OnLive demoed: lag, graphics are a problem. GASP!!!

[Shannow]

In fact, I guarantee it will take more people to run the server farms than it does to run a gamestop. Not to mention, the server farm jobs would pay a lot more.

So you think that it makes economical sense becouse it will cost allot to run?

Obamaian economical sense. Make a plan thats doomed to fail, but at least it will provide jobs so its still a good deal.

 

[MetalCraze]

Also, please explain how the system makes no economic sense? I'd like to see that. Lol

Which country has enough money to keep thousands of $10000s servers capable of rendering Crysis with max settings and at least 4x FSAA at at least 1920x1080 (otherwise OnLive will make no sense), upgrade them, fix them, hire personnel in every single city?
One month of this will bring down the economics of US - you don't have to be an idiot to understand that, right?

 

[thesheeep]

Retardoland?

 

[Mattresses]

160934.4m (1000 miles) / 3*10^8m/s = (0.000538s. + Input latency + Compression Latency + Hardware(ISP) Latency) * 2 <= 80m/s

So it has nothing to do with the speed of light, 1ms doesn't fucking matter.

 

[Kraszu]

160934.4m (1000 miles) / 3*10^8m/s = (0.000538s. + Input latency + Compression Latency + Hardware(ISP) Latency) * 2 <= 80m/s

So it has nothing to do with the speed of light, 1ms doesn't fucking matter.

5.38x2=1?
Oh a 0.000538s you say? lets see speed of light is 186.000 miles per second=186miles per ms.

Not that there will ever be prefect conditions . Based on equation that Mattresses proposed he expect onlive to put fiber in direct line to they customers.

 

[Mattresses]

160934.4m (1000 miles) / 3*10^8m/s = (0.000538s. + Input latency + Compression Latency + Hardware(ISP) Latency) * 2 <= 80m/s

So it has nothing to do with the speed of light, 1ms doesn't fucking matter.

5.38x2=1?

Not that there will ever be prefect conditions . Based on equation that Mattresses proposed he expect onlive to put fiber in direct line to they customers.

didn't count the zeroes, dude.

and the point is that the speed of light is not the bottleneck, and steve perlman is full of shit.

EDIT: man what the fuck is with these sneaky edits, I consent I probably fucked up in calculating, no physics major am I.

EDIT: I did, 1000 miles is 1609344m, not 160934. whodathunk. 10ms round trip it is.

 

[MetalCraze]

10 ms is still a big controller lag. Of course even 10 ms is impossible in real world conditions.

 

[snoek]

Now who would have guessed...

Also, people want to own their own software (forever),so even if this thing would have worked, which it probably never will...renting a 'service' like that would still be a big no-no.

 

[Xi]

You guys are claiming that they will have to upgrade ALL of their hardware, and that this cost exceeds the monthly payment + game purchase margin. However, you also have no concept for how they are implementing the server technology, or how they will handle the upgrades. All we know currently, is that the upgrade cycle will be once every 6 months. I'm guessing this means they will upgrade some of the hardware, probably video cards, to handle the newest games, however their old hardware will be just fine for the older games and as such will remain intact and in use. Not everyone will be playing every game and not every game will require maximal GPU quality. Anyway, all we can do is speculate, but I'd wager that the business model for upgrading hardware is pretty sound.

When people are actively using the service you guys will still be calling it vaporware, or when the service proves to be functional, instead of bitching about latency, you'll bitch about how your super expensive video card can render a better image. Then when image quality catches up, you'll be bitching about something else completely.

Ridiculous. You can cling to your PC, that's ok. However, I fail to see how any of the issues raised have been enough to stop the service. Keep using your PC, keep buying and upgrading hardware, and keep modding. People who place a lower value in such things can utilize this service, and god forbid the service actually bring about some positive change in the current system. Hell, anything is better than where we're at. Seriously, just do something, anything and we'll go form there.

Lol so ridiculous. I've never seen such confirmation bias on mass internet scale. I wonder if this is some new type of phenominon. Cult confirmation bias? lol

 

[Overweight Manatee]

160934.4m (1000 miles) / 3*10^8m/s = (0.000538s. + Input latency + Compression Latency + Hardware(ISP) Latency) * 2 <= 80m/s

So it has nothing to do with the speed of light, 1ms doesn't fucking matter.

5.38x2=1?
Oh a 0.000538s you say? lets see speed of light is 186.000 miles per second=186miles per ms.

Not that there will ever be prefect conditions . Based on equation that Mattresses proposed he expect onlive to put fiber in direct line to they customers.

