OnLive streaming PC games: Crysis on any PC?

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:47

I've been reading, with great interest of course, about AMD's new cloud gaming system.

It's pretty confusing to read about, but from what I can gather it's one sick monster of a PC that is set up somewhere remote.

At which point you buy a game from them (I think EA are involved) and play it from their computer on a video stream on yours.

Basically it has hundreds of the new Phenom 2 CPUs and hundreds of 4870 radeons. You buy a game and when you load it it runs from *their* hardware (IE best visuals and graphics ever seen) and then streams it to your PC in HD so that it's not reliant on your hardware at all.

It seems that in a way it's one hefty powerful game console that you plug your rig into as a 'TV' of sorts and play away til your heart's content.

I would imagine it would also be 100% piracy free as only your save game is being stored on your machine, it also stops you filling up your hard drive with 14gb's worth of pump for every game you want to play, and stops the need to have damagable media (like DVDs) in your collection.

If it works it could change gaming as we know it. I'm sure they will come up with a way of making it work on TVs too.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

I'd guess the only issue would be netcode. Imagine the lag issues you'd have if you didn't just have to wait for your actions to be transmitted to the far end, but for the stream to be transmitted back to you. And the guy you're playing against in Uzbekistan.

The Rev Owen · **Posted:** Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:50

You'd need a monster net connection to play anything.

Given that I can't seem to download anything at more than 30KBps between 6pm and 11pm on my connection, I suspect this wouldn't work for me.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:51

I'll reread the article as it goes.. I'm sure they mentioned that somewhere

Shame I don't have a bloody scanner

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

This isn't a serious suggestion. This is a "if we lived in the world where everyone has fibre to the kerb" suggestion.

1920x1080x32bit colour x 60hz = 474 megabytes per second.

Nik · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 1982

Interesting idea. I'm not convinced it will work though, at least not yet. Are internet connections fast and reliable enough for it? People are more forgiving of the odd stutter in streaming video than they would be in games, especially if there is resultant lag. It could be problematic for people with capped internet access too. What will the video quality be like? If people are getting used to HD consoles on big TVs, this could look kind of ropey in comparison.

I'd like to be proved wrong though, as in theory it sounds nicely portable.

(Disclaimer, I've read nothing about this - and in fact hadn't heard of it - other than JC's post.)

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38458

Through a wired 100mb network I can run a VNC session quite nicely, but there's no way you could run a 3d game through it. I guess it's just speed and bandwidth that's the issue though.

It's not a new idea though. It's a Mainframe/Dumb Terminal setup innit.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Mar 06, 2009 13:16

Well I have done my best to photo the article using my camera. It's pretty large but I didnt want to risk text degradation so I left it as was.

It's rarred and inside are two jpegs, left and right. Left is the first page of the article, right the second..

I use imaging (or pic and fax viewer whatever it's called now) as that anti aliases it and keeps the text readable for viewing.

Apparently you can do this shit on a mobile phone too :nerd:

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Fri Mar 06, 2009 14:09

Just think of the input latency. Just wouldn't work out at all well.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

This is being demoed at GDC this year.

Via Gizmodo:

Quote:

Through a cheap set-top box or a simple PC software client, OnLive streaming games can deliver the latest system-melting titles to crappy hardware you already have. The service's secret? Cloud rendering.

In a nutshell: OnLive runs the games on their powerful servers, the output is then rendered as a video stream and then sent to your OnLive set-top box, PC or even netbook, taking expensive, loud, obsolescence-prone gaming PCs out of the picture entirely. 720p HD streams are said to be possible over a 5mbps connection, while SD gaming only calls for a 1.5mbps line. Hardware requirements are virtually nonexistent, meaning that you can play, say, Crysis, on anything from your MacBook to your Aspire One to your Dell Studio to your eMachines shitbox. If you want to hook the service up to a TV, OnLive will sell you a set-top box for "less than a Wii", which shoulders just enough of a load to play back OnLive's HD streams. The service itself will likely operate on a subscription model, but OnLive hasn't given any firm details on how much that'll cost. And before your ask, publishers are already on board, including EA, THQ, Ubisoft, and Epic. Really.

