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Denver, 4:38 AM
Fri Dec 4
57 posts in the last 24 hours
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04/02/09
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04/02/09
crap, strike through "OBAMA" text didn't work. darn HTML.
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04/02/09
maybe they should have been doing research on graphics hardware instead of clouds :P
04/02/09
I can also run crysis very high at a standard 1280x1024 res at 56 fps.
(both of these games are on my laptop that cost around $1200)
People overestimated how much power/expense you need to run it...
Crytek know graphic hardware wtf are you talking about?
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04/02/09
A) can't afford a console
B) don't care about getting the best resolution and bitrate
C) Don't notice or care about controller lag
Yay progress.
04/02/09
I can understand a lot of the arguments floating around here, but I don't see why most people aren't just excited for the possibility of it working.
I mean, I know you think it probably wont work, but shouldn't you be more excited at the fact that it just might work?
This can and will change everything if it succeeds. Maybe gamers are just too afraid of change and are unwilling to part with there little gaming boxes.
I, for one, look forward to the possibility of saving myself a lot of cash and at the possibility of playing any game I want on my Mac Mini.
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04/02/09
They'll still charge you $49.99+ for the game. Yet you only own the right to play it. YOU WILL NOT be able to transfer your rights to another person.
Your brother wants to borrow a copy of _____ forget it.
Comcast see's you wasting lots of bandwidth knowing your addiction, they'll want to charge you an extra $15 a month.
The more I think about Onlive the more is must fail.
04/02/09
They'll still charge you $49.99+ for the game. Yet you only own the right to play it. YOU WILL NOT be able to transfer your rights to another person.
I buy my games for me and don't lend them out or ever take them to a friend's house. Wait, I don't think that's even possible with computer games.
Comcast see's you wasting lots of bandwidth knowing your addiction, they'll want to charge you an extra $15 a month.
I already have a 12mbs connection and if COX does start charging more it will be across the board and not just because I am using OnLive.
I'm starting to think people don't like this project because it prevents them from pirating games and will end up costing them more money.
I've never been one to pirate a game and I hate the idea of throwing money down the toilet every two years to upgrade my computer to play one game.
I really didn't think I'd be in the minority here, but I guess gamers really are afraid of change.
04/02/09
Which is it people?
You can't have it both ways.
04/02/09
I'm sure it will work to some degree. For some kinds of games I am sure it will work really well. After all as technology progresses, the impact of ever higher quality graphics on your gaming experience saturates. It's just that some people like me would rather have great games AND the best quality graphics.
It's the same thing that happened with iPod and iTunes. You've got the digital distribution and widespread adoption, but you settled for lower quality bandwidth.
04/02/09
Even presenting the idea has influenced ways of thinking and future expectations. Whether it's all talk or not, further down the line this service will be viable, and if (God forbid) the guys at OnLive can't pull it off, another team will.
Looking forward to seeing how this develops.
04/02/09
OnLive isn't presenting anything new. They are just the first to claim they have a solution. But really they don't.
04/02/09
New to me I guess.
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If OnLive was to market their device to LAN centres, I can imagine both the LAN centres and OnLive making a very healthy profit and the LAN centres could use alot of their old hardware to set up a small server farm to act as a cloud, greatly reducing cost.
If it were to play out like this, I could see LAN centres becoming a lot more popular and maybe even the prime location for teenage gamers.
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He is right. And it will be a lot longer than a few years. You will need a ~12mbps connection for this to work decently. The masses don't have it, and the masses are what pay for the production costs.
04/02/09
i'd be more concerned about latency and how many hops the game data will travel across, and the inevitable packet loss (ever play CSS on a bad server which has really bad reg and lots of packet loss/choke? -- well this will be a million times worse :P)
04/02/09
Anywho, you're right about the latency. It won't matter if you have a fast connection if it's taking 160+ms for a round trip. I imagine packet loss causing terrible artifacts in the stream too which will deter quite a lot of people from using the service.
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04/02/09
Even if I thought that OnLive would work one tenth as well as they're claiming (and I don't), it still wouldn't be a useful service for either myself or a great many others :(
04/02/09
I'm currently in Japan. And apparently OCN set a new upload limit of 20 GB a DAY
and it's not a hard limit either, more like "please, dont go over this or if you do it too much we might call you and ask you to stop again"
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04/02/09
By 2011 or 2012 I'd expect the standard resolution on laptops and lower powered computers to be 1920x1200, and 2560x1600 to be more mainstream among gamers, instead of it's current status as the upper echelon. 1080p instead of 720p will be expected by gamers, especially with the next generation of consoles likely to support this on most, if not all, games.