Its important to realize that we are actually far below 3 X 10^8 m/s in transmission speed. Thats the speed of light in a vacuum. We are not transmitting through a vacuum. The actual speed of the transmission signal is somewhere around .4x - .6x the speed of light in a vacuum. .6x would be if the good people at Onlive were generous enough to personally upgrade the entire country's infrastructure and start running fiber optic cable directly to my house. Also remember that the lines aren't going to be straight line. Living 1000 miles away you could easily be 10-25% further then that because the signal doesn't take a straight line path, but lets just be conservative and ignore that for the time being.

So we're talking 20ms minimum round trip. Expect it to be closer to double, possibly even triple that just because the actual equipment involved in the transmission takes time as well. Even assuming they have perfectly instant compression latency were looking at something like 50ms in transmission minimum. Then add in the actual rendering lag, 30 fps = 33ms lag. We're far beyond comfortable limitations.

I could see it working in principle if you were forced to be much closer, but then that exacerbates the problem I outlined earlier even further. Too localized of a server system because you need to keep lag down vs a distributed system which has the advantage of actually making money instead of being a large space heater half the day. The only way I could see it working is if they sold the excess server time that they would have for the other 75% of the day people weren't using Onlive in, but I have heard absolutely no mention of that. Perlman seems content to absolutely ignore basic economics as well as physical limitations.

 

[J1M]

I don't think Onlive will work. I hope it does though, because twitch games simply will not work for it. Onlive success = increased chances of us seeing some high-budget turn-based games.

More likely, we'll see a lot of games that are similar to WoW in that they have decent responsiveness and a padding of about 250ms to expected reaction times for things like QTEs.

 

[Twinkle]

Hell, anything is better than where we're at.

And where we're at?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Hell, anything is better than where we're at.

And where we're at?

According to Xi, we're at $2k a year just to keep up with developing technology. But if you buy into onlive, you get nearly the same experience for just pennies on the dollar!

 

[ever]

Also, please explain how the system makes no economic sense? I'd like to see that. Lol

Which country has enough money to keep thousands of $10000s servers capable of rendering Crysis with max settings and at least 4x FSAA at at least 1920x1080 (otherwise OnLive will make no sense), upgrade them, fix them, hire personnel in every single city?
One month of this will bring down the economics of US - you don't have to be an idiot to understand that, right?

No but you sure do have to be an idiot to think anyone but the onlive company is risking their money with this venture.

The "economics" of the US can't be brought down if one or a few very rich individuals decide to blow all their money building pyramids, and it can't be brought down if they blow their money on running crysis

Furthermore the government isn't really involved in this venture so it has nothing to do with what country you're in.

Too many 4x games Skyway, too many. You'd be surprised how little control most governments have over you know setting up and running things like movies, potato factoires, video game companies etc.

 

[Black Cat]

@ ever

I'm almost (almost) willing to bet Metalcraze was just, like, mentioning that for comparison and a bit of exageration, like in saying where the bleeping bloody bleep are they going to get the money for that kind of thingity stuffie, nya?! and not because (i want to believe) he thinks USA's gov thingie is willing to pay so all its citizens have cheap next gen games and stuffies and nya, nya.

 

[Xi]

According to Xi, we're at $2k a year just to keep up with developing technology. But if you buy into onlive, you get nearly the same experience for just pennies on the dollar!

Actually, you said that I said it costs 2K a year, I didn't. However, what is the cost to play games on a PC if you break it down to a per year cost? I think about 500 a year probably isn't too far off. That's much more than you'd pay to use the Onlive service. Plus, if you consider the quality of a $500 a year amount in terms of graphics, at some point the onlive service will actually out pace the PC. So if you wanted to remain somewhat competitive the cost might be more like $600 a year on PC.

Everything depends on the cost of the Onlive service though. If it's 20 a month, that's only 240 a year by comparison. Not to mention that you can deactivate the service at any time. And the usability of the games is about the same. So why not?

/shrug

Edit:

As posted by the original reviewer of the service in beta:

And again, as I mention throughout this preview, I actually have been more impressed with the performance and experience OnLive has provided that I expected going into the testing period - I would call that a win for the service in this early state.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=85 ... pert&pid=6

 

[Xi]

There seems to be a couple of misconceptions regarding how the service works. Which is totally understandable as it isn't easy to ferret out technical details. I can't say how well the service will work in the end, as there are limitations to everything, but the technology and innovation of Onlive is really impressive nonetheless.