To anyone who has heard of LivePlace—the eye-popping server-rendered Second Life clone for mobile phones—this will all sound familiar, and the same concern will immediately bubble up: lag. If it's plagued client-rendered multiplayer games for all this time, how could OnLive possibly avoid it with such dramatically increased demands on user bandwidth? Well, Kotaku got to try the service, and though it was only hosting a fraction of the users it will when it goes public, they were able to play Crysis Wars without a hitch. OnLive is set for launch later this year, and we'll get to see how the service scales when the beta opens up in this summer, and if their unbelievable 1ms video enocoding claims hold any water.

Check Kotaku's fantastic report for more details.

Still sounds like scifi to me, but hell, so did terabyte hard disks once. The broad publisher support suggests their demos must genuinely be working, although making that work over public internet is still a tall order. Note that the Kotaku report suggests they will run regional datacentres so you always connect to one nearby -- that will at least help with the lag issue.

Mind you, BT claim they will have fibre to the home in 40% of houses by 2012. If we assume this service takes a year to launch and another year to gather momentum, it could overlap with the growth of ultra-low-latency home broadband. That could work out rather well for all involved.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38458

just seen it on Engadget too.

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 13:39

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

This isn't a serious suggestion. This is a "if we lived in the world where everyone has fibre to the kerb" suggestion.

1920x1080x32bit colour x 60hz = 474 megabytes per second.

To put that into context, IIRC, the internets from the pipes from the diamond project out only are 500megs-1 so people save their xtal data to a zip drive, and drive it up the A34 to oxford, rather than email it, as it's quicker.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

MaliA wrote:

To put that into context, IIRC, the internets from the pipes from the diamond project out only are 500megs-1 so people save their xtal data to a zip drive, and drive it up the A34 to oxford, rather than email it, as it's quicker.

Yeah. They are compressing the video in realtime, so it's like streaming a DivX; hence they claim to fit 720p@60Hz into a 5meg internet connection. That's all very believeable, but they also claim the encoding process only adds 1ms extra latency, which is a very impressive number. Or a big fat lie, one or the other.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 13:47

Pipedream for now.

I hope they make a success of it though.

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 14:40

This is a huge deal. If they pull it off, the PC hardware and game makers need to completely change how they do things. Hell, it's even going to affect people like Microsoft - we wouldn't have PCs capable of rendering Vista right now if games weren't pushing hardware boundaries.

The benefits (for us, the consumer) are great - no upgrade costs, no installing, no copy-protection, no incompatible systems, movies literally on demand, instant demos, fuuuck the list is huge.

Saying that I hope they pull it off is an understatement.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Certainly, make no bones about it: it would turn the entire games market on its head. Note also: no cheating, no patching, no game upgrades, and no second hand market.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 14:57

No Goosex

Dudley · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 8679

But lag will kill it. I don't care if they have the bandwidth, the power, everything, bandwidth will kill it.

And this story is older than dirt, I remember pointing out 8000 reasons why it wouldn't work on Bruce's blog back when he was still amusing.

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16557

I'd have to agree, while multiplayer games can deal with a bit of lag by fudging things, most games would feel horrible to play with even a small fraction of a second's delay between pressing a button and anything actually happening.

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 17:18

Dudley wrote:

But lag will kill it. I don't care if they have the bandwidth, the power, everything, bandwidth will kill it.

And this story is older than dirt, I remember pointing out 8000 reasons why it wouldn't work on Bruce's blog back when he was still amusing.

Had Bruce had a go on it?

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Grim... wrote:

Dudley wrote:

But lag will kill it. I don't care if they have the bandwidth, the power, everything, bandwidth will kill it. And this story is older than dirt, I remember pointing out 8000 reasons why it wouldn't work on Bruce's blog back when he was still amusing.

