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Forums - Microsoft - So, how have you been enjoying The Power of the Cloud ?

kirby007 on 03 January 2014

psfans: no
xboxfans: yes
...
...
...
ends up badly for the minority



 "I think people should define the word crap" - Kirby007

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bananaking21 on 03 January 2014
selnor1983 said:

Its being done already. 3 games releasing this year are using fixed lighting solutions in the cloud as well as physics calculations that are not directly affecting the player input controls. Titanfall does quite a few realtime calculations on the cloud. As its an online only game anyay it will benefit greatly.

70% of 360 owners have Gold subscriptions. ( I believe the last figure was 57 million active individual Gold users. ACTIVE being the important word.

Theres other consoles out there like PS4 or Xbox 360 for gamers who either A) dont have internet yet or B ) wont have good internet for 3 years. But why cant a company build something for people like e who CAN take and make use of Cloud Processing for things in todays climate?

The processing I mentioned will not effect gameplay. They are currently processing things that Fixed ( not dynamic ) etc. It still frees up resources of the Xbox One hardware. But by 2017 Cloud Processing will take a big leap imo. And thats when Xbox One will shine mightily.

please give me a link proving that lighting and real time physics calculations are done "in the cloud". 



Madword on 03 January 2014
FrancisNobleman said:
selnor1983 said:

Microsoft has a cloud service called Azure (it’s a real thing – you can go on their website right now and pay for servers and use them to run whatever you want). Microsoft realized that they could use that technology to solve our problem.

So they built this powerful system to let us create all sorts of tasks that they will run for us, and it can scale up and down automatically as players come and go. We can upload new programs for them to run and they handle the deployment for us. And they’ll host our game servers for other platforms, too! Titanfall uses the Xbox Live Cloud to run dedicated servers for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox 360.

But it’s not just for dedicated servers – Microsoft thought about our problem in a bigger way. Developers aren’t going to just want dedicated servers – they’ll have all kinds of features that need a server to do some kind of work to make games better. Look at Forza 5, which studies your driving style in order to create custom AI that behaves like you do. That’s totally different from what Titanfall uses it for, and it’s really cool! So it’s not accurate to say that the Xbox Live Cloud is simply a system for running dedicated servers – it can do a lot more than that

With the Xbox Live Cloud, we don’t have to worry about estimating how many servers we’ll need on launch day. We don’t have to find ISPs all over the globe and rent servers from each one. We don’t have to maintain the servers or copy new builds to every server. That lets us focus on things that make our game more fun. And best yet, Microsoft has datacenters all over the world, so everyone playing our game should have a consistent, low latency connection to their local datacenter.

Most importantly to us, Microsoft priced it so that it’s far more affordable than other hosting options – their goal here is to get more awesome games, not to nickel-and-dime developers. So because of this, dedicated servers are much more of a realistic option for developers who don’t want to make compromises on their player experience, and it opens up a lot more things that we can do in an online game.

This is a really big deal, and it can make online games better. This is something that we are really excited about. The Xbox Live Cloud lets us to do things in Titanfall that no player-hosted multiplayer game can do. That has allowed us to push the boundaries in online multiplayer and that’s awesome. We want to try new ideas and let the player do things they’ve never been able to do before! Over time, I expect that we’ll be using these servers to do a lot more than just dedicated servers. This is something that’s going to let us drive all sorts of new ideas in online games for years to come.

I know this got pretty technical and long-winded, so I thank you for reading this far. Hopefully I’ve cleared some things up, and you can see why I’m so excited about what Microsoft has done here and how it is letting us do awesome new things for our game. I’ll see you online in the spring to play some Titanfall on our dedicated servers!

http://www.respawn.com/news/lets-talk-about-the-xbox-live-cloud/#more-1772

Respawn ?

 

The studio that got moneyhated to make a microsoft exclusive title ?

 

Seems a legit opinion =)

Yeah I mean there is nothing in that text that actually states how Cloud computing will make the game better except for more servers and load balancing (which is important in a MP online game).

And dont get me wrong from a MP online point of view, there should be no issues of "cannot get onto service" issues like Diablo3 or MMO's... but other than that, it wont affect the look of the game that some people seem to think. 



