But YouTube is tiny and usually looks pretty crappy, netflix movies look nice, but you can't really compare video streaming with gaming streaming, the movie doesn't change depending on what you're doing, they can pre-compress those movies and they know exactly how much bandwidth they need to deliver the full movie. While it might work for simple games, it's hard to imagine your network connection being stable enough to support this on a large scale.
Actually, the main difference between streaming movies and this is buffering. Streaming movies don't need to maintain constant speed all the time because they can download it faster than your playing the movie when your connection is going faster than they need, and use that buffer so that you don't notice it when your connection can't handle the speed the movie requires. With OnLive, they can't buffer it at all. So if your connection dips below the speeds they require, your performance will suffer. Even if they downgrade the picture quality, it will still take their algorithm some time to detect your speed has dropped. But is this system worth it when your computer can handle the game with lower graphics settings ?
Max res is problem for me. There is no way they could give me what i have on my HD tv. Without my bandwith capping out.
I love how he says it will Stream full 720p at 60fps on a 5Mbit connection.... It simply makes me lol how retarded this guy sounds
I'm going to laugh so hard if this thing turns out exactly like they say...And it's a complete success...And look at all the negativity that is surrounding it's announcement. Btw...This is an alternative. Not meant to replace anything.
Actually, lets take that 60 frames/second and work with it. 1000/60 = 16.67ms That means that in order for them to give you 60 frames a second that the signal from your controller must travel to their servers, be processed, return to your computer, have the signal decoded and then output to your monitor and speakers in that time. How often do you see a ping that low on an internet connection ? Now consider that there will be time spent processing the commands you send, encoding the video on the server, then decoding it again on your computer. Which means the ping time needs to be even lower in order to account for this.
Pity it has so many disadvantages and unanswered questions at this point. Who do you expect to use OnLive ?
so it basically removes the "commands from the pc to the game then to the server" and substitutes commands directly to the server... i believe that in theory, it's amazing, but if you have even 50 million people playing games via this setup, there will still be issues of latency somewhere. i hope it works as advertised when it becomes large scale, but i'll believe it when i see it (on that large scale)
If they say the lag is 1ms at best, I call bullshit, it takes longer then that for info to leave your node. Edit: correted
Hiya I'd like to answer a question regarding latency. Regardless of how much your connection can transfer, it is still bound by latency. Unless it uses quantum entanglement technology to transfer your commands instantaneously, in which case you wouldn't need an internet connection. Also, the more capacity your connection has, generally the higher the latency is. This is a problem with xDSL hardware. A lot of people get this confused by thinking that an 8Mb/sec connection is faster than a 5Mb/connection. It's not faster, it's simply "bigger". A 56kbs modem could have latencies as low as 30-40ms if you bought expensive hardware. The lag came when you tried to transfer more than the connection could handle per second. But for games like UT '99 and Elite Force, I regularly had pings of 40-50ms on my 56K modem. So back on topic, there is going to be a distance between you and your server. The closer you are the lower the latency will be. With the lowest being around 2.6ms for a LAN connection, depending on your hardware. Now what they have done is given you a box, I presume, with a network card attached. This ethernet device, as it's dedicated for this sole purpose, will have incredibly low latency (no packet switching, OS multitasking, packet wait, protocol exchange etc.) So for a LAN connection we can assume that <1ms is possible for your device. On average, doing a tracert just now, there are 12 hops between me and a server. These routing devices are NOT enabled with your super speed ethernet device. An average latency time of hardware for professional routers is around 2-3ms. You have already reached 24-36ms and that's so long as you're in the same country as the "cloud". Now the data must come back. Add another 24-36ms so your round trip is 48-72ms. This is the Ping value you see when you play a game. However, in this case, it will be your display lag. 48ms, I suppose most long term gamers will notice. Most others probably won't notice until you get into the higher end of the ping. It's about whether or not you can tell. For professional gaming this will be impossible. Until they can bring the time down to around 10-15ms (as this brings it down to around the same as a standard input poll). This isn't meant to flame anyone, I just hope that you understand better the latency for the input and how it will affect you
From PC world..the pluses for this has already been stated in other posts..some good ones..like no piracy..but here is some cons
I can honestly say, Thats the ONLY TLDR (To Long DID READ) post that I completely 100% read and agree with, along with its humor involved, but in all seriousness.
In order to combat the inherent lag of sending/receiving data to/from an external source of currently unknown distance, you'll likely need more than a "decent" connection. Furthermore, the target audience isn't exactly the hardcore/frequent gamer. It is clearly the "gamer" that has either the lack of means or the lack of desire to have the sufficient hardware and software configuration to run the latest and greatest games out there. What this means is that your assertion that anyone using this will have the appropriate network and internet configuration to utilize the system as a whole is inherently flawed and probably incorrect. However, if they do manage to defy everyone's (at least in this thread) expectations of latency issues... then I would most definitely consider springing for this setup if only to extend longevity on system specs. All in all, I would most likely stick to buying the games individually for myself unless the majority of worthwhile games were being produced exclusively for OnLive.
So it's basically streaming extra high defintion video to you. It could work in theory but I think for resolutions over 800 pixels wide, you'll need an ultra fast connection and live close to their servers to get a minimum-hassle experience. Can you shed light on how they intend to overcome the barrier of data transfer rates for the average PC user? Mine is 10 megabits per second peak, and the average in my city is 7 Mb/s. It's funny reading about this because I've tested this exact same thing at work last year. I VPN'd into my home PC, launched a game and started playing it. I was getting 1 FPS and the polygons were mostly black. Some colour here and there allowed me to make out the picture. Not to say that OnLive will be like this, but to me it sheds some light on the difficulty of achieving such a feat.