Onlive: Inside and Out

[mAF]

Looks very interesting check out the little video on the page.
http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6206...opslot;thumb;2

[mAF]

Some are saying it could be an early April fools mind you.

[Orange]

Dave Perry has come out with some stuff on a competing system. I haven't read up on this, but given what a pain in the arse it can be to type a Word doc over Citrix I'm pretty sceptical.

[Orange]

Also, on a vaguely related theme, there was some discussion about whether this would be the final generation of consoles
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/25/pa...n-is-the-last/

[Stuie]

i'm finding it hard to wrap my head around lol. it just seems kind of too good to be true? surely Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are going to let this screw them out of millions if not billions of profits?

[Spookie]

Won't work.

ISPs would go fucking ape shit.

[Orange]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7976206.stm
Still no clearer.

[Minty]

Originally Posted by mAF

Some are saying it could be an early April fools mind you.

Clearly they arent the "some" who were present at the public demonstration where people got to playtest certain features and games.

[Swank]

lag

[Orange]

Although to be fair Minty making it work in a highly controlled environment doesn't prove a lot.

[Sh0cked]

Eurogamer had a fantastic article on this debunked it completely... from what I read unless they have come up with some amazing technology that it leaps and bounds forward from the rest its absolute bollocks...

Which backed up my initial thought of it being absolute bollocks

[Rainy]

What I want to know is even if it was true and worked flawlessly how the fuck do they expect it to catch on in a world of ever increasing strangulation of our bandwidth. Every year speeds increase due to new tech and every year we hear stories about isp's clamping down on the amount of data we can shift at such speeds.

In the article I read it takes about 500kbps stream to play the games in 720p (which is shit for a pc user) now downloading at 500kbps is roughly 1.7 gigs an hour? the average bandwidth allowance a month is around 30gig, that would mean at a rough estimate about 15 hours gaming a month lol.

[TheBuZZard]

As it says in the eurogamer article, bandwidth is much less of an issue than the processing power they would need to keep 1000s of people playing, try encoding video and playing a game at 720p at the same time on your PC. The computing power they will need to make this possible is stupendous.

If by some miracle they can pull this off what about price, a 360 can be bought for just over £100 and can be used without any internet connection. And as for games, publishers arent going to let them sell the games for any less than retail just like steam for games you will never really own and cannot play offline.

[Minty]

Originally Posted by Orange

Although to be fair Minty making it work in a highly controlled environment doesn't prove a lot.

It proves it isnt an April Fools

Sure it will work better in a controlled environment (it was the GDC though, so not entirely in their own ballpark) but if the product doesnt work, theyre not exactly going to last long.

[Heartwork]

http://www.cad-comic.com/news.php?i=1854

cad had a decent news post about it the other day

[Orange]

Originally Posted by Minty

It proves it isnt an April Fools

Sure it will work better in a controlled environment (it was the GDC though, so not entirely in their own ballpark) but if the product doesnt work, theyre not exactly going to last long.

I think that's everyone's point, no?

Part of me think its unlikely that the various software partners would have got involved if there wasn't something to it, and I'm sceptical of any supposed technical barriers (particularly bandwidth), but it really does seem incredibly implausible on the basis that every player of Crysis is going to have to have a behemoth of a machine running at a remote location to power it, which suggests server farms on the very grandest of scales.

{edit)oh yeah, Buzz said that already {/edit}

[Rainy]

Originally Posted by TheBuZZard

As it says in the eurogamer article, bandwidth is much less of an issue than the processing power they would need to keep 1000s of people playing, try encoding video and playing a game at 720p at the same time on your PC. The computing power they will need to make this possible is stupendous.

If by some miracle they can pull this off what about price, a 360 can be bought for just over £100 and can be used without any internet connection. And as for games, publishers arent going to let them sell the games for any less than retail just like steam for games you will never really own and cannot play offline.

I was talking about the end users bandwidth not the Onlive company's output of bandwidth. Any company can purchase a bigger pipe than Boy George's anal passage with enough money but us as end users are fucked. Even large company's like virgin media are whining because things like the BBCI player takes too much bandwidth and the BBC should help them pay there bills.

That said if it's all true and ISP's could strike some sort of package deal with an included sub to onlive then I would actually been quite interested.

[[RaG]Ethel]

Originally Posted by Rainy

In the article I read it takes about 500kbps stream to play the games in 720p (which is shit for a pc user) now downloading at 500kbps is roughly 1.7 gigs an hour? the average bandwidth allowance a month is around 30gig, that would mean at a rough estimate about 15 hours gaming a month lol.

500Kbps = kilobits surely

so an hour is 200megabytes and 15hours becomes 120 hours

[TheBuZZard]

Bandwidth for end users isnt an issue, only have to upload very little and download like Eth says is well within even crappy British ADSL means.
Even if it is an issue like I said before its minor issue compared to processing power and who the hell is going to want it.

[Inertiaman]

This is the key, it's going to be a frigs sight cheaper just to HAVE a pile of disposable local processing (in the form of a next gen xbox) than it is to provide the centralised setup this needs. Penny Arcade (as ever) nailed it for me;

OnLive is pretty much the belle of the ball at GDC thus far, and its promise of rapture must be pure exhilaration to anyone who has never worked IT. I wouldn't describe it as a fight, per se - the knives remained sheathed - but I would say that Gabriel and I entered into what you might call a scale model of a fight. There was fury, but it was a very compact fury.