The servers run virtual instances of each game. They are spun up on the fly as needed, games are not 'installed', it is similar to hosted virtual desktop and application virtualization technologies if you are familiar with those. Also, don't think of it as a full blown Win XP instance for every game running either, it is much more efficient. There is little need to retire old games as the instances are only using resources when someone is actually playing. We can realistically expect no end of life for old games. Also unlike most servers, these have GPU's, lots of them, that handle the rendering of the graphics.

The video stream that is sent to the client is compressed using a pair of custom silicon chips per instance it doesn't use the graphical processor or CPU so video compression is completely independent. The hardware is custom and is another very interesting technical aspect of the service. 720p compression time is 1ms and around 4Mbps downstream throughput scaling downward depending on the game. This isn't comparable with any other remote video protocol. It is worlds ahead of TCX, ICA, PCoIP, standard RDP etc...

Latency is affected by quite a few different factors. Distance, hops, provider down to that grueling last mile aka customer prem. Onlive hasn't solved the speed of light issues, there will always be latency, but they are doing some interesting things with backbone level routing. Companies like ATT and TWC are among the investor lists, and Onlive are working with all of the major providers to improve routing. Granted there is only so much you can do with UDP.

Decompression of the video stream takes longer with the browser plug-ins but I can't recall how many ms it takes it does add to the overall latency though. The MicroConsole contains the same custom silicon as the servers for decompression and doesn't suffer much.

Another interesting component that affects latency are wireless controllers. Depending on the tech, age etc, latency of wireless keyboards, mice, controllers can exceed 20-30ms. The controllers that Onlive uses are in the 3ms range.

Being a Sys Admin that spends a great deal of time and effort in virtualization technologies I've been following Onlive since they went public, trying to understand the different facets of the underlying technologies. This is some seriously cool nerd stuff

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010 ... roblem.ars

Ishisaru

 

[Overweight Manatee]

According to Xi, we're at $2k a year just to keep up with developing technology. But if you buy into onlive, you get nearly the same experience for just pennies on the dollar!

Actually, you said that I said it costs 2K a year, I didn't.

It's the money saved that interests me. Let the retards invest 2,000 every few years on a new PC. I'm so tired of that, done it numerous times over the years and I'm just done now. I'll try onlive when it goes live, and if I don't like it, who cares. I'll just cancel it and move on.

I'm sure that was your twin brother that posted that. Not you. No sir.

However, what is the cost to play games on a PC if you break it down to a per year cost? I think about 500 a year probably isn't too far off. That's much more than you'd pay to use the Onlive service. Plus, if you consider the quality of a $500 a year amount in terms of graphics, at some point the onlive service will actually out pace the PC. So if you wanted to remain somewhat competitive the cost might be more like $600 a year on PC.

$500 a year is a totally new system. Let me tell you my expenses over the last 3 years:
Geforce 8800gt : $150
1 Gig of RAM: $40

This is ontop of a PC bought for about $500 just around 5 years ago. It still runs pretty much everything at max or near max specs. I easily outpace Onlive's image quality and obviously have the huge response time advantage.

There seems to be a couple of misconceptions regarding how the service works. Which is totally understandable as it isn't easy to ferret out technical details. I can't say how well the service will work in the end, as there are limitations to everything, but the technology and innovation of Onlive is really impressive nonetheless.

The servers run virtual instances of each game. They are spun up on the fly as needed, games are not 'installed', it is similar to hosted virtual desktop and application virtualization technologies if you are familiar with those. Also, don't think of it as a full blown Win XP instance for every game running either, it is much more efficient. There is little need to retire old games as the instances are only using resources when someone is actually playing. We can realistically expect no end of life for old games. Also unlike most servers, these have GPU's, lots of them, that handle the rendering of the graphics.

The video stream that is sent to the client is compressed using a pair of custom silicon chips per instance it doesn't use the graphical processor or CPU so video compression is completely independent. The hardware is custom and is another very interesting technical aspect of the service. 720p compression time is 1ms and around 4Mbps downstream throughput scaling downward depending on the game. This isn't comparable with any other remote video protocol. It is worlds ahead of TCX, ICA, PCoIP, standard RDP etc...

Latency is affected by quite a few different factors. Distance, hops, provider down to that grueling last mile aka customer prem. Onlive hasn't solved the speed of light issues, there will always be latency, but they are doing some interesting things with backbone level routing. Companies like ATT and TWC are among the investor lists, and Onlive are working with all of the major providers to improve routing. Granted there is only so much you can do with UDP.

