Live data from Hacker News

GeForce Now: A Review

whatever.scalzi.com

181–190 of 198 posts

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

An extra 40ms is absolutely terrible, and apparent to everyone. Anyone who says otherwise is accustomed to ultra bad games. > GFN on 120hz is better than a 3060 on native in 60hz False. 60Hz input lag is subtle and if someone can't notice an extra 40ms, they won't notice this.

The input lag is measurable, I'm talking about empirical results.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#182

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…

> my experience is that it's flawless and indistinguishable from native in twitch games like fortnite and counterstrike This is just your opinion and it's wrong for at least 50% of humans. Nobody with a mouse will find fortnite or cs playable with 40ms added lag. 40ms lag is higher than the mere 16.66ms you get from going from 60 FPS to 60 Hz vsync (that is, running the monitor at 60Hz and enabling vsync. it will be…

It's not 40ms of added latency. The chart can't be used like that. I agree 40ms would feel incredibly laggy, like 20fps laggy. That's not how GFN feels, it's perfectly smooth, more smooth than native hardware. Just look at any video of people moving around in gfn. Here's a random one I found. https://youtu.be/q-Fzkp-az9Q?t=154

The chart really only says it's more smooth than native hardware. Like think about it, if you're comparing 16.6ms to 100+ then the game would be running at like 1fps and is completely useless. Come on that's obviously not what it is.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#183

You guys are walking into a trap. This is going to be way worse than movie streaming, and unlike movies, when one of these companies pulls a game you once loved and it's not available, there will be no pirates to save you, because the software is trapped in the cloud. The future may well be streaming-only. Mods will be greatly impacted eventually, with only sanctioned mods allowed to run in the cloud. There'll be no…

This is exactly what’ll happen. It’ll start as bring your own library with the odd exclusive, but eventually it’ll evolve into the only way to play AAA games. The pricing isn’t great either. I tried the 3080 tier for $25 CAD per month. It was really cool, but not realistic for my gaming budget. To me the pricing looks bad even with the hyper inflated, unrealistic prices of GPUs right now. I can buy a 3080 for about 3…

Hell, the RX480 is still holding up absolutely fine in 2022 (I guess it helped that the GPU manufacturers keep distracting themselves with "This time we'll find a use-case for path tracing!"?). These subscription prices are crazy.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#184
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia has like 85% of the market share for discrete cards. Releasing a game that doesn't work with Nvidia cards in the PC game space would mean flushing your entire release and all your publishers money. Nobody on earth is withholding support for Nvidia as a bargaining chip in the PC gaming space. The actual issue is vastly more trivial copyright makes it easy to forbid such and even if present license didn't forbid…

> Nvidia has like 85% of the market share for discrete cards. Releasing a game that doesn't work with Nvidia cards in the PC game space would mean flushing your entire release and all your publishers money. Nobody on earth is withholding support for Nvidia as a bargaining chip in the PC gaming space. Nvidia has that market share because Nvidia has a very big team doing nothing but working either directly with game de…

The problem is that you are fabricating this picture of the world from whole cloth with no corroborating evidence and it doesn't even make sense. Who would threaten to sabotage their own entire operations in the PC space and why would they do that instead of relying on copyright and licensing which trivially provide a means to achieve the same ends.

If Call of Duty N doesn't have terms in its license that forbid NVIDIA's use case the best case scenario for NVIDIA would be fighting a protracted and expensive legal battle to establish this meanwhile Call of Duty N+1 includes slightly different wording that clearly establishes this limitation.

There is no need for coercion its clear as day that the only reasonable path forward for NVIDIA is willing collaboration with manufacturers.

