Richard_Feynman said:
Machiavellian said:
Richard_Feynman said:
It IS a big deal.
"Yes but the differences is all win."
No! With full game streaming and online gaming the dev makes a single specification for how those things would work. The only factor then is the lag - which is directly dependent on the network conditions.
With this cloud compute, there is a partial set of calculations which are chosen do be done online. The whole problem comes down to this choice. This choice has to be made scalable - i.e. it changes as network conditions change. So now it is a situation where a dev decides (or is forced) to do a certain aspect of their rendering through cloud compute. But what happens if network conditions fail during rendering? Moreover, what happens to the offline player?
What you end up with is SERIOUS fragmentation. How many sets of rendering would there be? What will the offline gamer loose? Can't sacrifice AI or physics for those without cloud compute, or can we?
Headaches for devs. That's what this is. Serious, serious headaches. And for what!?
10% better performance half the time? 20%?
You don't need to be a tech guru to be able to stare down this rabbit hole. It is ugly. It is very deep and very ugly.
*note, features such as driveatar are not part of this problem whatsoever. Online (and offtime!) calculations are a fantastic idea and I think driveatars are awesome. But this is hardly new.
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@Bolded: You are making assumptions on how the tech works without actually knowing how it will be implemented. The thing about cloud compute is that it was never mentioned if its calculated realtime or not. Also without knowing how the data is sent from the client to the server and back or what is actually sent make it very hard to base any assumptions unless you are famalier with such work.
The problem with saying if something will work or not or how it effects a game realy does depend on how the developers and MS tackle the problem. Your assumption could be going down a path the game is definitely not doing which would make it null. I believe people should wait until MS give out the details of how their cloud compute is working before jumping to a bunch of assumptions that may or may not play out.
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I know how the tech works. I don't need to know how the details work to understand client-server relationsips and basic in-game rendering that's referred to the server. I don't need to know details to understand how it works. And the fundamentals of these proposed operations are very vulnerable to serious scrutiny.
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You say you know how the tech work, exactly what have you done in this space to know the challenges. Hell, its something MS and their partners are working out as we speak so I am a little doubtfull you trully understand exactly how developers will use cloud compute for physics in games and how it will be implemented unless you are woking in this space. I work in client server tech as I develop software in this space all the time but that does not mean I am an expert on how games will implement a solution since I do not design games. I do have a lot of ideals how things can work but they are just ideals and not hard implemtations since thats where the nuts and bolts are worked out.
As I stated you just have assumptions but you really do not know. Its evident that MS has and is researching this tech and its also evident that Crackdown will be implementing it. They have planly stated this is what they are doing which means they are actively encountering challenges you have made and either solved them or they are null because their implementation does not go down that path.
Personally anyone who is not actively working in this space has no more knowledge of how it will work then the average person on the street even if they know client server tech. When it comes to software there are a host of differet ways to skin a cat. I teach software development at the company I work for and it always amaze me when I give an open end project how many different solutions I get. Based on the experience of the developers and how they code most solutions never are the same.