Decompression of the video stream takes longer with the browser plug-ins but I can't recall how many ms it takes it does add to the overall latency though. The MicroConsole contains the same custom silicon as the servers for decompression and doesn't suffer much.

Another interesting component that affects latency are wireless controllers. Depending on the tech, age etc, latency of wireless keyboards, mice, controllers can exceed 20-30ms. The controllers that Onlive uses are in the 3ms range.

Being a Sys Admin that spends a great deal of time and effort in virtualization technologies I've been following Onlive since they went public, trying to understand the different facets of the underlying technologies. This is some seriously cool nerd stuff

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010 ... roblem.ars

Ishisaru

So posting irrelevant quote blocks of other people is supposed to sway people who are pointing out obvious economical flaws? Do you even understand basic physical equipment principles or do you base your knowledge completely off of what Onlive's marketing department tells you? I guess that explains where you got your $2k a year for a PC statistic from though...

 

[Xi]

New Beta tester comes forward:

Terav | about 11 hours ago | permalink
I've been Beta testing OnLive for awhile. It's frustrating to read the article and the comments because they are so polarized. I know we are all under NDA, but I'm just confirming OnLive Beta is neither perfect nor awful. It's a product in development, and it definitely works.

OnLive is just like any Beta, and you get new releases periodically. Some of them are very good. Some of them have one hiccup or another, and I send in bug reports. They acknowledge the bugs, and fix them. Eventually it runs well again. It's clear that some of what they are doing is making adjustments for my ISP and my PC setup because they ask questions about them or ask me to run tests, and then the next release fixes the problem. For example, I sent in a bug because movement was not smooth when I first tried it. OnLive told me my gamer mouse would not be supported until a later release. I tried a mouse they supported and it was night and day: it worked perfectly. If I hadn't sent in the bug, I would have thought it was something wrong with OnLive working through the Internet, not my mouse. One thing is for sure is you can't just make a judgment on one test, like one of the Beta testers interviewed in this story. He should send in the bug, and then gave them a chance to fix it. Don't condemn the entire OnLive concept for it.

The video is 720p, just like their FAQ says. They said they'll be going to 1080p when there are enough US homes with faster connections. So, 1080p is just evolutionary. If 720p is not good enough for you, then wait a year. Again, don't condemn OnLive for it.

The bottom line is this. When I get a good release for a given game, it feels like playing the game locally at 720p. I kid you not. When there are bugs, they eventually fix them. Just like any Beta, it has gotten steadily better in fits and starts. I've seen enough things work well that I see no reason why they can't get the other bugs fixed. So, what is clear to me is that OnLive is no longer a question of whether the concept works. It's a question of ironing out the details.

I've Beta tested a lot of stuff over the years. But, OnLive is different. Once you've used it enough to wrap your head around the fact that it's going to work, it's pretty heady to think how much it is going to change gaming, and probably more than gaming.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/01/onlive.ars


Edit:

It's the money saved that interests me. Let the retards invest 2,000 every few years on a new PC. I'm so tired of that, done it numerous times over the years and I'm just done now. I'll try onlive when it goes live, and if I don't like it, who cares. I'll just cancel it and move on.

I'm sure that was your twin brother that posted that. Not you. No sir.

I said every FEW years. My 2K was probably an exaggeration, but many people spend that much if not more. Sorry if your not one of those people. Still, you put words into my mouth. I did not say 2,000 a year, you did.

$500 a year is a totally new system. Let me tell you my expenses over the last 3 years:
Geforce 8800gt : $150
1 Gig of RAM: $40

This is ontop of a PC bought for about $500 just around 5 years ago. It still runs pretty much everything at max or near max specs. I easily outpace Onlive's image quality and obviously have the huge response time advantage.

I call bullshit. A 5 year old CPU would barely handle modern games. Also, are you still using AGP? You're lying to make it seem cheaper than it was. Also, did you factor in the cost of a monitor? Or are you using one you've had for 10 years?

You're just being stupid now. Done talking to you. (Not to mention your value prop is still only almost on par with Onlive.)

 

[Melcar]

It's all bullshit anyway.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I call bullshit. A 5 year old CPU would barely handle modern games. Also, are you still using AGP? You're lying to make it seem cheaper than it was. Also, did you factor in the cost of a monitor? Or are you using one you've had for 10 years?

You're just being stupid now. Done talking to you. (Not to mention your value prop is still only almost on par with Onlive.)