Basically stop spinning stories to explain what is already trivially explicable.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#185
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only question is how this is even surprising. Wi-Fi is an arms race between you and your neighbours about who has the most powerful Wi-Fi transmitter, while Ethernet works wonderfully and collision free, in terms of network packets. We all have at least three Wi-Fi devices, including the smartphone, using some frequency bandwidth. Yes, people dislike cables, but if you ever play and transmit the game via OBS to Tw…

In principle Wi-Fi devices should be able to find a free frequency channel to communicate in (especially Wi-Fi 6 that parent refers to), so yes, this is surprising. Maybe there is a reason GeForce Now has a page about recommended Wi-Fi routers: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/recommended/

These huge, powerful routers are exactly what you don't want your neighbours to have in an apartment building. =)

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#186
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle Wi-Fi devices should be able to find a free frequency channel to communicate in (especially Wi-Fi 6 that parent refers to), so yes, this is surprising. Maybe there is a reason GeForce Now has a page about recommended Wi-Fi routers: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/recommended/

These huge, powerful routers are exactly what you don't want your neighbours to have in an apartment building. =)

Wi-Fi power is limited by country, so a cheap router will have the same power as an expensive one. The expensive ones can direct it better, so I think you want your neighbor to have one so the power is used for their devices and not yours.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#187
Cloud gaming is inevitable because of the Moore's law but as Moore's law slows down "fewer and fewer computer users will think their computer is too slow[0]." And they won't buy new computer or laptop for gaming because the computer they already have will be powerful enough to run most of the games. This is where the complexity of managing games and managing the whole gaming experience comes along. Simply offering cloud gaming service is not enough, you need to include extra services and perks in order for people to consider signing up and using your cloud gaming service.

[0] https://jlforrest.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/the-forrest-curve...

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want literature, film, or music to be "ephemeral", and I don't want to be unable to show these things to my friends and family. I don't want games to be ephemeral either. They are a form of art as valid as any of those others. Often, games combine all those forms into one magnificent modern whole. I want to be able to examine and study games as a form of art, the same way film & lit students study those thing…

I think we can discuss two things here, what will happen and what should happen. For the "should" part, I think it'd be great if software would somehow expire, and then become free software, as in, code and assets too. I'm not a lawyer or anything but as artwork goes public domain after a while, so should software and its assets. It would be great "for the people" so that the experience wouldn't go away as abandonwar…

I'll add to what should and what will happen a third category: what could happen. But first:

The problem with public domain is that there's no legal requirement for the publisher to give it away once the copyright expires (if they are the sole possessor). If something is legally public domain but no one has a copy, then it doesn't matter.

If we had a library of deposit (publishers legally have to provide a copy to e.g. the library of congress) for commercial software like we do for books, that would fix that.

Another thing that could happen is that consumers could just reject game streaming like they did in the 80s (GameLine) 90s (Sega Channel) and 00s (OnLive)... I think those were technical, not consumer rejection problems though, but I'd be glad to be wrong. Nevertheless, I'll do my part by never paying for a cloud game. If consumers reject it, it'll die off and games will continue as before. I also hope the PS5 digital fails; already I can't use a bunch of PS3 game features (gran turismo track editor, dlc, etc) since the servers are shut down.

One more thought: mods and custom servers can do special things that people love, and that will always be viable, and worth a lot of money. If Arma II were a cloud only game, DayZ wouldn't have been made, which means neither would PUBG or Fortnite have arisen. Maybe the concept of mods will always keep the local game alive?

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#189
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally already the case with GeForce Now - you're NOT allowed to play your whole library because the publishers sued nVidia for allowing you to play the GAME YOU OWN on the machines YOU PAY FOR in their cloud.

>GAME YOU OWN You can't own games. You can only get a license to play one.

A man walks into a store, picks up a game, pays for it, and takes it home; he never agrees to a license or signs a contract.

He puts it in the game console, it starts up, and he plays it, and still hasn't agreed to any license or contract.

I'm not declaring that you're wrong, but I suspect these "publisher's wishlist" licenses and terms may not hold up in court in the event of someone violating those terms.

Just because someone writes something down doesn't make it true, and that describes a great many EULAs, too.

Re: GeForce Now: A Review

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>GAME YOU OWN You can't own games. You can only get a license to play one.

A man walks into a store, picks up a game, pays for it, and takes it home; he never agrees to a license or signs a contract. He puts it in the game console, it starts up, and he plays it, and still hasn't agreed to any license or contract. I'm not declaring that you're wrong, but I suspect these "publisher's wishlist" licenses and terms may not hold up in court in the event of someone violating those terms. Just beca…

If someone doesn't have a license to use it, then wouldn't using it be copyright infringement.
Post reply on HN