Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
So I just tried OnLive. . .
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
I'm stunned.
Completely.
I'm on a single-core computer with less one gig of memory that it shares with the ancient intel integrated graphics card, and it ran Borderlands. Fucking Borderlands!!!
Yes, the graphics were a little fuzzy at times. Yes, it sucks that you don't actually own the games. And yes, they need a bigger library of games. But Jesus Jumped Up Christ, it can run Space Marine on a fucking netbook? What else do you want?
This makes me rethink the entire future of gaming. Not just PC gaming. All video gaming.
The biggest disadvantage that PC gaming has is the inability to rent games. OnLive changes that. The biggest disadvantage that video games have in comparison to other entertainment is how much the games cost. OnLive understands that it's easier to get $6 out of ten people than it is to get $60 out of one person. And for single player games I'd really rather rent them anyway.
With Netflix gearing up to add games, possibly streaming games, and a few other companies lookiing at making similar streaming services; I'd say that things are about to get very interesting.
Edit: Just to clarify, my MSI GX630 bricked on me recently and I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet. The whole experience has kind of put me off of the idea of using laptops as desktop replacements or gaming machines. So Until I get back in the mood to custom build another rig, I'm stuck on this machine.
BTW, I also have an XBox 360, Wii, PSP, DS, Dreamcast, and N64. . . Just not at the location that I'm currently at. . . .
Comments
And you didn't feel the network latency?
If so I'm more impressed with you than OnLive, cause input lag of more than 30 ms is too much, and for OnLive it's possibly more like 60-150 ms which is just useless for anything and especially gaming.
I did lose a little accuracy, but I'm not sure if that's because I was used to playing the XBox 360 version or the lag.
Overall, it was serviceable. And since this piece of shit is all that I have to game on right now, Onlive will do.
More to the point though, I'm pretty sure that this type of service is going to eventually replace the business model that we're currently using. I'm not entirely sure that I'm behind that, but as long as there are emulators, or services that provide retro games, I guess I can learn to live with it.
If Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo all offer a streaming box similar to OnLive, I'm going to laugh my ass off.
I like it, sometimes the lag makes me just turn it off but for the most part things run pretty smooth for me.
human cant perceive anything lower then 85 ms so any saying otherwise doesnt know what he is experiencing.
it was tested by scientific way smarter then the average university .if you are at 85 ms dont sweat it you didnt miss anything from 5 ms to 85
80 ms sec is what
.080 s diff.you tell me you can percieve that?mm!i hope i am wrong in my mat conversion! of ms vs s
Okay I'm sorry then I must be superhuman since I can easily perceive the 0.1s input lag on my 47" LCD in non-gaming mode.
Could gaming was the future :]
Before internet providers decided to cap most bandwiths, only allowing 200 gigs a month. Thanks america, We have the slowest internet compared to others, and we cap!
Played - M59, EQOA, EQ, EQ2, PS, SWG[Favorite], DAoC, UO, RS, MXO, CoH/CoV, TR, FFXI, FoM, WoW, Eve, Rift, SWTOR, TSW.
Playing - PS2, AoW, GW2
So you're saying that the 15 ms is what makes the difference between not perceivable and distincively perceivable?
I saw this post, and I felt that I had to respond. I am a writer and editor for http://OnLiveFans.com so I might be a little biased. However, I have been a member of OnLive since they launched in the US. Since day one, I have been nothing but pleased with the service. There are some times during the day that if you are connecting via wi-fi you will experience some minor lag and lesser graphics. However, the majority of the time, OnLive works just fine, and usually better than my Xbox 360.
OnLive initially required a 5mb/sec connection but now that has been reduced to only 2mb/sec, and it is continuously getting better. If you are in the US, I recommend you try it again if you have in the past. It has improved a lot. If you are in the UK or Europe, wait until Thursday to try it. Thats when they launch in the UK, and the service will run a lot more smoothly.
Ed Krassenstein
http://OnLiveFans.com
Yeah, I'm a founding member of the service. Got in a week after it went up. I've never experienced the 'Game killing lag' that some complain about but I do have an 11Mb/s connection. I live in Maine which is barely in the US (LOL). I have noticed the service get much better since I've been a member but it's more in the variety of games for me. In the beginning the choices were few but now there are a whole lot more different games to choose from. I do however wish they would extend the 30 minute free trial to all games. Some that I'm not sure I want to spend money on have never had a trial. All in all a great service though.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
There are important, fundamental reasons why OnLive can never replace the current gaming model. And those haven't changed.
