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Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

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Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#361

Post by cmg »

kofejnik wrote: post #326
justfor1comment wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to get these, every 5 minutes, right on the clock. Turns out, OS X location services rescan wifi every 5 minutes, God knows why. Turn it off, lag gone.

From Apple's info page on Location Services:

> Your approximate location is determined using information from local Wi-Fi networks, and is collected by Location Services in a manner that doesn’t personally identify you.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204690

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#362

Post by Scramblejams »

Androider wrote: post #356
Scramblejams wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developing a game that runs on Stadia and one that runs on the customer's local Linux box are probably going to be two different things, unfortunately. :-(

This isn't going to bring any new local games to Linux, rather it "solves" the gaming problem by simply making these streaming games playable on Linux with Chrome, same as on Windows, Mac, on your TV with ChromeCast, tablets, phones etc. Much like web apps, YouTube, Netflix etc. today already work flawlessly on Linux, so will gaming too with this development. For most people, the browser is already the only "native"…

Due to GP's mention of playing Valve games on Linux, I mistakenly assumed the poster was hoping to run the other games locally. Thanks.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#363

Post by joshuamorton »

kllrnohj wrote: post #270
puzzle wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gamin…

> The other costs (power, people, etc.) are amortized over Google's array of services. Power doesn't really amortize, and neither does heat. And capacity still had to increase for this. They didn't just find random GPUs under the table they forgot about, and now that they have a massive fleet of GPUs it's not suddenly going to start handling dremel queries. This all still costs money. A shitload of it. Someone is goi…

>They didn't just find random GPUs under the table they forgot about, and now that they have a massive fleet of GPUs it's not suddenly going to start handling dremel queries.

This strikes me as rather amusing. Google was having such trouble getting their hands on enough GPUs that they decided to build custom hardware accelerators (TPUs) to fill the gaps.

I'm sure they'll find a use for these.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#364

Post by fcarraldo »

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.

I hear this a lot, and this is typically a network optimization problem. Networking is hard, and "a cable with enough bandwidth" is only part of the issue. How many hops between devices? Are any devices in the chain wireless? What router are you using? How many other devices are connected to it, and what kind of load are they putting on it?

FWIW, I frequently stream PS4 and PC games, wirelessly, over 802.11ac and it's more than playable. Dark Souls III, and even Overwatch, is playable over my network.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#365

Post by DantesKite »

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.

There's a lot of computer games I can't play at 60fps because my computer isn't good enough.

I would like if someone else handled all the hardware upgrades, so I don't have to spend so much money every year just to keep up.

One of the appealing aspects of South Korea gaming cafes is that all the computers can be rented for a few dollars and tend to be maxed out. That environment creates a great place for everyone to get into gaming.

I'm not sure how that fits into Google's long-term interests, but it definitely fits into mine.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#366

Post by badpun »

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…

Since not everybody is playing at the same time, a single GPU will service multiple players (each of whom would require a console).

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#367

Post by chipperyman573 »

kyle-rb wrote: post #316
chipperyman573 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Into the breach was a great game, but it is unlikely to have sold as well if it wasn't for FTL's success.

Eh, probably to some degree, but at least anecdotally for me, "new game from FTL dev" got me to watch the trailer, but the concept is 100% what hooked me.

Oh, for sure, I feel exactly the same way. ITB is one of my favorite games in my steam library, and that's the same way I discovered it. The argument I was trying to make is that a lot of people wouldn't have had the opportunity to be hooked had it not been for the "new game from FTL dev"

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#368

Post by dougmwne »

satysin wrote: post #264
johnyzee wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it improve latency? The device it is connected to is already internet connected and there is no meaningful latency between the controller and the device. So how does the on-board wifi help? Adding wifi to a device for no reason is horrible, I don't suppose it needs explaining.

By directly connecting the controller to the service via WiFi it removes any potential issues with the device having to act as a proxy for the controller input. For their dedicated Stadia set top box it isn't a big deal (as they will control the hardware) but when used with phones, third party STBs and such it can be problematic. Google will have no control over the WiFi hardware in all these devices and many cheaper…

Yes, I was thinking along the same lines. It seems like the combined latency of bluetooth, passing that input through the OS, browser, then out to wifi could be considerable, especially if the machine's wifi and bluetooth chips are not optimized for low latency. Since Google makes the hardware of the controller, they can use all the lowest latency chips and drivers possible.

I'd be very interested to see some latency benchmarking of the stadia controller vs an xbox controller. I'd also be curious if a future version of this controller could connect directly to an even lower latency 5G connection, bypassing the wifi router and cable/fiber modem and removing yet another latency question mark. Even when playing locally, input lag can be considerable, so this might be a very smart hack to make this streaming service playable with a larger range of games.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#369

Post by puzzle »

kllrnohj wrote: post #274
agildehaus wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You underestimate how much Google tries to squeeze out of all the machines in its fleet. That includes old ones, sometimes to comical effect. A colleague at my current job told me about utilization targets at Amazon, where he used to work. At Google you could choose to be that wasteful if you really wanted to, but you'd lose headcount. Be more efficient and you'd get more engineers. I.e. you decide if you'd rather get machines or people.

There's also an old paper by Murray Stokely and co. about the fake market that was created to make the most use of all hardware planetwide.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#370

Post by andromeduck »

joefkelley wrote: post #313
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.

Sorry, maybe I missed it; where in the announcement did they say it was a subscription?

It's a service ffs.
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