The thing is 1080p is 2.25 times the pixels of 720p. The hardware to render the video can keep up but that's double the internet load. Streaming video is already putting a strain on the tubes (youtube is the bandwidth leader and nearly the majority of all internet traffic, taking up more tubespace than p2p) and ISPs aren't happy about it. A lot of them want to charge per usage for bandwidth, which would quickly increase the cost of streaming games and movies for the end user and the provider. Not to mention that connections just aren't fast and reliable enough.
In the end, it might just be a better deal for consumers to buy the hardware to play games. $400 for a console or graphics card seems like a lot but if it provides a markedly better experience, with smoother gameplay at a better resolution, and avoids subscription costs and bandwidth fees it might not be a bad choice.
I'm sure video-based streaming games could succeed at some point, but maybe not as we're envisioning them, or at least as I am- not as the cutting edge graphics on any machine type of deal. But maybe as a service geared more towards portability- gaming on your netbook, perhaps. If they could provide WoW at a playable framerate and resolution without much lag so that it could be played on any laptop or netbook I'm sure they'd be fairly successful.
And maybe at some point as the world of computing shifts more towards the idea of low-power terminals and a model of cloud computing, as it seems to be doing, then bandwidth will catch up with user expectations. Maybe we'll have consoles whose job is only to stream video from a server bank for us to play. But for now, as tasks like photo storage and email and word processing and other tasks trend towards external computation, these types of high bandwidth jobs may be some of the only things that really require a dedicated machine.
And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consoles have long proven that a dedicated machine for one function can be successful, and we can export everything else to the cloud. But for now, the infrastructure just isn't there to deal with the growing demand for high quality video entertainment.
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Of course, 720p isn't bad, but as technology advances and hardware can handle higher and higher resolutions, you bet your ass I'd want to see it at those resolutions.
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I agree, what I think is more important than advancing the technology we use is balancing and stabalising the technology we use. If Moore's predictions are correct and his law ceases to be relevant in 10-15 years, it will probably because of a) we will have reached a point where a more powerful processor, etc isn't neccesary or b)the market collapses due to flooding it with unneeded technology. Of course, both could occur together also. I believe the end result will be the same; manufacturing of processors, etc will become more about stability, efficiency and reliance than about power. For now, I'm just hoping I'm not alive when the singularity occurs :P
@TOCATL: @Sir-Lucius: Alot of people don't know anything more about resolution, pixel count, etc than 720p and 1080p = HD and 1080p>720p.
What most people fail to understand is that a resolution of 480p can look as clean and clear as 1080p because it isn't the resolution that matters but the resolution in relation to the size of the screen.
the thing is that its not about the amount of detail because its the exact same signal at 16:9, what changes from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 are the amount of pixels
I need to correct you here. Although your monitor/tv is recieving the same signal at 720p as it is at 1080p, if you're using a 24" monitor/tv and running your game at 720p, you're effectively doubling the pixel size that's outputted to the monitor.
Think of a sheet of rubber with a picture on it. If you and a friend grabbed two corners each and started to pull, the picture would get bigger but it would lose alot of the detail that it had when the rubber wasn't being stretched.
Just to reiterate, it's the resolution in relation to the size of the screen that's important.
04/02/09
Oh yeah, what now? WHAT NOW?!?!?
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What would that be perfect for?
You guessed it - playing Crysis on your office PC!!!
04/02/09
04/02/09
There will always be people who prefer not to own a car and only rent a Prius when they need to go to the store.
But there will always be those who prefer to pay more to own a GTR and keep it in their driveway, ready to burn rubber 4-wheel-drive anytime.
Same thing with this streaming business.
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04/02/09
I agree with the sentiment that having something tangible in your hands just feels better. But it seems like this streaming/cloud computing trend is being pushed by some seriously big players, like Microsoft and Google. I mean, forget gaming. What if every piece of software you used was based on a server somewhere?
I get the feeling that this is going to be here sooner than later, and here to stay.
04/02/09