From Gamasutra:

OnLive, a tech company that has been in self-described "stealth mode" development for seven years, has unveiled new technology that allows even the most complex PC games to be played on a television set or any PC.

The ambitious venture, which hopes to revolutionize the gaming world by removing the need to continually upgrade PC hardware or buy new gaming consoles every generation, makes use of cloud computing -- doing all of the game's video and audio processing on remote servers, then streaming the resultant images and sound back to the user quickly enough to play games in real time.

...

A number of major publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., Take-Two, Eidos, and Atari have already signed on. And the company has announced a partnership with Epic Games that will see the Unreal Engine 3 easily adapt to OnLive's APIs.

If this is true and it works, this is beginning of something quite huge.

wtf

You can't just ninja out of nowhere.

How does this prove that PC's are better than consoles?

this doesn't prove PCs are better than consoles. everyone knows that already

I can imagine console and pc hardware companies are over the moon about this news. It's almost too ludicrous to believe, but I guess someone had to eventually solve the latency barrier/issue.

Metal gear solid touch is out us$8.

Note to other iPhone users, when you start up safari and a qgl reply box appears you may not be in the thread you think you are.

You are looking at a minimum of 100 ms input/update lag (assuming a nice low 50 ms ping to their datacentre) in addition to the 15-30 ms of input/update lag already present between you, your computer and your display device.

So you are looking at ~150 ms approximate lag time between when you click your mouse, and when your gun fires a shot on your screen, before you start looking at whatever input capture/video and audio compression/whatever else needs to be done to get the required data to and from the user.

Then theres the large quantity of bandwidth which would be required for such a venture, think an mpeg4 video stream at 1920x1080 with a frame rate of 90 FPS, along with a seperate stream for audio.

I just don't see how something like this could work.

edit: ^^^ damn, you beat me to the bandwidth thing :(

This is gonna take a metric f***tonne of bandwidth. How many ziggybtes per second do you need, roughly, to stream high definition TV shows?

last edited by whoop at 18:30:23 24/Mar/09

I just don't see how something like this could work.

Yeah, I'm too logical to believe in God. Or streaming computer games.

It's just an exercise in marketing and will probably be doomed to failure like other streaming game companies - at least before the world gets more gigabits in the intranets.

So I would get to play 5 minutes on Bigponds 100mbit broadband of some random fps, cool!

Yeah, I'm too logical to believe in God. Or streaming computer games.

It's just an exercise in marketing and will probably be doomed to failure like other streaming game companies - at least before the world gets more gigabits in the intranets.

I only got 6mbit internet as I dont need anything much faster but my neigbor downstairs has 120mbit for 50 euros a month, that would be sufficient no?

No, you're looking at potentially gigabit+ for gaming at 720p@60fps.

on gametrailers they have an interview with the guy who talks about it all

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/11029.html

Agreed with the detractors. It's a cool vision of the future, but given this country's track record for broadband rollout, nothing we'll have the bandwidth for in the average Australian home any time soon.

Funnily enough this was suggested YEARS ago as a method of cheat-prevention but one of the cheat developers (I think of OGC or something).

I thought PC Gaming's longest standing issue was if Duke Nukem Forever was actually real or not?

nice time for a ponzi scheme?

3rd tranche IPO coming up?

No, you're looking at potentially gigabit+ for gaming at 720p@60fps.

You can stream HD at 720p right now although at half the fps.

I think it simply isn't realistic in the any game ever sense but I could see potential for games specifically designed for it working. I mean Nintendo does alright without HD and using cleaver low bandwidth techniques like cell shading. Obviously an online FPS is out of the question but a single player RPG or RTS could work.

I don't think this is a solution to constantly upgrading your PC for the latest and greatest games but it could make playing some specifically designed games without the need for a PC or console a possibility.

shenanigans

Cloud computing is just a way to charge every time you use it.
Design a game that works this way and you have a method of being payed every time someone plays your game.

So instead of having to upgrade your hardware regularly. Who even runs the cloud has to upgrade regularly. I dont think they will be doing this for free. So we will be paying for the upgrades one way or another.

Better solutions:

1) Stop making next gen games.

2) self assembling nano-machines that upgrade your machine automatically

3) Return to 8-bit gaming

6 months on, FocaL is still a noob.

i think Focal is on the good s***.

30 fps is all you need

good points icewyrm

waits for fiber to my door and beefy b/w plans

I just don't see how something like this could work.

just don't tell the Americans.. they're easily offended

FOCAL, stop reviving old threads or FUK OFF

No, you're looking at potentially gigabit+ for gaming at 720p@60fps.

whose arsehole did you pull this figure from?
playing a 1080 bluray rip (30GB~) over a network to a mac (using plex) uses less than 10mbit

last edited by tequila at 22:28:39 14/Sep/09

The technology is seriously impressive, but lets do the math, in USD.

100,000 subscribers at $50 a month = $5,000,000 per month

For the sake of argument lets assume a 1 for 1 streamer to 'server/gpu/whatever' in the backend ratio.

Give that an entire PS3 costs $300 retail, and a GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 costs about $195 retail I think its very safe to assume that the total cost of the hardware required for 1 player would not exceed $1000.


Nobody games 24/7 so lets say 20,000 of these people are playing at once, meaning for 100k subscribers they need 20k servers @ $1000 a pop.

20,000 x $500 = $20,000,000

So in summary they need about $20mil of hardware (And a hell of a lot of IP & smarts & bandwidth) to serve 100k subscribers.

Given that OnLive has received at least $16.5 mil in funding already I'd say its all within the realm of possibility.

Can't wait to see it in action.

Who's got a download cap? Cause mine was just eaten by using this new technology... How do they possibly think this would work?

Why the f*** do these old threads keep getting bumped? f*** off. f***ing f***.

playing a 1080 bluray rip (30GB~) over a network to a mac (using plex) uses less than 10mbit

what do you think ur bandwidth is between pc and monitor numnuts

Who's got a download cap? Cause mine was just eaten by using this new technology... How do they possibly think this would work?

From what I've heard analysts predict, it would be a subscription model. ie: You pay 79$ for your internet, for an extra 10$ per month you get gameon (or whatever) access, basically uncapped (like how some isps do free itunes). And the actual cap limitations are more an Australian issue than general internet. It basically turns gaming into a foxtel cable TV model. You pay for the channels (games/genres) you want, + the setup.

I only got 6mbit internet as I dont need anything much faster but my neigbor downstairs has 120mbit for 50 euros a month, that would be sufficient no?

Bandwidth is probably less of an issue then latency. And no they aren't the same thing.

Sounds like playing these games will be like using real player.

buffering...
buffering...
buffering...
2 seconds of game play
buffering...
buffering...
buffering...
2 seconds of game play
buffering...
buffering...
buffering...

Obes couldn't they fix that issue by making you wait a 1 minute so it can preload the start of a game then when you're playing the first part of the game is already preloading the rest. Would only work for single player games though.

No, that wouldn't work, because that would completely miss the point of this service. Your computer doesn't process any of the assets in the game. It doesn't have the game installed, it's just streaming a video feed of the game your playing, which is being processed on a remote system. It can't buffer a 1minute of the game because you haven't played it yet.

30 fps is all you need

Yer if you're a spastic monkey

what do you think ur bandwidth is between pc and monitor numnuts

numnuts? what are you f***ing 7
this tech talks about REMOVING the pc, so the bandwidth is only the video stream coming from the server cluster

meaning, less than 10mbit STINKY POO FACE