I received an SMS from Robert late last night, no doubt typed at some Game Developer's Conference bacchanal, and something in the way it was formatted managed to communicate a breathless enthusiasm. I reminded him that years ago - during E3 That Was - we saw a demo of the Phantom that was impressive enough to elicit a purchase. The demo was that good. So good that I never wrote about it - it was, in fact, too good. The machines that served the content were situated in a room not ten feet away, connected via gigabit ethernet. Every time I pore over some unchecked torrent from an ecstatic new convert, I start to become very curious about topology.

I mentioned IT before because people who have done time in the field have already been through several cycles of this kind of thinking. I'm not making a value judgment of any kind - I'm just saying that terminal computing is perpetually making a case for itself, because the seat of processing power is always shifting. Back when I worked for the school district, the basement of the administration building was given over to an ancient mainframe serviced by equally ancient people who only knew how to tend to their beloved, humming sarcophagus.

What I'm saying is that server-side solutions invariably lead to sinister necromantic cabals.

I'm not saying that exactly. Even sight unseen, there are genres I prize greatly that would work well on a mechanism like this. Virtually any raw tactics experience would excel under these conditions. Role-playing titles and some massive games would perform adequately, even in the absence of any unique technology. The new Prince is the sort of platformer that might function, and it features prominently in their materials. When I see a racer or a shooter, however, something in my mind rebels.

They have some incredibly forward thinking community solutions, and as a rental scenario what OnLive delivers is near optimal. I resonate in a harmonious way with the idea that discrete gaming "platforms" are a divisive, untenable regime that often obscures the medium. This is precisely why I am careful about things of this stripe: it is the will of my heart to believe it. I believe Matthew 24, verses 23 through 26 might be appropriate here. Due diligence.

If a man claims to be Jesus Christ, you can bet I'll check the wrists.

(CW)TB out.

[Inertiaman]

What they should be doing is aiming at family entertainment centers/themed resturants/creche areas in stores/pubs etc which have a need for basic gaming and frequent content renewal without any unreliable and complex POS equipment. The home market is never going to take this up in anything other than niche numbers.

Chuck-e-cheese would jump on it though.

[C0NTiNUiTY]

i would be one of the niche then!

i seem to be the only person that wants to see this work.

maybe they have some wonder proprietary technology up their sleeves that will work in a real life situation. Who knows even in this day and age it may be possible to keep bleeding edge developments secret.

720p limitation doesnt bother me, i play games at 1360x768 which is basically 720p anyway.

not having to worry about maintaining an uber machine to play games is nice.

choice of 'buying' or renting a game meaning i dont need to fork out full price for a single player only game i only ever play through once.

So fingers crossed the onlive guys can pull it off!

[Rainy]

What kind of Internet connection do I need to use the OnLive Service?

OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps.

That's taken directly from the Online official website FAQ. Now according to google calculator, 5 Mbps = 5120 kbps. Which again takes me back to the first post I made about it eating bandwidth. Don't forget your not downloading the game as such, not the games data anyway, your actually downloading a video feed of the game. I cant stream a 720P res video on my line of 4 meg. I don't even know what the average UK speed is, I would be surprised if its above 5 meg.

[Sh0cked]

Alot of people want it to work mate it's just increadibly unlikely to ever work due to the technical limitations of equipment. Bandwith whilst not a major issue is a serious one.. not just viewing the video but interuptions to the connection, lag issues all major major problems.

That is all before you even start to comprehend the computing power required to encode a 720p @ 60fps which is what they are toting.. in REAL time for not just you but everyone else who's playing the same game and everyone else who are playing different games?

Just to quote the Eurogamer article and OnLive here:

OnLive overlord Steve Perlmen has said that the latency introduced by the encoder is 1ms. Think about that; he's saying that the OnLive encoder runs at 1000fps.

Eurogamer

Its a shame as I think as an idea its a great one but at the moment its just not deliverable imo

[Inertiaman]

They do not have anything up their sleeve. All the technology employed is off someone elses shelf. I'd love it if it worked, but experience clearly demonstrates that it won't. Orange cited citrix earlier which is as good a case as any. And you've only had to experienced UT/CS/Quake etc to see what happens to a game over 150ms.

[Inertiaman]

Originally Posted by C0NTiNUiTY

choice of 'buying' or renting a game meaning i dont need to fork out full price for a single player only game i only ever play through once.

Also don't imagine for a second that publishers will allow game ownership to become any cheaper on this new platform.

[Inertiaman]

Originally Posted by Andy018

Its a shame as I think as an idea its a great one but at the moment its just not deliverable imo

I'd say it's totally deliverable - just not for the latency sensitive games they're touting.

[Sh0cked]

Sorry I really should of added an exception there for "Texas Holdem and Solitare"

Its not deliverable for any graphically intensive modern computer game due to the the limitations of technology.

[C0NTiNUiTY]

i wouldnt expect it to be cheaper
what i meant is that i only buy full price games i have intention of re-using.
At the moment single player only games i either rent or borrow off a friend.

take mirrors edge, i was one of the few who enjoyed the game, but still doesnt alter the fact u can complete it in 6 hours, so definately isnt worth 30 quid.

in the video demo they had a shot of the game screen where there was a choice of renting it 1 day 2 days etc etc

i mean with ps3 and xbox slowly rolling out downloadable full titles it would be good if they could do something similar.

Valve have started doing it with their free weekends i suppose but it would be good to say rent a game for a couple of days to see if its any cop (i know there are demos but demos rarely reflect a game well) then upgrade it to a permanent purchase.
Had that system been around i definately wouldnt have bothered with DOW2! COH ftw!

[Inertiaman]

Wow and the like would work a treat and have an obviously huge audience.