Onlive

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 6:11 am

have you guys heard of this yet?

it could be big.

What it is

in action

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 7:38 am

Question: What will happen to PC hardware manufacturors if this product becomes popular?

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:54 am

I want to know about the pricing. If it costs too much, then it doesn't work for me.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 8:07 pm

I can see it now: LAAAAAAAAG.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:07 pm

franpa wrote:Question: What will happen to PC hardware manufacturors if this product becomes popular?

The same thing that's happening now.

Besides, the OnLive system offers "up to 720p"
That's peanuts in PC terms. The same higher-resolution-at-all-costs mentality that drives the market now will keep it's little incestuous slice of the gaming market buying.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:15 pm

very true.

while everyone else who can't even get solitaire running smoothly will be all over this.

i'm sure i'll own a machine that can handle crysis, in about five years.

but lag is my concern, and cost. a rate of 50 a year is something i can swallow. since i already do.

if they can actually get lag under control, it could be amazing.

Post by **badinsults** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:26 pm

Still, for this to work, this company will need enough computers to play games for every customer.

diminish · Post by **diminish** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:43 pm

Another step further to not really owning something you payed for.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:17 pm

It's really THE ultimate DRM, isn't it? It's beyond phoning home, beyond even streaming games off servers like they were talking about a while ago... the software never even reaches the user's computer! It's a corporation's wet dream. I hope it fails, hard.

And really, I think chances are good it will, I mean, how many people have connections that can stream 720p video perfectly with zero buffering at all (seeing how they promise no lag)? What company, indeed, can house enough servers to accommodate all players? Are some people going to get an "all servers busy" message when trying to start a singleplayer game?

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:03 am

I know a guy who's brother works on this. He says it's potentially awesome.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:32 am

I'll always have my own computer to run my own games but I'll probably pick this up on the side to play games that I can't run on my current system.

Why does everyone have a win/fail mentality, it's not like you can't have this AND your 360/PC games.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:39 am

sweener2001 wrote:have you guys heard of this yet?

it could be big.

What it is

in action

wikipedia onlive article wrote:The service is a gaming equivalent of cloud computing with the game being computed, rendered and stored online...A low-end computer, as long as it can play video, may be used to play any kind of game since the game is computed on the OnLive server.

...Wha?

Ok, I read like, two sentence of the whole article and haven't listened to the link but...

I'm not sure I get how is this supposed to work concretely. If the game is computed elsewhere...that means the server would have to transfer the whole screen picture, frame by frame like 30-60 times per seconds...right? I don't get how this would be possible with standard internet infrastructure. Not to mention input delay/lag would probably be awful.

Basically isn't it playing someone else computer at long distance? :/

I'm curious to see those games that are so mega-uber-turbo-hyper-fighting awesome that even the latest PC or 360/PS3 can't even come close...They'd have to look like the first Jurassic Park movie, in real time, for it to be worthwhile.

If you're just paying to play 360/PS3 level games, then it's just pointless.

Rashidi · Post by **Rashidi** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 3:06 am

so, this stuff is somewhat kinda remote-graphical-dumb-terminal ?

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 3:07 am

Snark, you're just streaming video to yourself of your own controller inputs.

of course in a normal situation this would be laggy, that's why it's a service, they are trying to put servers close enough to people with really great speed that it would work.

a prerequisite for full resolution is pretty much the highest speed internet you can afford which is what makes this really expensive in actuality but internet costs for that speed will go down as greater speeds are achieved so eventually this will be fairly affordable. Of course at that point they will offer it in a higher resolution, which means you can play it at the lower, or pay more for your internet and play it at the higher.

It seems like a good alternative but as other people have said, it's no replacement to OWNING your own game and playing it on your OWN machine and seeing it processed right before you, there is nothing that will compare to that. Just like some of us goons that like CRTs for smooth refresh rates.

Snark · Post by **Snark** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:16 am

Panzer88 wrote:Snark, you're just streaming video to yourself of your own controller inputs.

Well obviously.

...But not over the friggin' internet though. :/

Just to be curious, I'd like to see the difference of bandwidth (or whatever the proper term) between a standard PC VGA cable and a (good) high speed ADSL connection.

I just don't think right now it would be feasible, even if the servers are next door and you live next to your ISP or something. Of course, in time this could be done if advances are made. In the long term the points you raised in the above post seem more relevant.

It seems like a good alternative but as other people have said, it's no replacement to OWNING your own game

Heh, you're talking to someone who has a 360 so...:/
I mean you know, the extend to which I "own" the game I purchased over Live is a bit in the gray area...So we're kind of already there to some extend.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 7:03 am

you own your copy of any game downloaded over live. just not a hard copy.

every live purchase is specifically tied to your GT and 360 hardware. it's your own personal copy.

but i get it, with the whole no hard copy, and not being to do other things with it.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:57 pm

Snark wrote:
Panzer88 wrote:Snark, you're just streaming video to yourself of your own controller inputs.
Well obviously.