Had Bruce had a go on it?

"I don't care if they have the bandwidth, ... bandwidth will kill it." Huh?

My round trip ping time right now to Google on a fairly crappy ADSL connection is 40ms, and it takes 17 hops to achieve that; the Kotaku article says they will carefully localise datacentres to minimise the number of hops. When I calibrate my AV delay in Rock Band, I often end up +/- 20ms even when I'm convinced it was the same. Audio engineers use a rule of thumb that latencies below 30ms will never be noticed when synchronising kit.

I wouldnt want to go out on a limb and say this OnLive cannot work. It'll be a hell of a feat, but it doesn't look impossible to me, just very difficult.

kalmar · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 17:27

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

MaliA wrote:

To put that into context, IIRC, the internets from the pipes from the diamond project out only are 500megs-1 so people save their xtal data to a zip drive, and drive it up the A34 to oxford, rather than email it, as it's quicker.

Yeah. They are compressing the video in realtime, so it's like streaming a DivX; hence they claim to fit 720p@60Hz into a 5meg internet connection. That's all very believeable, but they also claim the encoding process only adds 1ms extra latency, which is a very impressive number. Or a big fat lie, one or the other.

Hmm, even if you allow instantaneous compression, and and instantaneous internet, the output has still got to be decompressed at the user's side.
Any old crappy PC (or even a good one) is going to add lots more latency than that just playing a SD DivX file.

So, yeah, it might be good enough to be usable but the number quoted sounds fishy.

Malc · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 17:30

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

"I don't care if they have the bandwidth, ... bandwidth will kill it." Huh?

Without wanting to put words into duds mouth I think the 2nd bandwidth should be "latency/lag"

Malc

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

kalmar wrote:

Hmm, even if you allow instantaneous compression, and and instantaneous internet, the output has still got to be decompressed at the user's side. Any old crappy PC (or even a good one) is going to add lots more latency than that just playing a SD DivX file.

They should have this part working today, though, for the GDC demos.

Compressing to H264, this quad core PC can get something like 100 fps, so around 10ms per frame; I would imagine they would do the compress part in hardware on a GP-GPU or similar, so it's possible they could be compressing in circa 1ms I think. Whatever their codec is though it can't look much like MPEG or any of it's inheritants, which compress across future frames; their solution must act only on the current frame and those that went before it. They wouldn't be able to have any B-frames.

Decompressing is harder, unless they are going to write drivers that (again) leverage mpeg-2 decoding speedups on graphics card hardware. That wouldn't cut into their market too much, even integrated graphics on laptops from 2-3 years ago offer some facilities for this.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

"Even integrated graphics on laptops from 2-3 years ago" doesn't quite square with "Hardware requirements are virtually nonexistant".

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 17:40

Craster wrote:

"Even integrated graphics on laptops from 2-3 years ago" doesn't quite square with "Hardware requirements are virtually nonexistant".

It pretty much does.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

Plenty of people have kit that's older than 2-3 years old.

Dudley · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 8679

Even 20ms is too long, not to mention the decode will result in a lag of more than that and the encode the other end probably more even on an ACTUAL Jesusputer.

Decoding will probably be a frame behind what's recieved which is at least a frame behind what's being sent which is probably a frame behind what's happening.

On an action game that's just going to be awful, Forza's physics runs at over 300hz, Need for Speed : Shift at 420hz. By the time you even get the information to enable you to consider reacting you're already 20-30 physics frames behind the curve.

And the risk of a random network hiccup losing your game is massive compared to the average risk of a problem on a local.

Plus your machine still has to be good enough to decode 1900x1080x60 (which is more than most consumer PCs) and their PCs have to be able to run the game at that AND encode at that (assuming we're not taking as serious 500MB/sec internet with 100% reliability at that speed any time remotely soon). That's a lot of hardware and I simply can't see it being cost effective either.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Craster wrote:

Plenty of people have kit that's older than 2-3 years old.

