Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 577 posts

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#241

Post by mikewhy »

Klathmon wrote: post #27
djhworld wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crackdown 3 already semi-famously uses Microsoft's cloud systems to do some physics processing in the cloud and not on the client. Is that true though? I remember in the early Don Mattrick days of Microsoft they were heavily pushing the whole cloud physics thing but ever since then that has been swept under the carpet or heavily downplayed.

I haven't played it myself nor have I done a ton of research, but Crackdown 3 just came out recently, and I heard them talking about how important the cloud aspect of it is to enable the dynamic destruction they have in their multiplayer stuff. The link below from late 2018 talks about it a bit https://www.windowscentral.com/inside-crackdown-3s-azure-clo...

From people who've actually played it, it's nothing like what they hyped up or demoed way back when.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#242

Post by Scramblejams »

gsich wrote: post #216
Scramblejams wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when all the clients and the server are sitting in the same DC? Now you can program your clients and server like they’re all on a LAN. And now you can trust the client. (The client, not the inputs.) Those are huge reductions in complexity. This makes delivering good multiplayer easier, not harder. But I do agree that input/display latency is going to be a thing. Results may be highly variable and you’ll probably…

>And when all the clients and the server are sitting in the same DC? But what do you do when they don't? This can happen in multiplayer games with low population or during "bad times". You might have less trouble because latency is more predictable, but you still need the whole rewind stuff.

I predict a lot of game teams developing new IP for Stadia will impose a single-DC-match requirement, because the time/complexity tradeoff of implementing all that stuff won't be considered worth it. Then, if their game fails, maybe they'll blame that decision. :-)

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#243

Post by vvanders »

eropple wrote: post #140
vvanders wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1, ex networking+tools gamedev here and have almost the exact same thoughts. They haven't fundamentally solved the latency issue, 50-100ms of ping is brutal and the people who could be a target for this generally won't have a fiber internet connection. Network gameplay works via misdirection, predictable simulations and knowing how to converge a divergent state(including rewinding in time to re-play hittraces and th…

I'm not super sure, anymore, about latency being as big a deal. Particularly with regards to monitors. Display lag on a large TV can be upwards of 50ms by itself ; display lag on a monitor can be as low as 5ms. If you're viewing this as a competitor to low-end, relatively lightweight console play, the total lag of display plus network is actually maybe not that bad. Also, living in Boston I was seeing 16ms pings on G…

Yeah, but you hit the nail on the head when you said you have a steady, consistent latency on your TV.

When you're stuffing the pipe w/ 4k encoded content that puts a lot more pressure on the connection and added packet loss or delay is brutal in that case.

All of this stuff is subtle but it compounds in the same way that the average gamer won't be able to immediately spot 30 vs 60 fps but they'll know that the game "feels" better at 60.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#244

Post by stordoff »

petra wrote: post #228
holoduke wrote: post #219

The reason why these kind of initiatives fail is because they do not solve a real problem or issue. The average Joe doesn't need another subscription just to play some games. Having a console where you buy games is more than enough. I also silently hope that Google will fail hard with this one. Since they are the worst publisher on earth with absolutely no compassion towards its developers relationships.

It does solve some problems for game developers, like with style transfer. And gamers go where the content is.

Is there any reason that requires infrastructure to _play_ the games (in a consumer sense)? That seemed more like a prototyping tool to me.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#245

Post by agildehaus »

kllrnohj wrote: post #136
tcd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone copied Apple when they removed the headphone jack, whose to say consoles in the traditional sense will still be around in 20 years? Microsoft/Sony are NOT going to sit back and let Google win here. Expect replies from them (especially with Microsoft's Azure). The streaming services of gaming is coming.

> The streaming services of gaming is coming. It's already failed multiple times. OnLive tried & failed. Nvidia's has been in beta for years. Sony has one. Everyone in this area has tried this. Nobody has seen what could be described as "success", and the cost models so far have been ludicrous. Turns out renting Xeons and Radeon MI Instincts in a professionally staffed, maintained datacenter is way, way more expensiv…

> How do you make that price-competitive here?

Could they be using these GPUs for other purposes during idle times (AI model training, cloud GPU instances)?

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#247

Post by AcerbicZero »

pier25 wrote: post #233

Sounds great on paper but I'm skeptical. Not only you will need a really good internet connection and wifi, but also being close to a Stadia data center. The best possible case scenario will probably be a latency of around 50 ms, but I'm guessing the average will be closer to 100 ms which is too much for many types of games (specially competitive games the streamers play). Heck, even streaming in your local network i…

This is a very valid point. Adding 100ms of latency to games that already struggle to deal with their built in ~100-150ms already is basically a non-starter. So you're left with casual games, single player games (with no modding), and maybe some less latency sensitive multi-player games.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#248

Post by puzzle »

kllrnohj wrote: post #226
puzzle wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you know where to look, they left clues about using MI25 hardware. (I haven't been an employee for years, this all unfolded afterwards and, ironically, it is just one search away.) I'm sure they got bulk/promotional pricing from AMD, plus they're very good at both running hardware with low overhead and packing it efficiently.

> plus they're very good at both running hardware with low overhead and packing it efficiently. You can't really pack the hardware here since it's latency sensitive. It's straight dedicated resources to an array of VMs. Dedicated CPU cache, even, hence the odd 9.5MB L2+L3 number. Bulk pricing only gets you so far here. You're still talking gear that's categorically way more expensive than similar performance consumer…

You can't do time slicing, no, but you can definitely reduce time to first frame in many ways. If you don't do that, you need to provision even more hardware. Packing is also part of the capacity planning phases of a service.

The other costs (power, people, etc.) are amortized over Google's array of services.

Last but not least, it would be very dumb of them not to run batch workloads on these machines when the gaming service is idle. I bet $1000 these puppies run under Borg.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#249

Post by pier25 »

minimaxir wrote: post #173

Other comments have suggested this might fail like OnLive/Nvidia/PlayStation Now because the economics of streaming on the business end don't work out. This case is different. Stadia is the first video game streaming product made by a cloud computing company, and also a cloud computing company which developed a video codec (VP9) just for high quality/low latency streaming. The economics are much different on all side…

> it all depends on how Google prices the service

I doubt pricing can change the underlying fact that you need really good latency and being close to a Stadia server.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#250

Post by technofiend »

djanogo wrote: post #41

I give this 2 years before Google removes all references of "Stadia" from it's product lineup. They have never stuck with a product which, relative to rest of their products, has smaller but dedicated adoption. For example, Valve will keep updating/supporting/hosting events of CSGO even if it has <1Mil active users on PC, but I can totally see Google pulling plug on it and burn dedicated followers.

Particularly if Facebook overtops them with some sort of streaming Oculus appliance. This is already a killer app for people on the edge about upgrading older PCs. I beta tested this as did a friend - he was able to play on a chromebook! But if I could play Elite: Dangerous on a streaming VR console I'm not sure I'd ever buy another high end PC again.
Post reply on HN