...But not over the friggin' internet though. :/

Just to be curious, I'd like to see the difference of bandwidth (or whatever the proper term) between a standard PC VGA cable and a (good) high speed ADSL connection.

I just don't think right now it would be feasible, even if the servers are next door and you live next to your ISP or something. Of course, in time this could be done if advances are made. In the long term the points you raised in the above post seem more relevant.

It seems like a good alternative but as other people have said, it's no replacement to OWNING your own game
Heh, you're talking to someone who has a 360 so...:/
I mean you know, the extend to which I "own" the game I purchased over Live is a bit in the gray area...So we're kind of already there to some extend.

they say they can accomplish it over the internet via their amazing new video compression.

and as far as owning your 360 or steam stuff, you do man, you have a physical version downloaded, with onlive, no internet, no game.

clessoulis · Post by **clessoulis** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:21 am

If there little plugin play unit doesnt cost a ton I plan to pick it up along with the controller. As long as crysis and crysis warhead are on the list of playable games at launch.

This is a really great idea and a awesome idea for a rental service. I'd never buy any games for this service unless I simply couldnt afford to play them aka crysis.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 1:06 pm

Panzer88 wrote:they say they can accomplish it over the internet via their amazing new video compression.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-w ... rk-article

Post by **odditude** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 2:31 pm

i'll believe it when i see it realistically load-tested on users' actual mostly-crappy-and-unreliable connections without crashing in horrible firey bewmage.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 6:21 pm

creaothceann wrote:
Panzer88 wrote:they say they can accomplish it over the internet via their amazing new video compression.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-w ... rk-article

the article seems a little uninformed, or the opinion was formed too fast.

there are no specs on onlive's video encoding, so using a current and publicly available codec can't even necessarily give a ballpark estimate. eurogamer's servers probably don't compare to what onlive will have.

does anyone know what one of those tesla super computers is actually capable of? i actually don't.

i understand each of the concerns, and gizmodo has a more in depth playthough experience posted. but making these comparisons to things that are probably nothing like onlive's setup doesn't fly.

i actually hope the service works. whether i jump right in is another thing completely.

clessoulis · Post by **clessoulis** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 6:46 pm

Am I the only one assuming that it one be a 1 to 1 connection.

I dont think its gonna be just 1 pc playing to 1 unit. I think they will have some super gaming rigs that can run multiple instances of some of the nicest games at very high settings and 720 resolution.

Like a dual 4870x2 rig with 8GB of ram on a 64bit os can run about 5 instants of crysis warhead on very high/high settings direct X 9 at around say 60fps. The game was tweated to run on highest on only a 8600 after all. So I imagine much less demanding games would work even better.

Hell some servers could probably run up to 15 instances of 1 games. If it only ask for 30fps you could see one pc runing 25ish copies.

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:04 pm

sweener2001 wrote:
creaothceann wrote:
Panzer88 wrote:they say they can accomplish it over the internet via their amazing new video compression.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-w ... rk-article
the article seems a little uninformed, or the opinion was formed too fast.

there are no specs on onlive's video encoding, so using a current and publicly available codec can't even necessarily give a ballpark estimate. eurogamer's servers probably don't compare to what onlive will have.

does anyone know what one of those tesla super computers is actually capable of? i actually don't.

i understand each of the concerns, and gizmodo has a more in depth playthough experience posted. but making these comparisons to things that are probably nothing like onlive's setup doesn't fly.

i actually hope the service works. whether i jump right in is another thing completely.

That guy is informed as hell, actually. Look up his posts at www.beyond3d.com 's forum. His name is grandmaster.

And a Tesla is basically a GeForce GTX 280. Yes, I'm not kidding.There's been a lot of research into using graphics cards/chips for normal computations lately(The reason why is the raw computational power of a graphics chip is usually higher than any consumer CPU. The problem is they are too specialized.). A tesla supercomputer basically just has a fuckload of them.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 2:19 am

it still is hard at this point to determine, I don't think they would attempt this if they didn't have some super compression technology up their sleeve and if they do of course they won't expose it until they absolutely have to.

Of course there will be connection issues, I'm just assuming now that you'll have to have a pretty good connection.

as for 1 to 1, it depends on the game, with world of goo 1 unit could supply 1000s of users I'm sure, but then there is the games that are being made FOR online that have "better than possible on consumer computers" games, which might be close to 1 unit per user.

We really won't know till it comes out.

gllt · Post by **gllt** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:17 am

Yeah I'm totally ready for the earth to explode now.
That, or if this makes it to reality, everything related to it burns to hell and back.

Just no. Please, God no.

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