OnLive

[daan 79]

In the future ppl will buy programs, they shoudnt have to do extra calculation for on ther own rags. I think it will be for developers also be a breaktrough if they can focus on ppl who using there software with high end equipment.

I personally would see a great benefith if this would help poor countries to get easy access to high standards. I think some closed small communities like schools or covernment will want to have this for ther own use.

And i think logistics would make more sence also.

And stuff getting old doing nothing is a waist.

[KDR_11k]

The problem with deployment in poor countries is that they don't have much internet access. It'd be cheaper to give them self-contained computers that only need electricity (which should be somewhat easier to come by) than to give them a terminal that requires both electricity and a good internet connection.

Besides, we're so capable of manufacturing electronics we can build a computer that does basic text processing and such for the same price as a terminal (well, not with Vista and Office 2007 of course but with less resource hogging software) so doing anything below high-end stuff on the mainframe instead of the client would be plain silly.

This leaves the thing to high end uses but supercomputing already covers all the productive high-end tasks. OnLive is just the application of the ancient and almost extinct (for a reason!) terminal and mainframe model on gaming.

I really don't see any application for this. High end PC gaming is a really tiny niche, most people just go for consoles instead which are cheap enough that it just doesn't make sense to get a cheaper system and pay for a subscription. You'll have to upgrade the client-side hardware anyway because we're seeing the evolution of the user interfaces now instead of a push of the graphics and the mainframe cannot alter the physical device in your hands. Meanwhile the promised lack of upgrading won't matter because graphical advances are going to get cut down even more (PC gaming already seems to have reached a glass ceiling that noone is willing to break) because it just makes no business sense to develop games that have even more advanced graphics.

The whole graphical advantage race has become obsolete in 2006, OnLive is like building the ultimate buggy whip when the automobile came out years ago.

[zwzsg]

[...]
assuming some things are true
[...]
If they say in from of a room full of people that [...] this is not the kind of thing they would lie about.
[...]
I can hardly imagine they would have mentioned this unless it was giving them a decent improvement (let's say 20%).
[...]
providing they are not lying

You are too naïve!

[Boirunner]

it just makes no business sense to develop games that have even more advanced graphics.

The whole graphical advantage race has become obsolete in 2006

With procedurally generated content, you can utilize as much hardware as you like without significantly altering development cost.

As the gaming market grows larger, more expensive games become viable.

And the only glass ceiling in gaming is the clock frequency of the processor, everything else is exponentially growing as always.

[SinbadEV]

What price range would you see as "okay" for this service?

I'm thinking if the monthly subscription is under 20$ and includes basic access to the service, demos, trailers and the friend watching stuff... then they would need to charge somewhere around common rental fees for the games, let's say 1 week for $15 for new games, 1 week for $5 for older ones. Also, if they want to REALLY take off they need to partner with someone like Blizzard and sell a "Blizzard Pass" that would be like 30 a month for subscription, access to WoW and library games (like diablo, starcraft, warcraft3)... that would hit the niche I think they will profit the most from.

Another great way for them to get this in the mainstream would be to include free-play of some older games for all subscribers... it's hard to swallow that monthly fee if all it lets you do is pay MORE money to play games.

[Jazcash]

Bump: I knew this thing would take off.

Crysis on iPhones, Call of Duty on 15 year old PC's, it's all starting to kick off.

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpFzpF0m ... re=related

It seems the idea works fine, sending commands to the high tech computers which send back compressed video of the game.

I guess the only draw-back now is internet speed.

[knorke]

great now the nextgen console shit can clog up the internet too.
won't somebody think of the tubes?

[Master-Athmos]

Well when being tested it turned out that it isn't really "mature" yet. The video compression makes everything look rather bad (especially blurry) and another problem is the input lag you have due to the entire system which is nasty especially for fast stuff like racing games...

[JohannesH]

Offtopic, whatever happened to daan 79? I remember he made the Springzine which was pretty cool but now his acc had been removed?

[Hobo Joe]

but if their compression/decompression/network optimization stuff really can manage a lagless 17ms server to user and still look HD, this technology could give the upper hand to on-demand video service...

Input lag is waaaaaayyy different than normal lag. You can hide normal lag behind lag compensation to an extent but you can't hide input lag.

[SinbadEV]

Looks like OnLive is... live.

I noticed while at work so I can't test it right now, but someone of you should try it out (apparently sign-up is free and you can play demos using a "browser plugin" on PC or MAC) already.

[Licho]

What a BS .. it can't work even from quality perspective..

Atm I play games at 1920x1200 with 60fps easilly.

To achieve that without loss of quality, you need to transfer up to

1920x1200x4x60 bytes each second. In other words you need:

4216 MBit connection - thats well above total connectivity of many countries.

[SinbadEV]

What a BS .. it can't work even from quality perspective..

Atm I play games at 1920x1200 with 60fps easilly.

To achieve that without loss of quality, you need to transfer up to

1920x1200x4x60 bytes each second. In other words you need:

4216 MBit connection - thats well above total connectivity of many countries.

technically they are using server side compression so they only need to send the pixels that change and keyframes (similar to digital TV)... also I believe they are targeting a 1024x768 resolution or something like that.

Oddly enough YOU COULD TRY IT OUT AND TELL US HOW SUCKY IT IS instead of doing so from a philosophical perspective.

[Neddie]

I think Aegis did try, and found it awful.

[Licho]

Oddly enough YOU COULD TRY IT OUT AND TELL US HOW SUCKY IT IS instead of doing so from a philosophical perspective.

Its not philosophical :) No matter what compression you use, if you want to achieve same quality thats how much data you need to transfer.
Many effects cause nearly every pixel to change - like noise added for extra film effect or in dark scenes.

If target is 1024 then its not even worth trying for me.

[Wombat]

meh, youtube is banned on my office pc, whats that :D?

[Jazcash]

Yeh, Average download speed for UK is less than 3mb/s. I'm sitting here with less than 1mb/s so it's pretty much out of the question for me :[

[SinbadEV]

I think you need to have a 3mb/s connection to the server that you are running the game from (so right-now that's only possible in the continental US I believe)... this will give you a picture that looks about as good as a 720p video compressed with a 3mbps bitrate at best but more like a 720p video compressed with 1mbps bitrate (given the live render, compression, decompression, input lag and the inherent bidirectional nature of the transaction)... so I'd say to get a "passable" quality experience you'd need a 5mb/s down by 3mb/s up between you and the server...

that said, many US Internet providers are offering 10+ mbps down and up connections now which would definitely be able to handle a high quality experience as long as they can somehow keep their ping times consistently under 5ms.

edit: I can also see any game that does not rely on reaction time to work fine... like Turn-Based strategy games.

[Zydox]

Hmm... I wouldn't be willing to pay for OnLive just to play turn based games... feels like those type of games players just fine on old computers as well...

[Teutooni]

What a BS .. it can't work even from quality perspective..

Atm I play games at 1920x1200 with 60fps easilly.

To achieve that without loss of quality, you need to transfer up to

1920x1200x4x60 bytes each second. In other words you need:

4216 MBit connection - thats well above total connectivity of many countries.

+1

The whole concept is sketchy. At the speed of light, the signal can travel 300km in a millisecond, and that's a direct beam of light. There will be a lot more lag due to compression, routing, packet filtering, packets getting lost, etc. Even a few milliseconds is noticeable in input lag. I just don't see this ever working, not with this set of physical laws.