Contrary to breathless journalist's claims, there'll have to be some cutoff though, defined by the CPU/GPU requirements of the decoder.

Dudley wrote:

Even 20ms is too long

No it isn't. When I calibrate my Rock Band instruments, I can move their latency from +15ms to -15ms and not notice any difference when I play, in one of the most timing-sensitive games I can imagine.

Dudley wrote:

1900x1080x60

It's 720p only and that consumes a 5meg stream, not a 500meg one.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Craster wrote:

Plenty of people have kit that's older than 2-3 years old.

Contrary to breathless journalist's claims, there'll have to be some cutoff though, defined by the CPU/GPU requirements of the decoder.

Oh, agreed - but that difference is fairly important when it comes to the marketability of the service. If they can give me a £50 set-top box that I can play all the latest games on, fantastic stuff. If I have to shell out £200 for it then it loses a great deal of it's appeal.

kalmar · **Posted:** Tue Mar 24, 2009 17:56

Craster wrote:

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Craster wrote:

Plenty of people have kit that's older than 2-3 years old.

Contrary to breathless journalist's claims, there'll have to be some cutoff though, defined by the CPU/GPU requirements of the decoder.

Oh, agreed - but that difference is fairly important when it comes to the marketability of the service. If they can give me a £50 set-top box that I can play all the latest games on, fantastic stuff. If I have to shell out £200 for it then it loses a great deal of it's appeal.

See Nuon and CDTV to name but a few.

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11843

Although I agree with Dudley, it really does depend on the game. Maybe it won't be so successful for NFS, but better at slower games. If it takes off, the develpoper will know the lag you are seeing so could take it into account.

I think it is going to be very difficult to implement, but I hope they give it a serious try, because it could be awesome.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

55 min presentation demo. I don't have to watch all of this for details just now, but I skipped around and watched a little of it. The on-box UI looks damned slick (09:40 in). Some lag discussion at 45:00. He talks about the video compression algorithms at 07:00, and says that their new algorithm is completely optimised around lag reduction. They play some Crysis at around 17:30 on a low-end laptop but I cannot find them talking about the connectivity to the server -- they do mention it's 50 miles away.

Some of the features are ace -- you get Live-style notification when you friends come online, but you can tune into their video stream and watch them at any time. As you select games from the menu, it has half a dozen video thumbnails that are live games-in-progress. All games are infinitely pausable -- if you walk away from any game at any time, when you start the game back up, you are dropped back exactly where you left it.

Anyone who claims to be a gamer and isn't excited at the possibilities of a service like this should probably check they still have a pulse.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:18

I WANT IT. I honestly don't care that it's another box to go under my TV.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Grim... wrote:

I WANT IT. I honestly don't care that it's another box to go under my TV.

Why would it be? You have a media centre PC, don't you? Also: the optional STB they are selling is teeny tiny anyway.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:32

I want that little black box. My media centre is huge and not really set up for gaming (in terms of perhiperals).
However, as this runs in a browser, what's to stop me playing on my PS3?

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Grim... wrote:

I want that little black box. My media centre is huge and not really set up for gaming (in terms of perhiperals).

Well, their special pad is a Bluetooth one, so you could presumably just buy one of them.

Quote:

However, as this runs in a browser, what's to stop me playing on my PS3?

Browser? It has proprietary decoding doodads. They could write a PS3 client, but I bet Sony would be hostile to that.

Note that they are pimping Mac support too. That's a clever move. Crysis on a Macbook? Yes please.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Anyone who claims to be a gamer and isn't excited at the possibilities of a service like this should probably check they still have a pulse.

It's possible to be excited by the possibilities whilst still deeply cynical about the realities.

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16557

Craster wrote:

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Anyone who claims to be a gamer and isn't excited at the possibilities of a service like this should probably check they still have a pulse.

It's possible to be excited by the possibilities whilst still deeply cynical about the realities.

