Ps4 to PS Vita, Truly Mobile MMORPG

BelegStrongbow

http://www.thegamersdrop.com/2013/06/25/playstation-vita-playstation-4-internet-connectivity-explained/?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_69717

 

I read this and was like,  hmmm  So I can play ESO, Destiny, FFXIV, CoD Ghosts......

 

All Ps4 games,  All truly mobile on my PS Vita. ......

 

How is this not Headline news on MMORPG.com?  Can you guys write a huge article on this?  This is like mind blowing.  I am having a nerd panic attack of excitement.

 

discuss

 

EDIT:  I understand the devs have to enable the feature,  but if it as easy as they say it is,  This should be like a top question to every PS4 MMO dev in every interview. 

Vrika

Streaming games to your Vita sounds good in theory, but in practice you'll be limited by latency and bandwidth. While Sony's technology might allow streaming games anywhere through internet, the internet connections aren't good enough to allow comfortable gaming if you go beyond the range of your home WiFi.

If Sony's streaming worked well outside your home WiFi, Sony would be doing a lot more to get people's attention to that.

EDIT: Still, it's a good feature if your TV is used by someone other and you want to play on PS4. I could also see some Finnish students connecting both their PS4 and Vita to Sparknet to play PS4 at school/EDIT

BelegStrongbow

I mean maybe they will release a 4G Vita?  I know some 4G speeds could hold up well.  I also am sure there is a way to have the MMO use the PS4 hardware and internet connection to handle most the load and the Vita would be just bogged down by the remote connection.

 

Should be doable,  Its all just specs until it actually comes out though. 

 

I hope they do it right,  I really have been interested in a Vita but the game suck,  having access to PS4 through the Vita would be the reason I buy one. 

Quizzical

Streaming video is hardly new.  If it's over the Internet at large, then see OnLive, for example.  But that's going to be crippled by a lack of bandwidth, as even 4G doesn't offer 1% of the bandwidth of a simple DVI monitor cable.

Streaming over a LAN has more potential, but neither gigabit ethernet nor 802.11ac have nearly enough bandwidth to stream game video uncompressed.  If you have to compress and decompress it in ways appropriate for gaming, then it's not clear whether the PS Vita would have enough power to give you a decent gaming experience.  Streaming video in ways appropriate for gaming is much harder than things that aren't latency-sensitive, such as streaming video from YouTube, as the latter lets you compress across time.

BelegStrongbow

Originally posted by Quizzical

Streaming video is hardly new.  If it's over the Internet at large, then see OnLive, for example.  But that's going to be crippled by a lack of bandwidth, as even 4G doesn't offer 1% of the bandwidth of a simple DVI monitor cable.

Streaming over a LAN has more potential, but neither gigabit ethernet nor 802.11ac have nearly enough bandwidth to stream game video uncompressed.  If you have to compress and decompress it in ways appropriate for gaming, then it's not clear whether the PS Vita would have enough power to give you a decent gaming experience.  Streaming video in ways appropriate for gaming is much harder than things that aren't latency-sensitive, such as streaming video from YouTube, as the latter lets you compress across time.

so are you saying the PS vita connectivity is gonna suck?  It might change whether I can a PS4 or not

Quizzical

It depends on what you're going to do with it.  If you're streaming the game from a PS4 to a Vita over a LAN, it might well be able to more or less work.  I don't know what the display latency on a Vita is, but televisions are often terrible for latency, so streaming it to a Vita over a LAN might not be that much worse than playing a game on a television directly from a PS4.

But don't get ideas about streaming games across the Internet to a Vita, especially using a 3G or 4G connection.  Transmitting 1080p video at 60 frames per second and 32-bit color depth uses about 500 MB/s of bandwidth uncompressed.  Even a 4G connection would probably leave you shy of 2 MB/s under optimal conditions, and that sort of compression severely degrades the image quality.  The work to compress and decompress video that much tends to add to the latency quite a bit, as does the delay in communicating across the Internet.  Furthermore, you'd burn through a typical monthly data plan in under an hour at that speed.

You can make the data plan last longer by greatly reducing the bandwidth needed--but that greatly reduces the image quality even further.  They'd probably greatly reduce both the monitor resolution and the frame rate to partially compensate, but when you're trying to compress images by a ratio of about 1000:1 as compared to what would be ideal, you're looking at very lossy compression and very bad image quality, even if you reduce the game to perhaps a 480x360 resolution and 30 frames per second.

Opapanax

I'd think the biggest roadblock would be the WI-FI and just the infrancture in the NA (If thats where you are), somewhere like Japan who's internet infrancture far proceeds ours would have a better experience with it.

However I do remember my time with SOCOM: US Navy Seals on my PSP. Was able to play online on the PSP against others over the internet. Was impressive as it was my first experience with a handheld device doing that with a FPS.

Zipper Interactive.. We miss you..

Quizzical

If you're trying to play a game over a LAN, then public infrastructure doesn't matter beyond some basic things such as providing electricity.  You don't touch the Internet at all if you're going that route.

If you're playing over the Internet at large, then no country has the infrastructure to make game streaming viable today.  Furthermore, it's unlikely that any country will ever have the infrastructure to make streaming games competitive with rendering them locally.  It's a lot easier to send data a few millimeters from one spot in a chip to another spot in the same chip than it is to send data hundreds of miles over the Internet.

Ridelynn

The Wii U does this locally for their handheld screen - it does it via a dedicated (and very short range) WiFi N signal. So it's not like it's impossible. The latency on it is definitely good enough for the Nintendo - if you were trying to do competition-level gaming on it, then you wouldn't be doing it with something handheld anyway, so I really wouldn't worry too much about latency.

nVidia shield will do it over LAN too with your PC - but performance there is yet to be seen.

The big deal about the Vita is internet - which I will agree is possible to do technically, but in practice will probably leave much to be desired.