked great. I could play on a giant map with 13 AI civilizations who completed their turns in a few seconds. And my laptop didn’t sound like an airplane. I’m still bitter…

I agree 100%. However note your save games should be safe on steam cloud. Nothing gets stored on geforce now - your virtual instance gets destroyed once you log off. Should be easy to verify via your laptop even if you don't load up the save.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#36

Post by gherkinnn »

I played a couple of slowish action games like the Metro series on GeForce Now and couldn’t be happier. Tons of games from my old Steam library, all on my MBP. No more separate gaming rig required. A CoD campaign should work just as well, but I don’t trust it to be fast enough for competitive MP or Doom 2016.

Stadia does not exist and Shadow PC had an eternal waiting list.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#37

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

jb_s wrote: post #27
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #19

GFN is tested to be faster than native consoles in terms of input latency. https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs People are talking about turn based games but my experience is that it's flawless and indistinguishable from native in twitch games like fortnite and counterstrike. But then again I live on the East Coast pretty close to a datacenter and I'm on fiber, so obviously this won't be the case for people in rural areas. But…

I've unfortunately played way too many twitch shooters on PC and latency is really noticeable to me. To the point where I can't stand using my work-supplied laptop because of slight mouse lag (I think the mouse travels maybe 30-40ms behind my hand) and 60hz screens. This is somewhat annoying coming from 165Hz, gaming peripherals. Then I have to connect to a VM to do development. Absolute hell.

Yeah, it won't match the requirements for very high end competitive gamers. I was just talking empirical results found by Digital Foundry matching consoles.

> mouse travels maybe 30-40ms behind my hand

That sounds awful. But it reminds me that the chart I posted is tested using a very exacting tool and even the 3090 has a 30ms latency on 120hz and that's about as good as it gets. So you shouldn't take these numbers in a vacuum but more comparatively. GFN on 120hz is better than a 3060 on native in 60hz. I know it's not compelling for anyone who hates 60hz heh but for people who are okay with 60hz then GFN latency won't feel any different to you.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#39

Post by NikolaNovak »

stavros wrote: post #30

Rather offtopic, but would anyone recommend one of Scalzi's books if I enjoyed Old Man's War?

Rest of the series is pretty decent up to last book which is a collection of stories.

My favourite though is the independent novella God Engines.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#40

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

Quikinterp wrote: post #34
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #19

GFN is tested to be faster than native consoles in terms of input latency. https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs People are talking about turn based games but my experience is that it's flawless and indistinguishable from native in twitch games like fortnite and counterstrike. But then again I live on the East Coast pretty close to a datacenter and I'm on fiber, so obviously this won't be the case for people in rural areas. But…

That is a crazy amount of input lag 80ms on every single input doesn't sound fun to me for a game with constant motion

The chart I posted is tested using a very exacting tool and even the 3090 has a 30ms latency on 120hz and that's about as good as it gets. So you shouldn't take these numbers in a vacuum but more comparatively. GFN on 120hz is better than a 3060 on native in 60hz.

The tool tests time from button click to muzzle flash. It's not a 80ms delay on every motion, this is the total latency including the time the game takes to react to an input and fires a gun. It's hard to know how much base latency there is, the game could decide to wait a few ms before doing anything who knows, so I wouldn't read into that. Things like spinning around in a circle feels flawless. This chart should really be used comparatively.

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