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Forums - Microsoft - Microsoft shows off potential power of the Cloud at BUILD

Zappykins on 04 April 2014
Zekkyou said:
TimCliveroller said:
Zekkyou said:
"and the current market heavily favoring physical media for games". Really?

 

Of course. Games sell far more physical copies on consoles than they do digital. Hence "heavily favoring physical media".

Until a stable streaming service arrives or games suddenly becomes a lot smaller, it's likely going to stay favored towards physical copies for several more years. Pricing also needs to improve.

PC is the only place we've seen it swing heavily towards digital, but that's largely thanks to the convenience of downloading on a PC and the great services available for it both is quality and pricing (aka steam :p).

Well, I would say phones and tablets are about as pure digal as we have.  I don't think there is really any physical games for those devices.  If there was it woudl be very rare.

As most of people here are growing up in the information age, I'm still not understanding how they can not graps the value of this off sight processing.  Nvidia has shown it too.  Some of the processing is done of the severs, then the final reder on the local machine.  Small amounts of data are actually exchanged, so the stream back and forth isn't so big.  The server can calulate where are the object (like falling pieces) and send them to the local manchine to process. It's not 40gb a second at all.   Heck I used to play World of Warcraft on a dial up.  And it worked. 



 

Really not sure I see any point of Consol over PC's since Kinect, Wii and other alternative ways to play have been abandoned. 

Top 50 'most fun' game list coming soon!

 

Tell me a funny joke!
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Terlig on 04 April 2014

Honestly, there is more. What they really calculate in cloud is physics - and only physics (not a surprise, i was expecting this). They still need a powerfull PC GPU to render this. This demo is a proof, that this tech is IMPOSSIBLE to use with X1.

If we forget for a minute about this fact, there are of course still more things to consider - bandwitch and latency. Not only ppl without internet woudln't be able to play. The same goes for ppl with poor internet access. This means a huge platform defragmentation which is bad for everyone - players, developers and event MS.

The next. We need to consider, that these 300.000 whic currently calculate only shitty AI for opponents for some games or do some very basic and primitive offloads now need to calculate physics (i don't even mean graphics, go first paragraph). They will need milions of such servers to calculate this for milions of players. This is a next thing, next huge cost and no ROI.

This whole demo and it's explanation is a big insult of xbox players. But this is a problem of MS PR, which shouldn't focus trying to pull more interest by telling stories. This will going to backfire. Hard and soon.

And to the GAIKAI thing. Problem is GAIKAI renders everything on the server side - it works like a RDP or Splashtop or ICA if you know what i mean. And yes, they will charge for this service, because it costs a lot. And yes, Sony already shown working games, not the red herring.



Machiavellian on 04 April 2014
SvennoJ said:
fatslob-:O said:
 

No no, the rubles are created in realtime as you can see is microsoft's demo up at the top with it's "chunk count". It's cool that Nvidia showed real-time fracturing in this demo but the rest of their demos don't do it because it's computationally expensive as seen in microsoft's demo. Compared to the scale shown it's clear that MS demo is more impressive considering the fact that it's handling collision detection with 30 000 procedurally generated chunks!

That would be it's achilles heel as much as it sounds impressive. The data stream to update that kind of debris count at 32fps would easily exceed 60mbps. Plus the local machine still needs to have the spare overhead to render all that extra stuff. No wonder it's all simple grey blocks with flat lighting and no shadows.

Are you  sure about that.  The server only needs to send back the caculated values and the host machine display the results.  The data stream is much smaller than what people are thinking.



Mr Puggsly on 04 April 2014
Soleron said:
If people with an internet connection get a better experience than those without on a single-player game, something is very wrong.


Why? Every console has limitations to stay within a price range.

If X1 and other machines can get a performence boost from an online connection, well that's awesome.

However, I won't believe its possible until we actually see games taking advantage of this.



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Terlig on 04 April 2014
Machiavellian said:
SvennoJ said:
fatslob-:O said:
 

No no, the rubles are created in realtime as you can see is microsoft's demo up at the top with it's "chunk count". It's cool that Nvidia showed real-time fracturing in this demo but the rest of their demos don't do it because it's computationally expensive as seen in microsoft's demo. Compared to the scale shown it's clear that MS demo is more impressive considering the fact that it's handling collision detection with 30 000 procedurally generated chunks!