I think the reality of a service like this for someone with the average UK internet connection would be utter frustration.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:40

The other point, of course, is that this may finally break the Internet. I mean, the iPlayer came close.

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16557

It should be ok as long as Dimrill doesn't have it.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

They're not talking rubbish about lag in the video, mind. They are being pretty realistic. I think they are planning to scale this service as fiber to the home spreads.

Trousers · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3073

Regardless of the technical realities what of the financial considerations?

There's a lot of infrastructure to put in place with massive amounts of hardware churn to make sure the system stays up to date. That's a significant initial capital outlay which they are not going to claw back for quite some time. Is that a risk any financial backers are going to take on right now?

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Trousers wrote:

Regardless of the technical realities what of the financial considerations?

I've been trying to dig into their financials, but there seems to be very little information.

In late 2007, they "raised $16.5 million in a second funding, according to a regulatory filing cited by PE Wire. Backers include Maverick Capital and Warner Brothers." The involvement of Warner is interesting.

And it seems Dave Perry is up to similar stuff too. I think you could argue (Perry does) that, far from being scifi, OnLive's model might be inevitable as broadband speeds increase, and it's just a matter of timing about when the problems become tractable; OnLive might struggle to pull it off right now, but then again they might also grab first mover advantage in a nascent market.

Jesus, this would kick the stuffing out of Game, Gamestop, nVidia, Intel, AMD, ... Almost everyone.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:17

I am fearful of these developments. I like things as they are.

*burns loom*

kalmar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:26

Curiosity wrote:

I am fearful of these developments. I like things as they are.

*burns loom*

*ties pitchfork*

What would the servers be like? I assume they've hit on some way of generating craploads of very high quality video feeds without having to have the equivalent of a PC graphics card allocated to every user (which would sort of defeat the object).

It's interesting. But I'm not convinced cloud computing is a very good match for this. For example, due to the latency problem, you need servers fairly close to your users - in the same country at least. So those servers are going to get hammered all at the same time - every evening, and sit fairly idle during the day.

So where's the advantage in centralising it, even if the bandwidth problem didn't exist?

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38458

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Jesus, this would kick the stuffing out of Game, Gamestop, nVidia, Intel, AMD, ... Almost everyone.

Games retailers would be fucked, granted, but hardware would still be needed at the server end. BIG POWERFUL server farms of huge power, actually.

Intel would be powering the STB's embedded OS with some version of the atom I would guess but AMD would be up shit creek with their CPU business.

kalmar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:44

DavPaz wrote:

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Jesus, this would kick the stuffing out of Game, Gamestop, nVidia, Intel, AMD, ...

... AMD would be up shit creek with their CPU business.

The original post says this scheme is "AMD's", which kind of implies they'd supply the hardware. Is that the case? The article doesn't mention it.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

DavPaz wrote:

Games retailers would be fucked, granted, but hardware would still be needed at the server end. BIG POWERFUL server farms of huge power, actually.

However, cost of server farms must be less than the cost of everyone having their own PC, otherwise OnLive's business model is fucked, so Intel etc still lose out overall.

Unless they can grow the market, of course: sell the OnLive service to people who would dabble with this but would never have bought a gaming PC.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:50

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out. People have thus far suggested that this would become the One Platform To Rule Them All, but I'd be interested to see what the developers and people like Sony/Microsoft have to say about that.

Not to mention the carnage that would ensue in the FPS world, as point-and-click vs joypad would mess things up considerably.

Also, would it cope fine if I was playing a game with, say, two guys in America, three in London, two in Scotland and one in South Africa?

Be Excellent To Each Other

OnLive streaming PC games: Crysis on any PC?
was AMD's Cloud system thing

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Be Excellent To Each Other

OnLive streaming PC games: Crysis on any PC? was AMD's Cloud system thing

Who is online

OnLive streaming PC games: Crysis on any PC?
was AMD's Cloud system thing