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sasquatchmontana on 11 August 2015
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SvennoJ said:

Why would a developer make a multiplatform game, and not use the servers on one platform?

Because they're not available on the other platform?

SvennoJ said:

In the end the console still has the same resources to divide for rendering. Off-loading the physics doesn't make it more powerful.

At the end of the day, it's a resource the console was designed to take advantage of. I doubt the end user cares if the power for such magnificent technical feats comes from the base hardware, the cloud or the MAGIC EMBUED SRAM from Microsofts satanic deals. The outcome is the same. Physics beyond offline console and PC.

sasquatchmontana said:

 Does streaming pre-baked lighting data from disk in AC Unity make the console more powerful? Did the pre calculated destruction data in Portal 2 make consoles more powerful? Now it comes from the cloud in a dynamic way, console is still the same.

Uh kinda. Because these physics are dynamic and the real time, it's not pre-baked, so your analogy is faulty. It's a more impressive feat for a console to run Toy Story 1 in real-time, then play back the blu-ray of Toy Story 3....even if you have to be connected to the internet for the former.

sasquatchmontana said:

That's why Crackdown 3 is getting it.
http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/12/a-fully-geo-mod-enabled-saints-row-is-literally-impossible-in-this-gen-says-volition/
Reason: “With the kind of competition that’s out there I think, I suspect it would almost be impossible to do it and still remain competitive visually.”
Cell shaded, no worries about texturing all the new pieces and stylized lighting to simplify rendering

That's some reaching y'got there. Crackdown always has been cel shaded. It always will be. It is when power is not even a factor (CGI).

Why is it using cloud? Because Crackdowns creator did that next.

Visually, it's no less a leap over it's prequels then any other game this gen. Include the physics and it's a massive, massive leap. I can only deduce you might use that as a defense, is because the physics are so far beyond critisicm, that's all you have.

Except gpu's are perfectly capable for these kind of physics tasks.
Simple stats, XB1 has 112 Gflops total cpu power, ps4 has 533 Gflops extra gpu power over the XB1. It has 5 extra XB1 Cpu's hidden in the GPU?

This demo requires at least 1,680 GFLOPS.... and that's SCCCCRRRAAPPPIN' AT THE DAWWER....probably need 2500 GFLOPS to be sure...and since the compute units on the PS4 are asynchronous, you'd lose that relative power in visuals and get a much worse looking game and still be a terraflop short....

And don't forget the overhead from distributed general purpose computing compared to local specialized hardware.  

The overhead is zero, I didn't forget, so much as not even bother to consider a non-event of the equation.

Without dedicated servers it quickly escalates with every extra player. Having one central server is far more efficient when lots of data communication is involved between clients. It would be a cool challenge to use distributed computing in a peer to peer setup. Each client is assigned and calculates a bit of physics and shares their results with the others. The more players join, the bigger the mayham can get. Yet bandwidth limitations and latency quickly blow that up, as each console needs to communicate with every other connected player. Hence dedicated servers.

You're point? Azure is just servers and servers and servers.

Except a consistent 2-4 mbps requirement is a lot more than online games require so far. At the begin of the gen MS stated 1.5 mbps would be their optimal experience target.
http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/connected
Plus can they smooth it out enough. If for example the bulk of the data is needed for the first 5 frames out of 30, you're effectively looking at a requirement of 24mbps, even though it's only needed for the first 160 ms. Just as judder in frame rate can break the performance of a game, spikes in data transfer can be just as off putting.

It is at this stage we do not need to bother with numbers. The video is proof enough that it works. You can reason with silliness that "it might not work like that in real life"...as if they'd bother carting 200 servers to Gamescon instead of using the nearest ethernet port to show a 15 minute demo.

I'm sure there will be sub-optimal instances on a worldwide basis. Name a game that has never, ever had an online hiccup? Because I can't think of one that hasn't. These games are sold today....and the world turns on as usual.

I love the tech behind it, but not the nonsense marketing.

You can say that. It just won't do any good with examples such as this proving it's not nonsense. Until PC's or PS4 have a game with as much destruction...interactive destruction....real time destruction ...on local hardware....for this kind of thing they are less powerful. Their efforts are going to look quite quaint by comparison. I guess power is measured in more than pixels afterall.