new 'console' called OnLive

[Niode]

It's not possible. It can't be.

Unless this server they have is sentient or something and can guess what you are going to do there is no chance in hell that they are going to have 1ms lag.

This thing just isn't going to work over current internet infrastructure. Do me a favour and go on youtube, watch a fairly long video that streams long enough for you to see it streaming. Just click around on that time-line where it hasn't streamed yet. You're looking at a good 100-500ms lag between it realises where you have clicked and where to start streaming video. Streaming video ONLY works when it knows what's coming next. With games anything can happen. Just take a look at that multi-verse mario thing where a guy took hundreds of videos of one level play on mario. The server would have to process every single possible move that a player could make so that it could stream the video. Just look how complex that process would be in 2D then multiply it by a third dimension.

Take that concept and apply it to a video game. The streaming server has no idea what you are going to do next it simply can't compress and stream the data (AT 720p no less!! HAHA, yeah, good luck on that one...) fast enough without you seeing noticeable lag.


This WILL NOT WORK. Mark my words.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

It's not possible. It can't be.

Unless this server they have is sentient or something and can guess what you are going to do there is no chance in hell that they are going to have 1ms lag.

Quick somebody find me John Connor and a T800.

But yeah there's no way this is going to happen hardware or legal wise for another decade or so at least.

[lisalover1]

I gave up on the console the second I saw the modem port on the back. Epic fail.

[racketboy]

As others have said, it's all in the lag
Interesting business concept though.

[elvis]

This WILL NOT WORK. Mark my words.

Two things:

1) There will never be 100% lag free network gaming. Technically speaking, even local gaming is not lag free, as electrons still take time to move around. The point is you can get lag pretty low - low enough that people don't notice (or they do, but it doesn't matter a whole lot).

2) YouTube is a bad example for two reasons. Firstly, there is no need for YouTube to be "immediate". Waiting 500ms for the clip to buffer isn't a negative user experience, compared to waiting 500ms for a command to register in game. Secondly, YouTube is not only traditional client-server communication, but also has multiple layers of proxies and routing nodes sitting between the content and the user. Compare this to modern game code (particularly those that use P2P technologies to ensure "closest node" topologies), and you're talking apples and oranges.

Here's a better example:

http://ggpo.net/

GGPO is a P2P network versus emulation system written in a very clever way to compensate for the problems with high latency network connections. It's not perfect (no online system is), but it's damned impressive. Certainly good enough for me to play SSF2:T (arguably one of the fastest 1-on-1 fighting games) with people on the other side of the country, and not notice huge amounts of lag compared to other far more expensive commercial online systems.

Is it 100% lag free? No. Does it work well? Heck yeah. Well enough that Capcom noticed, and have licensed the code for use in SSF2:T:HDR and SF4. My bet is we'll see similar netcode appearing in a lot of future titles.

Like it or not, online gaming is becoming bigger and bigger. We're seeing more and more games coming out that are designed for online play (with a few primitive 1-player modes merely for tutorial purposes), and some that are 100% online only. The current generation of consoles and their online stores are a very conservative stepping stone towards a day when all content delivery and multiplayer modes will be online.

[Niode]

I know Youtube wasn't the greatest example but I was trying to keep things in layman's terms. Everyone is familiar with the way Youtube works. That was the reason for the analogy.

I agree with you though. Like what Moz said, electricity only moves so fast. Any transfer of this electricity over any distance introduces unavoidable lag.

The key is in the netcode, but even with the worlds greatest netcode in the world I still don't think they can do everything they say they can do.

Let's ignore the whole lag issue for a moment and concentrate on the video streaming. They say they can transmit 720p video in less than 5ms. That's grade A bullshit right there. There's no way they can do that with current internet infrastructure.

I'm still calling bullshit on this one until I see a working version in the wild (IE on the internet, not on a controlled LAN) I just can't see it happening at all.

Besides they're saying they're going to achieve the same fidelity that current PC users are used to? That must be one hell of a video compression standard that can do 720p at just 24fps without you seeing a lot of artefacts especially in the 5ms they say they can compress-transmit-decompress it.

[elvis]

If you've been in the tech biz as long as someone like myself, you'll pretty soon realise that it's marketing people who write the bullshit websites, not techies. Read some Dilbert to get an accurate idea of what goes on.

Don't get too upset about the "5ms stream, 1ms lag" style crap that gets thrown around. It's just marketing people hired to do what they do best: constructive lies.

I'm looking forward to what the console brings. Even if it's a catastrophic failure, at least someone is trying to move away from legacy software delivery systems and towards a pure online system, which ultimately will be the future of gaming (whether we like it or not).

[SpaceBooger]

So, I got picked to get a free year and one free game of OnLive's pc platform.
Im going to give it a try, but I am wondering if I get borderlands can I play with you guys on it, or just those on OnLive... I guess we will find out.

[Capcomwarrior]

With all the talk of the virtual desktop future supposedly on the horizon, this is no surprise... although I hadn't heard of it before this.


As others have said, we aren't ready for it to be a success yet... but at some point, I believe we will be.

[Hobie-wan]

So, I got picked to get a free year and one free game of OnLive's pc platform.
Im going to give it a try, but I am wondering if I get borderlands can I play with you guys on it, or just those on OnLive... I guess we will find out.

Borderlands multiplayer is matched through Gamespy. So If you log into that you should be good.