Making an indie game : Dead of Day!

Dark_Feanor on 03 January 2014
Madword said:

Yes indeed any company *could* purchase access to the cloud, but the question would be *why* you would want to for a single player game. They will not... and yes definately Sony could build their own, us MS's or use google/amazon. It's just not practical for anything other than a online experience (MMO).

I don't think online processing is ready for at least another 10 years, maybe more. So i don't think Sony is hamstringing it in any shape or form. In fact it might be a combination of streaming/processing that is the future... but not in the next 10 years... and not for gaming at the level MS was talking about (30x power or whatever it was).

It doesnt matter how many servers you have and how fast those servers go, you are always restricted by the speed of the pipe going to and from those servers. With crazy bad interenet in various locations.. it's just too much of a hassle.

I do think in the far future, gaming will become more of a service because it will cut out the piracy issues.. but for processing etc... not this gen.

You are right, price is the single most important factor for this tech... for any tech.

However you have to consider that the price for "cloudbase" processing is falling realy fast. It´s falling faster than the Moore´s Law, this days.

It´s harder and harder every day to put more transistors into a silicon dice, but there are plenty of room to build server farms, only problem then is energy price and telecom infrastructure.



SvennoJ on 03 January 2014
J_Allard said:
Raising the AI difficulty in these games only makes them drive faster. It doesn't alleviate the main issue, which is that they are programmed to stick to shitty racing lines no matter what. It's one thing that non sim racers have over these games.. the AI are much less predictable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgsdb5wYMw8

Put that in GT6 on the highest difficulty setting and the exact same thing happens.

Behold the power of the cloud and next gen racing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Ry4a_w2cI

Anyway there is online if you want unpredictable (bad) driving. The AI is made to simulate actual professional racing, not destruction derby or dealing with parked cars. (That's not even GT6 AI btw, I tried to hold them off to re-arange traffic for the win from 3rd in a tournament trophy, they do find their way around you) They sure don't give up easy in IA events, big step up from GT5. I've only seen the AI spin out on it's own once, but they have plenty different driving lines and will stick like glue and pass you when they have a chance.



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Ashadian on 03 January 2014
selnor1983 said:
Well not a lot of Cloud features are being fully utilized at the moment.

But same game changing cloud features Ive used so far are:

Forza 5 : Cloud based Drivatar AI. - This completely crushes previous driving AI in games like Forza 4 and GT6. In fact I had the chance to play GT6 the other day on boxing day at a friends house and the AI was absolutely pathetic in comparison to Forza 5. In fact it appeared non existant in comparison.

Operating System : Complete access to all my games and exact save points without linking my gamertag to another console. Wherever I go, Everything is accessable in 10 seconds or there abouts.


What Im looking forward to.

Unlike any other system, the ability to have every single game brought out use Cloud processing for things like Drivatar AI, Physics calculations, AI battles, Fixed lighting etc.

Titanfall is out in March and uses Microsofts Cloud processing to process AI battles happening on the otherside of the map nowhere near the player. Providing a much more immersive dynamic experience than using the CPU on the Xbox to Process 100's of AI battles.

Basically over the next 2-3 years, Microsoft has put in place for Xbox One that sells each has 3 Cloud Processing servers available to it. One of the reasons Ttitanfall went to Xbox One in the first place. Was the Cloud being far superior to PS4. Halo 5 is said to use the Cloud Processing as is Fable Legends among other games.

But yeah already we see early benefits that DO change the way a game plays and system operates.

Read this Then believe the Exact Opposite!



kirby007 on 03 January 2014

just let them strut around with their pov, it is not worth the effort to enlighten them



 "I think people should define the word crap" - Kirby007

Join the Prediction League http://www.vgchartz.com/predictions

Instead of seeking to convince others, we can be open to changing our own minds, and seek out information that contradicts our own steadfast point of view. Maybe it’ll turn out that those who disagree with you actually have a solid grasp of the facts. There’s a slight possibility that, after all, you’re the one who’s wrong.

