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OnLive: The Future of (PC) Gaming?

#1   Golden Legacy 

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    Posted 25 March 2009 - 07:45 PM

    This is unbelievably sick.

    The need for new graphics card, faster processors, and even new computers to play the latest PC games has always been a hindrance. What if all that could be done away with? What if you could play a game such as Crysis, Mirror's Edge, or Fallout 3 at the highest setting, no matter how old your computer is?

    Enter OnLive. This technology takes the input from your controller and sends it to the servers at OnLive, which processes it and streams a video back of the game you are playing. In other words, all the actual processing in the game is done at their machines, and what you get back is real-time video footage, as though you were streaming it!

    http://kotaku.com/5181300/onlive-makes-pc-...ysis-on-your-tv

    All you need is literally just a broadband connection.

    #2   Ironsight 

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      Posted 25 March 2009 - 11:23 PM

      Eh.

      #3   Split Infinity 

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        Posted 26 March 2009 - 02:24 AM

        View PostMiley Cyrus, on Mar 26 2009, 04:23 PM, said:

        tl;dr

        Translated.

        No really, Nos and I were talking about this the other day. Crysis 2 anyone?

        #4   Caael 

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          Posted 26 March 2009 - 09:20 AM

          How much and when's it out?

          #5   Someone Else 

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            Posted 26 March 2009 - 12:18 PM

            Farking sweet

            Still hate monthly fees

            Also... kinda seems too good to be true.

            http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-...ly-work-article

            That douchebag at CAD also says things nicely.

            http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/#1854

            I want this to succeed, but it's got a lot going against it. And even if it does meet success, I doubt it's success will be a compete overhaul of gaming as we know it.

            #6   Toasty 

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              Posted 26 March 2009 - 10:42 PM

              Old news.

              Welcome to the world of cloud computing where the servers handle everything for you.

              As for broadband, you'd need fiber for something like this.
              Didn't read the part about it streaming video and whatnot.

              [EDIT] I take that back. 5mb/s is a fiber connection. But forget about it if you want to play on 30" monitor. Streaming live video at 2560x1600? Forget it. Not in this day and age. Not unless....

              ..... the entire US gets up off their ass and lays down fiber everywhere (like Japan's already done, lucky *******s). If you just happen to get even a foot of wire dedicated dial-up or DSL data speeds, your connection will be horrible. Though I suppose they could deal with that by routing the connection through the necessary terminals/etc.


              Anyway, this is likely where the future is headed. Pretty much all consumers will end up getting "nettops" and just outsourcing their data-crunching loads to servers. Most of their data will probably be stored there too.


              The only real problem with this whole setup is that even though you wouldn't have to spend money upgrading, you'd have to pay an arm and a leg to get the "top of the line" experience.



              Anyway, I think I'll stick to having a beast of a desktop PC. Gives me control over the hardware, don't have to pay a monthly fee, and I like tinkering around with my rig anyway (explains all the downtime it has....). Besides that, I'm confident in my ability to fix my computer and keep my data safe. Afterall, that stuff is far more important to me than it would be to someone else that was running a server farm.


              tl;dr I'll stick with my PC, thanks.

              #7   Ironsight 

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                Posted 26 March 2009 - 10:58 PM

                View PostToasty, on Mar 26 2009, 09:42 PM, said:

                ..... the entire US gets up off their ass

                Fat chance. That would involve the government spending money on something actually useful. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

                EDIT: Fat pun not intended.

                #8   Toasty 

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                  Posted 26 March 2009 - 11:15 PM

                  Lawl.

                  Anyway, after actually reading the articles given, I've come to a more precise conclusion:

                  Nice concept, but forget about good quality high-def (or even SD) video, and absolutely forget about playing any top-end hardware intensive game (like Crysis).



                  To be frank, I hate the idea of cloud computing as much as most software guys love it. I'm a hardware guy, so I like building stuff with my hands. Not typing on a keyboard. As much as I know I should get into software (big monies), I can't. HTML/etc. is about as advanced as I think I'll get.


                  I prefer a good desktop for other reasons however:

                  I'm perfectly capable of maintaining my PC by myself. Cloud computing only puts a person who could care less between me and my data.

                  That person probably doesn't/won't speak clear and fluent english.

                  If they (server farm owners) lose your data, it's gone. They'll probably only reimburse you. I'm capable of recovering my own lost data.

                  I can build a PC that will last me for a good long time and still play games for years to come. The cost of it will more than likely be less than the cost of a cloud computing service over the same period of time.



                  But obviously, people who are less technologically inclined than people like me will benefit from it. Though dealing with yet another group of companies like the teleco's will be loads of fun.

                  #9   Someone Else 

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                    Posted 26 March 2009 - 11:21 PM

                    Well, like you said yourself, this is probably where we're headed in the future. A lot of people don't like upgrading and maintaining their own hardware. That's why video game consoles exist in the first place.

                    Even if this OnLive does fail, you can bet your ass that somebody also will come along and pick up the pieces in the future.

                    #10   Toasty 

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                      Posted 27 March 2009 - 12:01 AM

                      Yeah. And hopefully then, we'll have coast-to-coast fiber here in the US (if the US is even around anymore). Then you'll get real live HD video streaming.

                      Though I guarantee you that you won't see games pushing hardware like Crysis does when that time comes. Developers will realize that few people will actually have their own desktops, let alone ones capable of handling such a game.

                      It is physically impossible for a server farm to provide performance on par with a $5k custom built desktop for every single person it services. It's definitely possible to provide that kind of computing power for some people who subscribe to such a service, but not everybody. And if some "carriers" offer that kind of performance, you can bet that it'll cost an arm and a leg.

                      #11   Split Infinity 

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                        Posted 27 March 2009 - 12:39 AM

                        It depends on how many server farms they have set up. They could establish service providers in every major city, although catering to the thousands of people using the service daily could turn out be a multi-billion dollar commitment. That's a lot of developer sponsorships to lean off.

                        #12   Toasty 

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                          Posted 27 March 2009 - 01:11 AM

                          What I mean isn't that it's physically impossible (well, it could be depending on the circumstances), but that it's financially impossible (and if you throw environmentalism into the mix, it could even be illegal with proper legislation).

                          It would cost more money per FLOP to run Crysis at max settings on a server farm the way OnLive is doing it, than it would to just build your own computer and play it on there.

                          Remember, the hardware doesn't only have to play the game, it has to take a video of it, compress it, and stream it, all within about 8ms if you don't want lag, and that's not including sending it to the customer. Even if you had a Quad SLi/Crossfire setup with two GTX295/HD4870X2's and a Core i7 processor, it still wouldn't be capable of encoding video at a rate of 1000 FPS. Or even 500 FPS. And that's if you're also utilizing Nvidia or ATi's new video encoding technologies that allow the computer to actually use the graphics card to help encode the video (traditionally, video encoding has been done solely by the CPU, and not all videos are decoded by the GPU when watching a video. It depends on the codec used).


                          You'd literally have to have a decent sized server farm consisting solely of Tesla GPU's just for the video encoding.

                          Besides the problem with video encoding, managing all the data flowing through these servers would be a monstrous undertaking.


                          When you actually dig into it, the idea just seems borderline impossible.


                          That's not to say it's impossible, but since games will become even more demanding of computer resources as time goes on, the only way for the idea to get any better would be for the hardware industry to improve faster than the software industry.

                          But then again, the software industry is actually severely limited by hardware technology, so something like that happening is astronomically unlikely.



                          Hopefully we'll get quantum computers soon....


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