For starters, you can't get a gaming experience comparable to what you could have on modern integrated graphics. And furthermore, you probably never will be able to, because those integrated graphics will keep getting better--and probably faster than OnLive does. It certainly won't be possible in the foreseeable future.
Input latency is much nastier than adding the same amount to your ping times. That's not solvable unless either Internet technology advances dramatically, or else local ISPs are willing to let OnLive build stuff into their local networks. There are a lot of situations in games where if you react quickly enough, you don't get hit. That might get covered up by clever network code if it's adding 50 ms to your ping time, but not if it's input latency.
Even apart from input latency, the compression algorithms needed to reduce the amount of space that an image takes by 99.9% will hurt image quality greatly. That means that even if you ignore latency issues, you can't get image quality to match modern integrated graphics, let alone a real gaming system.
Now, OnLive will deliver a better experience than having a game not playable at all for people with ancient computers like the original poster. But look who that means their customers are: people who can't pay for computer stuff. Almost axiomatically, OnLive's customer base is restricted to people who can't afford a computer with modern integrated graphics, or an older gaming system that is at least competitive with modern integrated graphics. Think there's a lot of money to be made off of such people? I don't.
There's also the issue that OnLive uses a lot of bandwidth. It could easily be two orders of magnitude more than a typical online game. That means that on days when your Internet connection isn't the best, games won't be playable using OnLive, but will be playable by other means. And do you really want to lose access to single player games entirely just because your Internet connection is spotty?
ISPs notice this stuff, too. You know why ISPs went so far out of their way to hamstring file-sharers? It's not because they're worried about IP infringement. It's because they don't like 1% of their customers using up 50% of their bandwidth. If some particular application uses outlandishly large amounts of bandwidth, ISPs will notice and will sabotage it. They have to in order to be profitable.
Guess what OnLive does? Uses huge amounts of bandwidth. Right now, ISPs can ignore it, because hardly anyone uses it. But if it catches on, then ISPs will find creative ways to restrict things just enough to make OnLive unusable, while everything else works fine. And if OnLive users want to cancel their account and take their business elsewhere, then ISPs will be happy to see them go.
Yeah and those of us with fast rigs (like me) are perfectly content to buy the games we want and play them in all their graphical glory on our own kick-@ss rigs. No fuzzy graphics here.
Actual no-shit rentals could come to the PC, it isn't outside of the realm of technical possibility.
Steam half-way does it already, when they give out free play weekends for some titles. Their DRM is such that they can grant, limit, and restrict software licenses based on your account info. The only thing that deters me from saying that is the total answer is that Steam forces you to download the entire game before you can start playing it. For many games, that's several gig's worth of info, and on ~most~ US connections, that is going to take a while before you can play your rental.
But - take a look at something like the Guild Wars file patcher, or the newer WoW incremental file patcher.
You combine that, which lets you play the game without having to download the entire thing, along with the ability to restrict and control the length of the rental, and you have a pretty solid PC rental model, at least technically speaking.
The hard part of that, is of course, coming up with a generic enough incremental patcher that you can use with generic games for rent - GW and WoW have that patcher specifically in mind when they deploy, most games assume you have it on a DVD to install, or are buying the entire game in one lump, and their file structure is set up that way.
And the biggest road block isn't even technical. It's the fear of distributors that their software will become pirate bait, or that they won't get a big enough share of the rental cut. Or they shift the bulk of the content to IGP/DLC so that you end up having to buy crap even if you just rent the game.
Then again, that wouldn't help situations like the OP - you'd still need a machine powerful enough to run the game. But I would dig it, a lot of games I play through once just to see the story, and never touch them again. I'm totally bummed when I buy most recent Bioware games, but I'd love to be able to rent that stuff. Another reason to shift over to consoles I suppose, and I can just buy it used and resell when I beat it.
If something takes very short time, a human is not able to detect it at all. But if somethign happens 0.08 seconds later, then a human will react to it 0.08 seconds later. Human reaction time when he's excepting something can be under 0.2 seconds, so 0.08 seconds lag before event happens on your screen can mean 40% increased reaction time.
Usually reactions in games are much slower. If you need to decide between alternatives, move your mouse to right position, etc. then that 0.08 seconds won't make much difference.
Economics of scale.
