radha said:
SvennoJ said:
I completely agree with you, I was only pointing out that that Wolfenstein raytrace example is not economically viable and not what MS is after for games, since they still have to continue to work without it.
For now we only have 2 real world examples. Titanfall that also handles NPC behaviour in the cloud during multiplayer, pretty much like an MMO. That makes it easier to keep the games in sync but doesn't free up any significant resources. I don't believe for a second that launch games are maximizing all available cores and memory already, and if it can be off-loaded to cloud, it can be more easily off-loaded to a separate thread.
And there is Forza Drivatards, which actually adds a little extra strain to the console. It always has to upload your replay data for the server to analyze and then download custom AI routines before the race, to be run on the console.
Although MS is not after it right now lag free 30fps gameplay might be do-able gaika style some day. I have ping times of around 18ms to the nearest server. If that server can render and compress in 10ms (200fps rendering is possible, 5ms for render and 5ms for game updates and compression), and I have 1gbps internet that can download 5mbps worth of data (reasonable 720p image stream) in 5ms (200 times faster then 5mbps internet, since that would take 1000ms to download that image data), then I could get a comparable experience. Pipedream for now.
You don't actually need to hit 33ms to get the same experience as we have now though. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-article?page=3 The best we're used to atm is 67ms. So you could get away with 100mbps internet or a bit better visuals. Although you still need to factor in the time it takes to poll the controller and prepare that data to send to the server, plus decoding and preparing the image for output to the display afterwards.
Ofcourse by the time this is possible on a large scale, local hardware can most likely do a better job again with 4K coming up next gen.
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AH, i missundertood you then, apologies
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No problem. I realize I made some gross calculation errors in my example.
You don't need 1gbps internet to get 5ms latency per frame in a 5mbps 30fps stream. a 5mbps 30fps takes 33ms per frame, so you only need 7x faster, 35mbps internet to get the download speed fast enough for my example. And for 67ms latency, 5mbps internet is fine if all the other stuff can be done in 33ms.
Somehow though the full streaming solution feels the same as the argument that mobile is catching up to consoles. At least was catching up until consoles take a big leap forward again. It's the same with streaming. It is almost capable enough to do last gens 720p 30fps games that have an average latency of 100 to 150ms on consoles. However the bar has now been raised to 1080p and hopefully 60fps.
Providing it for backwards compatibility is not a bad idea for those 720p30 150ms latency games, yet local hardware remains king for now. And probably will for a long time as local hardware can be a lot less powerful then a server with equal experience, due to all that extra time available for processing and rendering.
And back on topic for enhancing games with cloud computing. MS is recommending 1.5 mbps internet, 192 kb/s or 6.4kb/3.2kb per frame in 30/60 fps games. I'm curious to see what can be done with 3.2kb of data to enhance a render pipeline...
