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Luna – Cloud gaming service

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Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#121

Post by victords »

QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #9

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

I'm partial to the subscription service model because most of my life I could barely afford a console or a gaming PC to play a lot of games, so it seems much more accessible.

But regarding the argument that we will have a bunch of different service which we would need to subscribe to: Is that really a downgrade?

We already have exclusives for consoles. There a number of games you can play only on Xbox. Then there are the games you can only play on PS4. And then there the PS3 games, which you will need yet another console because there is no backwards compatibility...

One way or another we already have this fragmentation today. Subscribing to multiple services actually seems cheaper for me.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#122

Post by franklampard »

asou wrote: post #87
franklampard wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 5G can definitely help here, assuming it provides faster and more reliable connection. It used to be unthinkable before 4G for people to watch videos everywhere on their mobile phones.

Most providers softcap at 50 to 100 gb . At best I'd get 10 hours of gaming here. Don't get me wrong, I want this to succeed. I want to be able to play COD or Halo from anywhere with a 5g connection. But with such high data usage it's DOA

Given the mobile connectivity history, I am pretty optimistic the cap is going to increase. It’s not that long ago that I had a few mega bytes per month.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#123

Post by wayneftw »

scarface74 wrote: post #95
wayneftw wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is. They publicly sided with and are helping to support Epic. Google didn’t do a mobile PWA for Stadia even on Android. I thought there was a comment about some technical limitations on iOS Safari in some previous thread but I can’t remember. They probably want the same experience everywhere.

Microsoft specifically sided with Epic with regards to Apple trying to deny Epic from developing the Unreal engine on iOS. Nothing else.

Microsoft has definitely spoken out about app stores and their 30% cut. Here's a quote:

> “If you look at the industry today, I think what you’ll find is increasingly you’re seeing app stores that have created higher walls and far more formidable gates to access other applications than anything that existed in the industry 20 years ago,” says Smith. “They impose requirements that increasingly say there’s only one way to get onto our platform, and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created. In some cases they create a very high price for a toll, in some cases 30 percent of all your revenue has to go to the toll keeper if you will.” - Microsoft’s chief legal officer Brad Smith [0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-...

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#124

Post by nightski »

dx87 wrote: post #120
vmception wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latency is the only “situational use case” to care about. This has been mitigated more and more. The rest is just gatekeeping gamers imagining what a larger group of wallets would care about and being strong. Chronic problem in that community. Isnt the biggest protest amongst enthusiast gamers based around at what point they will pay the company anyway? Hard to take any stance there seriously when there is zero p…

It's not just people gatekeeping, developers are usually going to target whatever gives them the biggest return. PC games have been gimped for a long time because the developers make sure the game runs on consoles as well, and if cloud gaming takes off, it'll be even less likely that people develop games with PC players in mind. I can't blame people for wanting cloud gaming to fail; if it's succesful it could cause m…

Not to mention it makes modding dead on arrival. I get it, most gamers do not mod. But being able to write mods and work with Microsoft Flight Simulator in the 90s is what got me hooked on computing in the first place.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#125

Post by fwsgonzo »

p1necone wrote: post #98
sickcodebruh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to give Stadia a try when Doom Eternal came out because I wanted to play it in 4K and only have a PS4. Backed out because of their announcement that it was not native 4k, as originally promised, but actually upscaling. Whether or not I would have known the difference is another story but the backtracking on something they had been so adamant about left a bad taste in my mouth. I also don't like their subs…

This bewildered me - they advertised 4k gaming and then it turned out the vast majority of games were running at like 1080p and being upscaled. Sending 1080p video at 4k seems incredibly wasteful and pointless.

Technically upscaling with machine learning can be amazing, and it's what most real-time renderers use nowadays. You won't be able to tell, and it can even add detail if the network is good. I'm not an expert though, but I suppose it can only get better?

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#126

Post by nightski »

victords wrote: post #121
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #9

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

I'm partial to the subscription service model because most of my life I could barely afford a console or a gaming PC to play a lot of games, so it seems much more accessible. But regarding the argument that we will have a bunch of different service which we would need to subscribe to: Is that really a downgrade? We already have exclusives for consoles. There a number of games you can play only on Xbox. Then there are…

Yea but other than streaming, we've been seeing exclusives slowly disappear over the past generation. They still exist but are becoming much less common.

The thing is that I've probably spent the same on games as I have on Netflix for the past 10 years. But now I have a Steam/GoG/etc.. library with over 1000 games I can take with me and maybe even share with my kids some day. I have nothing remaining but memories from Netflix.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#127

Post by ebalit »

pb7 wrote: post #26
dzhiurgis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kinda lame all competing streaming services are launching in same market.

It'd be cool if something innovative launched in Europe for once. Nearly a billion people with very few global consumer technologies originating there.

Shadow [0] launched a cloud gaming offer in 2017. Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the lead developer of the VLC project just joined as CTO. The problem isn't to create consumer technologies but to be commercially competitive against major players like Google or Amazon with deep pockets.

[0] https://shadow.tech

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#128

Post by ficklepickle »

rococode wrote: post #45

Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad. Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windo…

I tried it out. I'm a very casual gamer. Some types of games cannot tolerate the extra latency. GRID, a racing sim, was basically unplayable. The input latency was too noticeable.

PUBG, on the other hand, was perfectly playable (although I have never played it natively so can't compare). If I were a skilled player, I might have noticed the latency, hard to say.

I'm on Linux, so I was interested to try games I can't run easily. Unfortunately, chrome on Linux doesn't have VP9, so 4k resolution was not possible. It also didn't fit my wide-screen aspect ratio, so I had black bars on the side.

You can compile it yourself or some such hacky thing, but the whole point of Stadia for me was not to futz around with that stuff.

Note that this was from Vancouver, with hard-wired ethernet on ~300Mb/s cable. If you are closer to the server (California?), your results may differ.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#129

Post by ficklepickle »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #107
Mupuff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play regularly, usually the experience is pretty flawless, there is the occasional stutter once in while and\or degradation of graphics. When it works well (and it usually does for me) I think most non-pro players won't notice any gameplay impacting latency. The biggest issue right now with the service is lack of games.

And the lack of other players in multiplayer games...

I played PUBG on stadia with users on consoles. It shows a little gamepad next to their name, whereas mine had the stadia logo. I never actually encountered another stadia player.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#130

Post by chaostheory »

MikusR wrote: post #117
chaostheory wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have fiber, so I'm at the mercy of how much demand there is for Comcast at any given time. Sometimes it works great, other times not so much. I'd rather just install games locally like with Game Pass, Steam, or EPIC. My local computer can handle these games just fine. I'm definitely not the target audience since I can afford the hardware. The only place I can think of in the US with fiber are university dorms…

You don't need fiber. As for use cases, i just now played an hour of The Division 2 on my laptop (with intel integrated gpu) using 4g connection from my phone.

You do if you don't want lag or weird graphical artifacts. You need fiber if you want a local install experience.
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