That would be it's achilles heel as much as it sounds impressive. The data stream to update that kind of debris count at 32fps would easily exceed 60mbps. Plus the local machine still needs to have the spare overhead to render all that extra stuff. No wonder it's all simple grey blocks with flat lighting and no shadows.

Are you  sure about that.  The server only needs to send back the caculated values and the host machine display the results.  The data stream is much smaller than what people are thinking.

Yeah. Tell ppl without still internet or with poor internet connection that they can only see 5 FPS, because of power of the cloud. Tell this to ppl which would want to play a single player game. 

And for multiplayer games - you need to consider, that this data stream is an addition to the data stream already required for multiplayer purposes. And i don't even consider graphics - just physics.



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AnthonyW86 on 04 April 2014

If they hade implemented a more powerfull gpu into the Xbox One they probably could have done this without the cloud.

The difference in power between the Xbone and PS4 is about 500 Gflops. To compare that's on par with three i7 quad core cpu's. If they use that for physics calculations they could run what you just saw natively on the console.



Machiavellian on 04 April 2014
lucidium said:
Machiavellian said:
lucidium said:
The other part is this, any internet connected device with enough cpu grunt to handle the load on the network stack is a valid device to be used with cloud computing, the notion that this is exclusive to microsoft and the xbox one is somewhat retarded.

Exclusive to MS no, but what other company is developing in this area and spending money and resources.  Do people actually think that another company can just one day decide to do cloud compute without investing the resources into making it work.  Thats like saying any company can do Gaikai type game streaming without investing in the infrastructure tomake it work.  None of these types of technology is exclusive to any one company and any of them can do it.  The difference is the cost of development, research to make it a commercial product etc.

So the tech is not exclusive to MS but if MS gets it right then it will be exclusive enough because they will have built the infrasturcute, spent the money on development and have a platform in place ahead of their competition.

Any company can rent cloud services from one of the many available, hell you can even rent azure yourself.

Youre overcomplicating it in your head, all thats needed is a server and client communication stack, the rest is up to the developers to implament in their own engines.

So what you are saying is thats all a company has to do is rent thousands of servers around the world to simulate what would be required to support a game with this tech.  In order to have quality of service for anyone playing your cloud based game, you would  need servers everywhere you sell your game.  Hmmm sounds expensive to me.  

Also what you are saying that you only need is a client server setup and thats it.  You do not need a development platform that makes it easy for a developer to have a  multi-thread hosted instance where sending multiple streams of data from individual clients machines, replicate those streams  or split the data so that you can use mutliple servers to process the data, sync that data to the multiple client machines and send the completed stream back to the client.  So such a setup is something game developers can spin up or any company can just spin up in months if they decide to go down this route.  

I believe you are underestimating the work and investment needed to setup such an infrastructure.  MS already spent 3 years doing it and they still not totally ready to go to market.  Not sure why you believe this is something that can be done in a shorter time frame.



SvennoJ on 04 April 2014
Machiavellian said:
thismeintiel said:
OdinHades said:
A better GPU would be a much easier solution and would save millions of R&D costs. But why take the easy road, it's TEH FUTUREZZZ!

I don't know, I still don't buy all that powah of ze cloud stuff, sorry.

Completely agree with this.  Plus, this demo was heavily controlled and limited.  Now, let's move this into a real world situation, like online co-op.  Imagine if there are two or more gamers in a level, all making different decisions, with dozens of AI enemies and destructable environments.  Then, just imagine not having the fastest/most stable internet connection.  No, cloud gaming that shares large amounts of computations between local HW and cloud servers is still just a thing of the future.  Of course, by the time it becomes 100% doable in real world execution (in a decade or two), a beefier GPU will still be the much better option.

I would have to say that Gaikai/Now is a much better solution in the real world, as there is no shared computing, just streaming the A/V and your controller inputs to and from the host server.  There's also the benefit that it is 100% already proven to work. 

