Onlive

[T1MT1M]

I thought that this could go in hardware the cage video computer games and software. you may not like my twisted logic of putting it in none of those but it seems general enough for me .

http://gdc.gamespot.com/video/6206692/g ... conference

This is an hour long conference with the creators of onlive. If you don't feel like watching it, onlive has host servers that you can connect to on the internet so that you can play games, the thing about these servers is that they do all of the processing power that your computer would usually do. In other words anyone can play the games that are on the onlive service even on the most basic computer.

This is also available to an ordinary tv with a hdmi connection (they said an analog converter will be available), it also means players on mac, computer and the tv will be able to play against each other.

The only requirement is to have a minimum of 1.5Mbit connection (this will enable you to recieve SD video) or 5Mbit (720p). Onlive is also subscription based.

My thoughts are that this is a brilliant idea and the time it took (7 years) was well worth it. I can only hope that this will be a success.


Everybody's thoughts?

[Isak922]

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

It's VASTLY simplifying a process that can already be done (With much headache. If I'm not mistaken, this is like setting up a remote server on your computer to access the games to play. This can be done on Windows XP and Vista).

The concept is amazing... If it'll actually work, however, is the problem. Things of this nature are always plagued with speed and lag issues, which the OnLive team says is not an issue it seems.

Only time will tell.

[HarvesteR]

i heard about this too... couldn't picture how this would work without any kind of lag...

imagine that the game is being run on the cloud, or more specifically, updated and rendered there, but the input is with you...

so you send your input to the cloud... it processes and renders a new frame, and sends the graphic output back to you... all that takes time.... and lag is, as far as i know, unavoidable when it's caused by geographic distance

so how would you play a game as FS, or any real-time action game, without lag between your actions and the response?

i can see this however, working very well with MMO style games... basically point and click control mechanics, and everything else is done on the server side

this idea does have a lot of potential... i think it all will ultimately come down to what kind of games they decide to host

Cheers

[T1MT1M]

well they are using optical fibre (speed of light = 3x 10^8 m/s) and the maximum distance they use for people to their servers are 1500 miles (2400 kilometres) (worst case scenario)

so 2400/300 000 000 = 0.8 micro seconds to get the information across half of my country. or 1.6 micro seconds to get it there and they send back. So the distance doesn't matter.

But then there is all of the things in between ie. routers, the time it takes for there servers to process the information and decompress the video. they said in the video that it ends up taking 1 millisecond. which actually means that it takes 1000x longer for them to process the information than the optical fibre takes to send and recieve the information.

[HarvesteR]

yeah, you can't expect that the information will travel as if the path were a straight line between you and the servers...

there are nodes scattered over the way, each with it's latency and down-time between requests... anyways, there's a lot that must go down before your data actually reaches the servers for processing... and then there's the whole trip back  ::)

1ms is very optimistic... but then i assume they're limiting their service to those within this 1500 mile radius... to ensure low ping times... it could work that way... just like playing a multiplayer game... and streaming video all at the same time  ;D

Cheers

[machineman9]

I was discussing this on a tech section of a different forum.

I came to the conclusion that it simply can't and won't happen.


Too expensive. They'd have to have like 3 users on a graphics card atleast. Latency would be horrible, the image quality would be low and I would be suprised if they could get a lot of the more modern games to work without essentially hosting a small server for every single player.

I prefer my discs and consoles and will stick to them. If I need to play more modern games on Windows, I will upgrade my computer... Which is probably going to be cheaper than that service, and better quality.



In theory: It's alright. Still prefer discs

In practise: Can't see it happening. Looks like they released their specification before they did their final design (yeah, GCSE Product Design, lol)