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Playing MMO's on a Tablet
GrayGhost79
Member UncommonPosts: 4,775
Hello all, I was in a discussion with others in another thread discussing tablets, PC's, and Laptops. One of the things discussed was gaming and the limitations tablets must endure when it comes to gaming. I wanted to make this thread to clear some things up.
Currently there are two really well done apps for android devices (and others) that shine when you are thinking about playing an MMO on your tablet.
Splashtop Gamepade THD - For those with Tegra 3 devices.
and
Kainy - For those without Tegra 3 devices.
Currently I am using Kainy on my Ace Iconia A200 to play GW2 and TSW. Both are streaming and playing flawlessly. I had to setup a page specific for GW2 and a page specific for TSW. Each page has 20 buttons and 2 Analog sticks (One controlling the mouse and I toggle it to become mouse look) as well as a keyboard.
It's like playing with a completely customizable controller with as many or as few buttons and sticks as you want.
I have even used my phone as the controller while viewing the game on my tablet.
What this has allowed me to do is essintially get a very high end portable gaming system for next to nothing cost wise.
The Acer Iconia A200 set me back only $229 and Kainy cost me all of $2. So for $231 I have a portable PC that can play any game on the market.
You will need very good internet at your home and at wherever you are going to be playing from. The only true limiting factors are how good your internet at home is, internet where you are playing at is, and your PC's hardware that you are streaming from. Your tablets specs aren't that important.
As I've said, I've been playing GW2 and TSW already. Setting up a page for Rift tomorrow so I can try it out there. Then I'm on to Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. Hardest part of all of this is setting up the page layout for each game and that took me only a few minutes to figure out.
So for those that want to play MMO's on your tablet, you can!
Splashtop Gamepad THD for Tegra 3 devices.
Kainy for non Tegra 3 devices.
Comments
Could you possibly make a video of you playing any of these games on the tablet?
How does it work exactly though? Do I need to stream it from my pc and do I have to be right next to my pc?
You are streaming it from your PC and no you don't have to be right next to your PC. An example would be the fact that I am in NY right now with some friends while playing games off of my PC in MA lol! Also I probably could make a video, let me think about that.
Here are some vids in the mean time that aren't mine.
Kainy -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NtZhtjYOZw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjXiZzDLjgg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCGN1R8JDP8
Splashtop -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leyx3pFzrHY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuycUe0TyIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08OyicHBju0
Hah, I live in MA as well.
Now, if I don't like touch screen. Can I use my keyboard somehow? I'm not really a fan of playing games with touchscreen.
Is this all pretty easy to setup though?
Yep, all of it's pretty easy to setup. If you don't want to use touchscreen you can use Xbox controllers, PS3 controllers, Wii Remotes, mouse and keyboard, you name it really lol.
As the saying goes... "Theres an App for that!".
Lol cool! Thanks!
Now, is it legal? Or is it considered like "jailbreaking"? Just a concern of mine. Also, can Ipads do this?
Lastly (that I can think of), the games run perfectly? What about with large crowds of people? I would love to stop playing my pc games in the basement lol.
Oh! And the graphics are exactly the same as your pc's?
Yes it's legal lol. The apps I listed require no jail breaking or even rooting.
As far as Ipad, I know you can use Splashtop 2 on Ipad but Ipad doesn't play nice with a mouse so... it may not be as simple to setup.
Here's m guess on how it works:
The rendering is done on computer using the video card. From there it's captured from the screen buffer, compressed as video, and streamed to the client (tablet) where it is displayed. This part of the link is very similar to watching a movie streamed to the tablet.
To make the UI work, the server side (PC) hooks into Windows, injecting UI commands into the computer. The UI commands are controls on the client (tablet) and these signals are passed to the server (PC) where they get used.
The whole process is similar to VNC or Windows remote desktop except that it's been optimized for gaming.
Three factors for performance: (again more guesses)
1. video compression will knock down the video quality and possibly frame rate,
2. network latency will make things delayed in both directions
3. performance could be improved with more bandwidth, worsened if reduced
Thanks for answering my questions all!
Lastly, if I wanted a tablet just for playing through my PC, is it worth it? How are the android games? Do people even play the android games online? I got bored with my ipod games so it's a concern as well.
I hope I'm not thread-jacking!
PS. Awesome thread!
just installed splashtop 2, and it works very well, but when i launch a game, like wow, i can see on my pc monitor that if goes into wow in fullscreen, but on my phone/tablet, it has wow as minimised, and im still looking at the deskop on the phone.
why is that?
Edit:
Got it to work, it appears taht games have to run in windowoed mode to work, btw, performance was flawless, love it
The choice of tablet dictates your monitor size and resolution. You also need enough performance on the tablet end to decompress and display the video in real time. It likely doesn't take very much performance to do that, but it's not completely trivial, either.
