OnLive (thoughts?)

[bob1000]

Recently, I found news of a console/service called "OnLive". Basically it's an online game service like, say, XBox Live, but it's supposedly cheaper and easier to set up. Here are some links...

Game Informer (http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/200903/N09.0324.1136.49546.html)
IGN (http://pc.ign.com/articles/965/965535p1.html)
Onlive Countdown (http://www.onlive.com/)

Thoughts?

[rock_nog]

Well, you forgot the most important aspect. Basically, the games run on uber-powerful server computers. Then, somehow they instantly compress the video and transmit it to your computer almost instantly. The practical upshot is that even if you have a dinky computer, you can, say, play Crysis at max settings, provided you have a good Internet connection.

Actually, I had thought of this years ago, but I never thought it'd really be possible. I'm still incredibly skeptical that the technology even exists to do this, but at the same time, I'm also intrigued. I've missed out on too many awesome new games because my computer can't keep up.

[AtmaWeapon]

If they pull it off, it'll be very impressive, but I'm really thinking this is going to blow. Hard. I don't think it's feasible for them to keep enough hardware to be scalable unless they plan on charging hundreds of dollars per user or severely limit the number of people that can be using the service at once.

Even then, if the client end isn't in an ideal networking setup then there'll be issues. For example, high-end FPS players can seek >100FPS performance, and I admit that after I played Quake III at 125 and then saw it at 90 on a slower computer I found it quite jarring. 100FPS of 1600x1200 video with 24-bit color is not feasible; one frame is about 43.9 MB, so you'll need roughly 439 MB/s to play at 100FPS; I've never seen a home user with that kind of connection. Maybe they'll use compression, but that introduces latency and lowers image quality. Feasibility is still a tough sell: I just saved a 1600x1200 bitmap as a jpeg with 50% quality and it compressed to 136 KB; that's still 13.2 MB/s to maintain 100 FPS.

I think it's a good idea but I really don't think we're there for full quality. If they're talking about lower quality or playing in a Youtube-sized area, then I think there's a possibility, but that's a hard sell.

[rock_nog]

Honestly, maybe it's because I'm used to playing games on a crappy computer, but really, all you need is a solid, consistent 30 FPS for most games to be playable. After all, movies only go at 24 FPS. The main reason you'd want higher than that is because the framerate tends to dip when there's more action on-screen, so you want a buffer to prevent it from dipping into unplayable.

Also, they're apparently limiting resolution - 720p for fast broadband, 480p for slower. Might bother some, but if I can get 480p and a solid framerate, I'll be happy. I mean, as it is, I can't even play Bioshock on my computer, so this offers me something I couldn't otherwise have, even with the trade-off in quality.

[ShadowTiger]

I'm the last person who you would see "Graphics >= Quality" from, but the ice and water effects, particularly the waterfalls, in Bioshock, raised the bar for me. I'm sure it won't make that much of a difference, but I think it'd be just as beautiful as a veritable slideshow, if not actually playable at such a speed.

[AtmaWeapon]

Honestly, maybe it's because I'm used to playing games on a crappy computer, but really, all you need is a solid, consistent 30 FPS for most games to be playable. After all, movies only go at 24 FPS. The main reason you'd want higher than that is because the framerate tends to dip when there's more action on-screen, so you want a buffer to prevent it from dipping into unplayable.

Also, they're apparently limiting resolution - 720p for fast broadband, 480p for slower. Might bother some, but if I can get 480p and a solid framerate, I'll be happy. I mean, as it is, I can't even play Bioshock on my computer, so this offers me something I couldn't otherwise have, even with the trade-off in quality.Perception of motion is far, far more complicated than "24 fps". Your eye is not a camera that blinks at 24 Hz; your brain processes a continuous stream of images.

I read the most fantastic article about this in the past, but I can't find it anymore. But on the whole, the reason 24 FPS works in a theater is because it's dark and the image is the brightest thing. In a particular study the article referenced, fighter pilots were able to identify images of jets that were flashed for less than one hundredth of a second in a perfectly dark room. Think about what happens when you stare at a light bulb then look away; that afterimage is important to how movies convey smooth motion. More recent CG movies apply blur between frames because without the blur movement appears jerky.

All that aside, it's been a well-known fact on every gaming forum I go to that a game has to run at 60 FPS to look smooth on PC. I really and truly can't handle playing an immersive game like a first person shooter when it drops to 30 FPS.

I'll adjust the math for lower framerates though. I took a photo and resized it to 720p (1280x720) at 96 dpi, then saved it as JPG with 50% quality. The result was a 70KB file. Here's the bandwidth you need for relevant FPS:
100 FPS: 6.8 MB/s
60 FPS: 4.1 MB/s
24 FPS: 1.6 MB/s

So, to get a gaming experience that's at a resolution with 48% of the pixels that hardcore gamers crave (1600x1200), you need to be capable of a 4.1 MB/s connection to their servers minimum to see JPEG artifacts. I'm not going to be standing in line.

[rock_nog]

Well, I've been looking into it - basically it looks like they accomplish it by limiting the resolution to 720p (or down to 480p for slower connections - I don't mind, I already play most games at 640x480 because of my shitty computer), and they use a lot of compression (to the point where there is noticeable blurring). But other than that, they've demo'd the technology and apparently people who've gotten hands-on experience say it works surprisingly well.

And anyway, my point remains, I'll take the sacrifices if it means that I get to play games that I wouldn't otherwise be able to. And I think that's their primary market, not hardcore gamers (though I really think that should be blindingly obvious).

[Nicholas Steel]

They also don't claim FPS above 60 so I don't know why you guys talked about 100FPS situations o_o. btw bob, I know you kinda, right?

I wonder if they let you run the game at high resolutions but downsample the image before transmitting it to the user?