Sorry, I was off. Only 4 years ago. CPU is Q6600 @ 3 Ghz (actually had an E6600 originally but I bought a Q6600 off a friend for cheap and gave him mine. Quad core doesn't help with gaming much anyway so its irrelevant). More then enough for ANY game.

Yeah... I am using a monitor thats quite old. However the monitor cost is the same whether you use Onlive or not, so it doesn't factor into the cost. The only addition cost is that of a decent graphics card and an extra stick of RAM. Thats because you need all the other components to run Onlive and do everything else you use a PC for anyway.

 

[Xi]

I call bullshit. A 5 year old CPU would barely handle modern games. Also, are you still using AGP? You're lying to make it seem cheaper than it was. Also, did you factor in the cost of a monitor? Or are you using one you've had for 10 years?

You're just being stupid now. Done talking to you. (Not to mention your value prop is still only almost on par with Onlive.)

Sorry, I was off. Only 4 years ago. CPU is Q6600 @ 3 Ghz (actually had an E6600 originally but I bought a Q6600 off a friend for cheap and gave him mine. Quad core doesn't help with gaming much anyway so its irrelevant). More then enough for ANY game.

Yeah... I am using a monitor thats quite old. However the monitor cost is the same whether you use Onlive or not, so it doesn't factor into the cost. The only addition cost is that of a decent graphics card and an extra stick of RAM. Thats because you need all the other components to run Onlive and do everything else you use a PC for anyway.

Oh ok, your results are typical for all users right? Fucking retard. A PC easily costs about 500 a year when you factor all costs and break it down by year. Fuck off!

Edit: also, the q6600 is a 2007 CPU, which means your PC is less than 3 years old. The CPU at that time would have costed 250-300 by itself. Your results are FAR from typical moron.

Update (01/08): Intel has now confirmed that initial pricing for the Core 2 Quad Q6600 will be $851 in 1,000 quantities. This means they will be keeping their original pricing strategy that sets the Q6600 just below the QX6800, making for a less impressive introduction. According to this plan Intel will be reducing the Q6600 price later this year to $530 (in the coming 3-4 months), when it will probably give more life to it as a more affordable quad-core solution.

http://www.techspot.com/review/36-intel ... uad-q6600/

You're so full of shit it hurts. You might as well have stolen that CPU. Your results are absolutely not typical of average users, and your memory of time is terrible.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Oh ok, your results are typical for all users right? Fucking retard. A PC easily costs about 500 a year when you factor all costs and break it down by year. Fuck off!

No, my results are only typical for users who are not fucking retards. Which may be why you have so many problems coming to terms with them.

Edit: also, the q6600 is a 2007 CPU, which means your PC is less than 3 years old. The CPU at that time would have costed 250-300 by itself. Your results are FAR from typical moron.

Because reading is hard. I had an E6600 originally. Durr. As I explained, quad core makes no difference in gaming performance, so consider me as using an E6600 now. I traded the E6600 + $125 for a friend's Q6600 march of last year.

 

[Xi]

Because reading is hard. I had an E6600 originally. Durr. As I explained, quad core makes no difference in gaming performance, so consider me as using an E6600 now. I traded the E6600 + $125 for a friend's Q6600 march of last year.

Oh ok, so lets add another 125 bucks onto your fake cost. Haha you're fucking retarded. Go away you lying sack of shit.

Your results do not matter if they do not generalize to the population of PC gamers. The simple fact is that Gaming PCs cost more than what you have proposed. Your response is completely worthless in this argument.

Fact: You've spent more than $500 on just your CPU's alone, in the last 3 1/2 years. If you spent less its because you stole the CPU, were fortunate to know someone who gave it to you for cheap(typical upgrader spending thousands on his system to be cutting edge), or were totally lucky, which is NOT typical of the costs of a gaming PC.

The evidence suggests that you are retarded. Good luck though.

 

[Melcar]

The world is full of retards. Onlive will be a massive success because of it. When all is said and done, you will end up with visuals that are on par with consoles (maybe even worse) and with shitty input controls. Good enough for what it is as far as the masses are concerned, but people that are already on the edge of the market (the serious business competitive gamers and shit) will remain on their fringe market niche.
Shit? You can say that. If this were deployed in a place where high speed access is widely and cheaply available, it could make for a cool "gaming on the go" service; much more practical than lugging your lan box and/or console around, and when traditional portable gaming devices aren't your thing.
All in all this is shit though. Full fledged consoles are cheap and practical. You can get a cheap, all-purpose PC that can be able to play most games comfortably (both visual and performance wise).