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Solving the 100GB Game Download

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Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#101

Post by averageRoyalty »

pcchristie wrote: post #27

This seems an incredible technical accomplishment. My one question is, is it supposed to be solving for disk space constraints or connection speed constraints? I'm guessing both, but the former is pretty cheaply solved these days with a new drive (or by finally admitting you only need to have 2-3 games installed at once and probably aren't playing a dozen games in parallel), and I'm not sure it seems to be solving th…

> I'm in Australia and get 90-100 mbps, which is half of the demo speed, and I would be an upper outlier in this country.

This incorrect, although commonly repeated as we love as a country to collectively moan. Shadow leader at the time Albo was fact checked on this 2 years ago[1], and we clocked in at 82.58mbps back then. We now sit 16th at 96.05mbps[2].

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-02/fact-check-albanese-b... 2. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#102

Post by averageRoyalty »

justinclift wrote: post #90
pcchristie wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, I didn't know many people got > 100mpbs without paying for the infra. I am going off the fact that (as you may have seen in the news) a lot of ISPs got in trouble for advertising and selling 100mbps when a huge amount (majority?) of consumers could possibly pay for that without realising they'd never get it. After that made the news I noticed much more prominent caveats on 100mbps tiers, and many te…

> a lot of ISPs got in trouble for advertising and selling 100mbps when a huge amount ... never get it. Ahhh, yeah. I'm with Launtel ( https://launtel.net.au ), who seem to be extremely technically clueful and the opposite of the shady places that are around (Dodo, etc). So I've been with them in Melb, Syd, and now Brisbane. Melb speed was 100/40, Syd was 50/20, and here is Bris currently on 400/50. At all locations,…

Launtel are great, and I've never had any issue getting line speed on Steam from them. Give them a call, the staff are lovely and I'm confident will be happy to help resolve.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#103

Post by teaearlgraycold »

chevas wrote: post #9
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just push files to the client in advanced of request based on basic statistics.

"Server Side Prediction: Via servers are constantly learning from repeat access patterns of players. This let's us make high quality predictions for what content you'll need, before you need it."

Nice

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#104

Post by msz-g-w »

Lvl999Noob wrote: post #85
markx2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I am not condoning piracy, but when looking at game sizes, go check out fitgirl repacks. Right now there is a Steam game there reduced from 20GB to 10GB. Another is reduced from 3.5GB to 1.1GB. The downloads from there are consistently and significantly reduced. If a pirate can do that, why not a game company? or Steam?

If pirates can reduce the size, I would imagine that the sizes are from DRM or obfuscation.

They are not.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#105

Post by justinclift »

nhinck wrote: post #97
justinclift wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I'd tested that before and there wasn't a difference. But testing again now - just in case I was misremembering - and Civ 6 is downloading from the Melb server at ~15MB/s currently. Thanks for prompting me! :) --- Testing the Sydney server now too, and that's ~20MB/s. Looks like a solid win there as well. :)

Well it's not what it could be at least it's better.

Interestingly, when testing Steam downloads from Syd and Bris servers just now - 4:10am local time - (downloading Control Ultimate Edition this time around), both of them were able to give consistent download rates of ~50MB/s.

That's in line with "line speed" for my current NBN plan through Launtel. Might try bumping that up to the 1000/50 plan at some point and see if the download rates go that high too. :)

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#106

Post by c-hendricks »

markx2 wrote: post #79
sombragris wrote: post #63

I like it, but it does not "solve" the big downloads issue. You know what would solve the 100 GB game download problem? Reducing that to 30 or 40 GB, not inventing an (admittedly clever and nice) man in the middle streaming things to you in byte-sized chunks.

Agreed. I am not condoning piracy, but when looking at game sizes, go check out fitgirl repacks. Right now there is a Steam game there reduced from 20GB to 10GB. Another is reduced from 3.5GB to 1.1GB. The downloads from there are consistently and significantly reduced. If a pirate can do that, why not a game company? or Steam?

IME fitgirl repacks trade download time for extraction time. I've purchased and downloaded some games while waiting for the same game to extract.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#107

Post by justinclift »

justinclift wrote: post #105
nhinck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's not what it could be at least it's better.

Interestingly, when testing Steam downloads from Syd and Bris servers just now - 4:10am local time - (downloading Control Ultimate Edition this time around), both of them were able to give consistent download rates of ~50MB/s. That's in line with "line speed" for my current NBN plan through Launtel. Might try bumping that up to the 1000/50 plan at some point and see if the download rates go that high too. :)

Trying the same test (downloading Control Ultimate Edition) from the Brisbane server at ~3pm rather than the dead of night gives the same download rate too. ~50MB/s.

---

After bumping the NBN connection speed up to 1000/50, and confirming that was effective (eg through speedtest.net), I've retried the download of Control Ultimate Edition.

Downloads from the Brisbane server are still mostly around 50MB/s, though the peak download rate was 72.7MB/s (very briefly).

Downloads from the Sydney server were mostly around 20MB/s, with a brief peak up to 43.7MB/s.

Downloads from the Melbourne server were mostly around 10MB/s, with a peak of 17.1MB/s. Seems like some kind of artificial restriction is in place now, though it could turn out to be something else (tcp buffer config of some sort maybe?).

Anyway, it seems like the local server (Brisbane) is now easily the fastest download for me, so I'll be using that from here on. Might as well drop the NBN connection back down to 400/50 as well, as there doesn't currently seem to be an advantage using the higher 1000/50 plan.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#108

Post by rkunde »

sp332 wrote: post #46
rkunde wrote: post #8

Related, have any major games using Binomial’s texture compression come out yet?

Sure, it's available in Unity, Unreal, and Blender at least. The KTX2 format has been a Khonos group standard since 2021.

I did notice that download sizes for the PS5 version of a game are smaller compared to the PS4 version. Maybe that’s why!
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