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Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

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Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#271

Post by ppseafield »

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…

Even the best hardware right in front of you can still currently cause a bad user experience for latency-sensitive games. All it can take is one player with high latency or an unreliable connection, and it can detract from the enjoyability of a game.

And games already have latency from input devices, inputs registering, the game calculating the next frame, the monitor displaying it, and the user perceiving what has happened on screen. Every millisecond of network delay gets sandwiched between all of those.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#272

Post by Scramblejams »

vvanders wrote: post #255
Scramblejams wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the client is still the client. It's still a big bunch of stateful code, but now it's running on the LAN with the server and can't have its bits fiddled by the customer. All that code where the server fastidiously checks the client's untrusted state updates goes away, replaced by a much simpler layer that sanity checks the inputs. All that code where the server has to rewind and replay inputs to deal with late-ar…

Sorry but I just don't see it. I'm used to designing systems and games that work in 100ms+ latent environments since that's what you see in production(or try mobile where it can be 2-5x that). We were doing 250ms ping times back in '99 with games like SubSpace and the like where you had a predictive game model/design. Yes you lose the overhead of designing for latency because it just won't fundamentally work in those…

I agree that it will all hinge on what kinds of latencies we see. If Google can produce the same kinds of latencies it does to 8.8.8.8, it's definitely got a shot. Mobile's an even bigger challenge, but I've seen wire-competitive latencies from 5G, so I think there's hope there too.

This does, however, leave VR high and dry. Wonder if they have any ideas about that angle.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#274

Post by kllrnohj »

agildehaus wrote: post #245
kllrnohj wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

They have TPUs for their AI stuff, and you still have to dedicate these resources while gaming sessions are active. How much monetary value can they really get out of the idle population here to offset the active usage?

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#275

Post by cbhl »

kec wrote: post #218
shereadsthenews wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google operates tiny little datacenters in every ISP POP in America. That is why the video I just watched on Youtube in Oakland came from some place 2ms away even though Google's nearest real datacenter is in Oregon.

How do you edge cache games though? Edge caching youtube requires a giant pile of hard drives, Edge caching games requires a giant pile of hard drives and a giant pile of compute power.

(Disclaimer in bio.)

It's not the edge cache itself that matters; it's that many ISPs peer directly with Google.

Google Cloud can route the audio/video/keyboard packets mostly over Google's private network and then only use the public internet once it gets to your ISP (or their transit provider). This provides Google with more control over how the packet gets to the end user.

Google provides a similar service to Google Cloud customers as the "Premium Network Service Tier".

https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/docs/overview

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#276

Post by dragontamer »

Slippery_John wrote: post #240
dragontamer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other than fighting games and fast pace shooters, the latency seems to be imperceptible, assuming a good connection. There are certainly games out there which would respond poorly to latency and jitter. Play Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, but randomly jitter your inputs by 10ms to 20ms here and there, and that would make it far more frustrating experience. Its bad enough that those punishing games can kill you quickl…

I can't reliably play Dark Souls via Steam Link over a wired connection that's less than ten feet long. Google may have some special sauce that improves the situation but like you I doubt it would be sufficient for all games.

Just a hint: TV latency varies between models from 10ms all the way to 200ms (!!) in my experience. 200ms latency TVs completely wreak almost any video game experience, even if it is "smooth" and non-jittery (a "timing" based game like Guitar Hero can compensate to some degree, but few games work at that level).

I would suggest checking your TV against a latency database: https://displaylag.com/display-database/

Its very possible that your issue is in the TV, as opposed to a network issue. If your TV latency is below 30ms, the TV is probably fine.

-----

For whatever reason, computer monitors consistently score around 10ms, maybe 15ms in the worst case. Its TVs that have all this processing that kicks the latency to 50ms or 100ms+. Especially on larger TVs.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#277

Post by diminoten »

dragonwriter wrote: post #261
diminoten wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I’m pretty comfortable pointing to existing cloud computing business models or streaming services as a precedent. Why are you this comfortable? Netflix, YouTube TV, Twitch, Sling, Amazon Prime Video -- basically all streaming services offer flat rates, not per-MB ones. Further, all existing game library services tout unlimited gaming as a primary selling point! That's the primary reason you opt into Gamefly or…

> Netflix, YouTube TV, Twitch, Sling, Amazon Prime Video -- basically all streaming services offer flat rates, not per-MB ones. YouTube (and Google Play TV & Movies, which appears to carry the same for-sale/rent content in a different storefront) and Amazon Video also both offer purchase of individual content items as well as a common flat rate subscription to certain content.

That's got everything to do with digital rights management, and nothing to do with resource utilization.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#278

Post by kabdib »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is my opinion, too, almost right on the nose. Especially the part about only supporting a product for a few years. I also don't like the idea of games-as-a-service in the sense that I only own a license to the game for as long as I pay a monthly fee. I'm okay with licensing content within the game (i.e. DLC), but I shy away from subscription games services like Xbox Games Pass or EA's Origin subscription.…

Have they even said anything about the business model? I'm a few minutes behind on the stream, but I don't recall any mention of licenses or subscriptions. The only "practical" example of launching they game they showed was... out of a button on a YouTube video. EDIT: A "Stadia store" was briefly mentioned shortly after my comment, it looked like it was tied into Google Play.

They didn't say anything concrete about money.

I'm guessing developers will be compensated with "exposure" :-)

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#279

Post by on_and_off »

markdog12 wrote: post #212
justfor1comment wrote: post #176

I participated in the beta and was pleasantly surprised to see how the entire experience came together. I only experienced one small technical issue. The game runs in real time on Google's servers. If you have some lag on your network, the client will drop all the frames during that time. Instead I expected behavior like Youtube where you will see a small loader and the game will continue before the lag started. This…

> Lag was still a rare thing during my experience Anything more specific than that, i.e. lag would occur every 10 mins on avg?

fwiw

No lag at all on my end. I am in the USA, so I have a solid but not amazing connection.

I should note that I have only played for half an hour because AssCreed was extremely boring. The tech itself was very solid in my experience.

I tried to catch some streaming artifacts, like parts of the screen not updating or a visible lag, but I could not see anything. In a blind test, I doubt I would have been able to differentiate this from running the game on my home console.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#280

Post by justfor1comment »

markdog12 wrote: post #212
justfor1comment wrote: post #176

I participated in the beta and was pleasantly surprised to see how the entire experience came together. I only experienced one small technical issue. The game runs in real time on Google's servers. If you have some lag on your network, the client will drop all the frames during that time. Instead I expected behavior like Youtube where you will see a small loader and the game will continue before the lag started. This…

> Lag was still a rare thing during my experience Anything more specific than that, i.e. lag would occur every 10 mins on avg?

Yes that seems about right. I would say lag occurs once every 5 mins and lasts for roughly a second. Not longer than that. But since gaming is such a visual medium that 1 second seems longer than it actually is. One thing I forgot to mention is I was on wifi and the performance may have been better had I plugged in an ethernet cable. Although I would add that wifi usage is going to be what the typical user opts for.
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