This is actually not correct.  This would be no different then having the game process server side with the computations for thee physics ect done by the cloud and only sending the information the users can view at any one time.  The amount of data is not big at all, if you include compression its even smaller.  The Cloud is not rendering the scene its just send the caculated data back to thee client machine.  This type of setup is not dependant so much on the speed of your connection instead of the constant sync.  Any disruption would cause little lag in the game but evven that can be smoothed  out with predictions.  It would be the same type of predictions that is used within MP games to keep things in sync.

As Gaikai being a better soltution we will see.  Both systems have their pros and cons and each solve the problem in a different way.

At the end of the demo the cloud is doing the physics for 37,000 chunks, position, velocity, rotation. Updating all those independently moving chunks at 32fps plus the geometry changes for new chunks, broken up chunks and left behind gaps is a lot more data than a h.265 compressed video stream.
And the client still needs to be able to render all that extra geometry. You're taking the physics calculation away, not the strain of rendering 37k objects.

It's a good example of how a Gaika/Onlive server can deal with high stress situations by utilizing a server farm to spread peak demand. As long as not everybody is blowing up everything at the same time, it will be a more economic solution instead of having the peak power available for each client separately. It's a tech demo of how slow down can be eliminated in a server type situation. I don't see it being practical as helping out a local machine with physics.



Machiavellian on 04 April 2014
Terlig said:
Machiavellian said:
SvennoJ said:
fatslob-:O said:
 

No no, the rubles are created in realtime as you can see is microsoft's demo up at the top with it's "chunk count". It's cool that Nvidia showed real-time fracturing in this demo but the rest of their demos don't do it because it's computationally expensive as seen in microsoft's demo. Compared to the scale shown it's clear that MS demo is more impressive considering the fact that it's handling collision detection with 30 000 procedurally generated chunks!

That would be it's achilles heel as much as it sounds impressive. The data stream to update that kind of debris count at 32fps would easily exceed 60mbps. Plus the local machine still needs to have the spare overhead to render all that extra stuff. No wonder it's all simple grey blocks with flat lighting and no shadows.

Are you  sure about that.  The server only needs to send back the caculated values and the host machine display the results.  The data stream is much smaller than what people are thinking.

Yeah. Tell ppl without still internet or with poor internet connection that they can only see 5 FPS, because of power of the cloud. Tell this to ppl which would want to play a single player game. 

And for multiplayer games - you need to consider, that this data stream is an addition to the data stream already required for multiplayer purposes. And i don't even consider graphics - just physics.

Its easy to see that MS is not concerned about people without internet.  Actually their first plans for the X1 is a clear indication of how much MS is concerned about people without the internet.  As for MP why would you think this really make a big difference.  Sending just the calculated info can be heavely compressed.  The amount of info would be nothing even with MP.  The problem is not the amount of data or even your speed of connection but more about ping time to the server sending the info.  This is something that MS has an advantage because they have servers around the world so low pings is very possible.



SvennoJ on 04 April 2014
Machiavellian said:
SvennoJ said:
fatslob-:O said:
 

No no, the rubles are created in realtime as you can see is microsoft's demo up at the top with it's "chunk count". It's cool that Nvidia showed real-time fracturing in this demo but the rest of their demos don't do it because it's computationally expensive as seen in microsoft's demo. Compared to the scale shown it's clear that MS demo is more impressive considering the fact that it's handling collision detection with 30 000 procedurally generated chunks!

That would be it's achilles heel as much as it sounds impressive. The data stream to update that kind of debris count at 32fps would easily exceed 60mbps. Plus the local machine still needs to have the spare overhead to render all that extra stuff. No wonder it's all simple grey blocks with flat lighting and no shadows.

Are you  sure about that.  The server only needs to send back the caculated values and the host machine display the results.  The data stream is much smaller than what people are thinking.

37,000 chunks: position, speed vector, orientation, rotation vector, list of new chunks, list of altered chunks, updates to existing geometry.
That is not a small data stream. I guess you can optimize it by letting the local machine handle the flight path of free flying chunks as long as they don't interact with anything, i.e. only update collisions and geometry changes. That's still a hugely variable data stream with a huge peak demand when blowing up a building.