You can also expect to deal with greatly reduced image quality, as a result of the lossy compression needed to make it work. That doesn't make it unplayable; think of it like comparing a Blu-Ray video to a YouTube video. Even if you're maxing out an 802.11n wireless connection (which is extremely unlikely), you've only got about 7% of the bandwidth needed to stream 1080p in 32-bit color at 60 frames per second. The bandwidth that OnLive used was less than 0.1% of what you'd need for that--which is why they had to greatly reduce both the monitor resolution and frame rate, in addition to making the images somewhat blurry due to the lossy video compression.
There are also problems of input lag, massive bandwidth requirements that might lead ISPs to try to throttle you (which would kill performance), and the unreliability intrinsic to wireless connections.
Next year will bring tablets capable of running more than a few MMORPGs natively, and that will give you a much better gaming experience for the games that run smoothly on those tablets. But that's not until next year, and some games won't be playable that way for a long time. Streaming video is available today and works with all games, even if the performance is less than ideal.
While it is wonderful that you pointed out the exceptionally common sense basics of how streaming works, I must inform you that I can stream with no delay or loss of quality as long as my PC and Tablet are both on a Wifi network (not even the same ones). The audio is also clear, no choppyness, sounds like anything playing locally from the tablet, and the graphics suffer from no compression either. Its called Splashtop and I've been doing it for a few years now. The only limitation is the resolution on my tablet. I either have to scroll around the screen to see it all, or match the resolution with my tablet. My cousin has a near retina display asus tablet (I think its asus), and you should see him streaming Diablo 3 on it! It was awesome.
So to those who would like to know, you can already do streaming with excellent quality as long as the networks on both ends are sufficient.
While I am not against tablets in general, I just have not seen ANY gaming app that works well...including the one at the top of this thread. My biggest complaint (which can not be addressed) is the small size of the viewing screen. It just is not acceptable to ME to play a game on such a small screen. Secondary to that, I really don't care for the controls on the tablets. Something just does not feel right when I use them and I don't like having my big ole hands partially covering the already small screen. Either give me a PC with something over 20 inch monitor or a console with a decent size LCD TV screen. That or nothing at all.
Let's party like it is 1863!
I have that problem with the on screen controls too
Even with a 10" tablet I still have issues.
Most of the gaming tablets out there look silly too. I am going to try the OP's recommendation and see if it cures my issue.
Is there PC client software available so I could stream a game to a netbook?
Going to try and adress this all in one post so bare with me, I've had a few to many drinks to attempt this but... I'm going to try lol.
1) Controls on Screen - This is resolved a couple of ways.
A) Use your phone as the controller and the tablet as a display. I do this when I have both available.
C) Some controls can be bypassed by using your accelarometer. I tweaked mine to turn left and right, up and down for aiming for FPS earlier in BF3 because mouse look and having to take my thump off to fire wasn't working.
Theres a lot of ways to get around this and get it working in a way that you like.
2) Resolution and Display questions - One thing that helps is reducing the resolution on your PC. It will look like crap on your desktop when you reduce the resolution to the tablets native resolution BUT, it will look amazing on your phone.
Not knowing all the specifics of your tablet, network, and PC, I can't begin to even consider troubleshooting any issues. Each app has a forums and support site that should be able to assist you there.
3) Small size of viewing screen - This is not an alternative to playing MMO's on PC. This is simply a means of playing MMO's and such on the go without spending a great deal of money on a laptop thats not going to perform as well as your PC anyways. This is essentially giving you your PC to take with you.
4) Terrible Controls - The controls can be tweaked in anyway you like. Like all things it takes practice and such. It also takes time finding layouts and controls that fit and work well for you. Like I said, you can use Mouse and Keyboard with these apps to play just like you do now. You can use pretty much any kind of controller. You get additional functionality with the accelarometer as well as with the touchscreen depending on what you enable.
It is simple to setup, but takes time to master. Once you master it though, controls are no longer an issue.
5) I'm just reiterating something I said earlier because it's important - Your internet bandwith and quality play a large and I mean LARGE factor. I have an massive internet bill lol, I pay more for my internet a month than many do for their car payment.
6) The Future - Scientists have already hit world records of 186Gbps in Dec of 2011. Internet technology is comming a long ways. So even if you can't or don't benefit from this kind of thing right now, keep an eye on it because streaming is going to be a big deal over the next few years starting towards the end of 2013 or 2014. Microsft and Sony among numerous other companies are investing in this type of technology heavily.
If I missed any concerns or questions I apologize. If I misspelled or made any gramatical errors, again I apologize. I'm on my second bottle of whiskey and 3rd six pack of beer. So... Have a great night all and a wonderful new years.
REMEMBER... Game Responsibly... Friends don't let friends drink and game oO!
1080p at 60 frames per second and 32-bit color requires 3981312000 bits per second, or about 4 Gbps. No wifi standard comes even close--not even the preliminary 802.11ac standard that isn't even available yet. Even gigabit ethernet, by far the best consumer network connection, only offers about 1/4 of that.
The question isn't whether you have to compress the video, but how much, and how badly the image quality suffers. And the answer is almost inevitably going to be, a lot.
Claiming there's no delay is likewise impossible. You can't transmit information faster than the speed of light, and even transmitting it at the speed of light exactly (which is wildly impractical) would be problematic if you're too far away from the home computer. It won't be bad enough to make most games unplayable, but in most games, it won't be as good as sitting at your desktop, either.