Madword on 03 January 2014
Dark_Feanor said:
Madword said:

Yes indeed any company *could* purchase access to the cloud, but the question would be *why* you would want to for a single player game. They will not... and yes definately Sony could build their own, us MS's or use google/amazon. It's just not practical for anything other than a online experience (MMO).

I don't think online processing is ready for at least another 10 years, maybe more. So i don't think Sony is hamstringing it in any shape or form. In fact it might be a combination of streaming/processing that is the future... but not in the next 10 years... and not for gaming at the level MS was talking about (30x power or whatever it was).

It doesnt matter how many servers you have and how fast those servers go, you are always restricted by the speed of the pipe going to and from those servers. With crazy bad interenet in various locations.. it's just too much of a hassle.

I do think in the far future, gaming will become more of a service because it will cut out the piracy issues.. but for processing etc... not this gen.

You are right, price is the single most important factor for this tech... for any tech.

However you have to consider that the price for "cloudbase" processing is falling realy fast. It´s falling faster than the Moore´s Law, this days.

It´s harder and harder every day to put more transistors into a silicon dice, but there are plenty of room to build server farms, only problem then is energy price and telecom infrastructure.

Yeah I would imagine infrastructure, staff and energy are massive cost drains for this kind of tech. Which I think is fine in normal business services. But games companies on the whole are running some seriously tight budgets... there are very few AAA big companies left and the middle ground is dying fast... so the cost has to be very effective. Of course ongoing costs is another issue, game is successful to begin with, but who wants to keep paying yearly costs for it, this means switching off games... crikey even Sony/EA do this to keep costs down, the rest of the gaming industry are not going to be renting out servers for long periods of time for mildy successful games.

So that again leads me to the same conclusion, that it will be of limited benefit to all but the biggest games with the most money behind them, and those will be MP or games with significant MP parts to their games. No point doing this for Single player games, or games that have small MP connectivty. So the major benefit will be with MS exclusives, and if they don't support it within the next couple of years (as in new gaming functionality and not MP based functionality), I think we can all agree that it was mainly PR guff.



Making an indie game : Dead of Day!

ethomaz on 03 January 2014
J_Allard said:
Raising the AI difficulty in these games only makes them drive faster. It doesn't alleviate the main issue, which is that they are programmed to stick to shitty racing lines no matter what. It's one thing that non sim racers have over these games.. the AI are much less predictable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgsdb5wYMw8

Put that in GT6 on the highest difficulty setting and the exact same thing happens.

lol this video is not GT6.

I will try here in few minutes.



ArnoldRimmer on 03 January 2014
endimion said:
Lol I love people claming cloud features are a marketing myth... It's about as accurate than 15th century people insisting earth is flat and the globe is a myth...

There's a funny irony in those words, as the whole part about "15th century people insisting earth is flat" is just a myth in itself.

Quoting Wikipedia:

Wikipedia says:

The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical.[1] The idea seems to have been widespread during the first half of the 20th century, so that the Members of the Historical Association in 1945 stated that:

The idea that educated men at the time of Columbus believed that the earth was flat, and that this belief was one of the obstacles to be overcome by Columbus before he could get his project sanctioned, remains one of the hardiest errors in teaching.[2]

During the early Middle Ages, virtually all scholars maintained the spherical viewpoint first expressed by the Ancient Greeks. From at least the 14th century, belief in a flat Earth among the educated was almost nonexistent, despite fanciful depictions in art, such as the exterior of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent sphere.[3]

According to Stephen Jay Gould, "there never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology."[4] Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".[5]

Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution.[6] Russell claims "with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat", and credits histories by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving for popularizing the flat-earth myth.

It's really interesting how many people falsely believe that the big astronomic debate/breakthrough that happened in the middle ages was about "flat earth vs. spherical earth", when it was in fact "heliocentric model vs. geocentric model".

LOL, maybe in 100 years or so, there will be a similar myth about "21st century people insisting that some mystical "cloud" would come around and magically make their hardware 50 times more powerful, despite most of these people not even being able to explain what "the cloud" is". And then, the Members of the Historical Association will feel forced to clarify that "with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person believed that the cloud would actually bring something truly new to the table".