Poor people have less money as individuals, but there are more of them. They can't afford to shell out for a shiney new console or mid range computer, but they CAN shell out seven bucks every couple of weeks to play a few games now and then. The movie rental business remains around primarily due to this fact. That's why at some places you can rent movies for $1 for a whole week. Netflix give you unlimited streaming movies and mail rentals for $8 a month. These people can't afford to buy a new movie for between $10 and $25, but they're more than willing to spend that same amount of money on a grocery bag full of movies to watch all week. The same thing applies here.
The "you plebs are too poor to be here" bullshit is just elitish posturing.
<yawn>
Yes your epeen is soooooooooooo big! <sarcasm>
Now, do you have anything USEFUL to share with the class?
I'm not saying everyone needs a $2000 gaming system. Or even a $1000 gaming system. Or even a five year old computer that was a $1000 gaming system when new.
I said integrated graphics. No discrete video card. The low end. The cheapest type of graphics that you can get apart from "doesn't turn on". Integrated graphics that you can get in something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101252
That's $500. And if you were to buy it and stick it on a shelf for five years and not use it until five years from now, then even at the end of five years, your then five-year-old $500-when-new laptop would still get you a better gaming experience running games locally than using OnLive on it will be able to offer five years from today. OnLive wouldn't even be kind of competitive with it, except in a relative handful of games that don't allow you to turn settings down far enough to run on not that great of systems.
Sure, OnLive makes sense for you today. But someday, you're going to replace that old computer. You'll have to, as if nothing else, it will die outright. And if you buy a sensible replacement for it, even on a tight budget, then OnLive won't make a bit of sense on your new computer. In fact, it won't make a bit of sense for you ever again for the entire rest of your life after that purchase.
And that's as compared to the integrated graphics that you can get today. AMD will launch better integrated graphics next year. And then better yet the year after that. And you can see where this is going. Maybe someday Intel will even launch integrated graphics that actually work right. Intel promises that Ivy Bridge will do that. Of course, they promised the same about Sandy Bridge, and Clarkdale, and...
In the year 2020, how many people will have a working computer, with a performance level low enough that it wouldn't be able to keep up with today's integrated graphics, but that they want to play games on anyway? Not 2020's best integrated graphics. Today's. That will be OnLive's target market. Do you really think there's a lot of money to be made off of that? Really?
Dude, you are a dying breed. All media is moving to a cloud environment... gaming included. On-live is pioneering the future whether you personally like it or not. Look at the facts. Everything is moving toward cloud computing. Windows 8 and the next generation of the Mac OS will have cloud computing intergrated into the OS itself. Google and Rim are working toward the same goal with their OS's. Right now we are seeing a revolution in how we as consumers will consume our media. Pretty soon everything will be cloud based and very little will be stored locally. This is the trend the industry is taking. On-live just got the idea before a lot of others caught on. If you think otherwise the very near future is going to run you over like a frieght train.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
I hope you can bring that fast rig of yours around when you're out of the country..or even out of your home for longer than a weekend. See, OnLIve doesn't just cater to the less wealthy. All I need is my netbook, internet connection, and I can still play the games that I would otherwise need my console or "super fast" mega computer for...wherever I am!
Dying breed or not, this change will not happen in the next few years. It's a simple matter of supply and demand. No one in their right mind can claim that OnLive offers a superior gaming experience compared to a 1k USD gaming rig and a game played locally. If they do, they are delusional.
As long as there are people who think the 1k USD is worth the difference in the quality of their gaming experience, they will buy those rigs and buy those locally stored games.
Companies have been talking about replaing PCs with dummy terminal for decades now. That hasn't happened either, and we are talking about intranet infrastructure with a lot fewer problems concerning network lag and other issues.
I am not really excited for this idea. Well sure if it works for someone that's great , but I've tried it and for me lag input is really decreasing experience even though my latency is small.
Not to mention that this solutions make things like Mods and customizing impossible. So yeah not interested tbh, I prefer having a game on my hdd and playing it like that.
But whatever suit you
You are right... they have been talking about it for over a decade. The difference now is they've stopped talking and now they are doing it. Like it or not it is on the very near horizon.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
the only drawback to the 85 ms thing is if everybody put a loose of 85 ms.exemple>
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-etc to home
say each number has 85 ms lag at the end there will be an insane amount of lag.this is probably what happen most of the time to user
that is probably why cellphone company google and all are trying to mod the system so you get the content as directly as possible with as less intermediary as possible.