Transmitting audio, on the other hand, is possible. That was never in dispute.
Watching someone else stream a video isn't a good demonstration, as that doesn't let you see the input delay.
1) If you've got enough USB ports on the tablet, then you can plug in whatever keyboard, mouse, gamepad, etc. you'd have used with a desktop. If you're having to carry around a keyboard and a mouse, and also need something to set the mouse on, then it's not really any more portable than a laptop anymore. But some games will do well with a gamepad only, and some are even amenable to touchscreen controls. But that's a game-by-game thing.
Comfortable input options isn't the only input consideration, however. If the game is running on your desktop, any input commands that you give it can't take effect until your desktop finds out of them. Taking tens of milliseconds to transmit your inputs does put you at a meaningful disadvantage in many games.
2) Setting a desktop to the tablet's resolution is usually the way to go if you're going to run it on a tablet. You say that it will look great on a tablet but bad on a desktop. But great for a tablet is bad for a desktop, and it won't look any better on the tablet than it did on the desktop, at least if you ran it in windowed mode on the desktop.
5) Have you considered that if you have a huge Internet bill, it would be cheaper to just get a gaming laptop and render games locally on it?
6) Yes, streaming options will get better in the future. But they're never going to catch up to rendering a game locally, as the hardware for rendering a game locally is going to get better, too.
I wish there were real tablet MMOs made particulary for sensor controls and with unique gameplay. Not all those cheap WoW clones they trying to feed us.
Porting Dofus & Wakfu on iPad would be a good start
1) It's an alternative for those that wish one, that is all lol. A mouse and keyboard for a tablet + a tablet that is streaming your PC is still more portable than a laptop that has hardware that really isn't needed with the above methods
As far as input delays, haven't had any issues so far. Though I haven't tried more than about 200 miles away from my PC. Maybe at 300-400 miles I may start to notice some input delay.
2) All I can say is, try it out. The smaller screen simply works better with lower resolutions, that doesn't mean it looks worse. Bigger screens look better with higher resolutions, smaller screens look better with lower resolutions. The quality isn't impacted. I mean look at wide screen monitors vs. standard, same resolution looks awful on the wide screen vs. the standard because you are stretching the picture out to fit the screen and your character looks short and fat lol.
5) I have a huge internet bill due to work and the number of PC's I have. I have 3 TV's all with a PC attached to them, 1 gaming PC for me, 1 work PC for me and 1 general PC for me. My wife has a PC, my son has a PC, my daughter has a PC. I have 3 tablets I use for various things and 2 smart phones. My daughter has 1 tablet for school, 1 tablet for fun, and her smart phone. My son and my wife both have smart phones.
The internet usage in my house for work and play is extremely high. My house phone is a VOIP so even that uses the internet.
So... my internet bill isn't due to my tablet streaming. I will have the internet service I have regardless
6) I don't know about that myself. They seem to already be surpassing what can be done locally with devices like laptops. Thats neither here nor there and not really the point of the thread. This was more along the lines of sharing information and experience about a topic that has seemed to peak a few peoples interests.
In any case, Happy New Years Quiz, always a pleasure to debate with you
What would help a ton with that is if games scaled to different resolutions better. For 2D interface stuff, it's hard to do, as that takes however much space it takes and will look awful if you try to squeeze it down. (Hooray for text in a 6 point font?)
But for 3D rendered stuff, switching to a lower resolution that still shows the same area of the game world is pretty easy to do. For a project I'm working on, there are only about 20 lines of code in the entire program that even care about the monitor resolution. That will go up a bit when I add an option for players to rescale things, but not much.
Making the amount that you can see depend strongly on your monitor resolution is bad game design for a 3D except at extremely small resolutions--meaning, like 160x120, not what tablets use. Some games are better about this than others, I suppose.
If a game runs well on a laptop or tablet or whatever rendered locally, then there's no reason to stream it from a remote desktop. Would you agree with that? For example, I don't care if you can stream Solitaire from your desktop; it's a stupid thing to do for everyday use, because a tablet has more than enough performance to run it locally.
Around the middle of next year, it's likely that AMD Temash-based tablets (rumored to include the Microsoft Surface Pro 2) will probably be able to run an outright majority of the games listed on this site smoothly. That will often be smoothly at low settings, not max settings. But it will be smoothly, and it will completely avoid long input delays or large bandwidth requirements.
Meanwhile, for laptops, you can already get AMD Trinity-based laptops running integrated graphics that will run nearly all Windows games smoothly--and often at high settings, even, though some games will require moderate or even low settings. And that's on integrated graphics.
What happens a few years from now when die shrinks and DDR4 memory mean you can double the performance on both of those in the same power envelope and at reduced cost of production? There will surely be ARM-based chips with comparable performance to what AMD will offer in tablets, and likely laptops. (I expect Nvidia to push Tegra-based budget gaming laptops running Android or some other variant of Linux, though that's only my speculation.) And maybe Intel will even finally produce a respectable graphics chip.