Remote game services (OnLive, Gaikai, etc.)

[rekator]

If you are playing on a TV with onlines 'console' you will get the TV input lag as well.

Play on CRT, no input lag!

 

[tritosine5G]

No input lag and (...), and (...), also (...)

I think onlive wins inevitably , speed goes up, lag goes down in future.

 

[tuna]

No input lag and (...), and (...), also (...)

I think onlive wins inevitably , speed goes up, lag goes down in future.

Do you have any numbers on the lag? Why would it go down in the future?

 

[tritosine5G]

Its the nature of technology!

They are already better than some games on the console &30hz DRM TV-s...

(No? )

 

[Arwin]

Lag will go down as the service picks up in popularity and providers install servers for this locally. Personally for me I agree - the service works pretty well and the graphics quality is the only real concern. However, for the type of gaming that I do that it provides, I prefer to have a flawless quality. This is why I greatly prefer watching a BluRay over even streamed HD movie channels. But that too should eventually wash out and become flawless ... hopefully.

I am just as annoyed with the quality of a service like Spotify ... it's just not good enough on PC, though it is close to good enough on iPhone (don't know why there is a difference at all!). But at the same time the ability to just about listen to any song ever at any time I want to is really awesome. When I put my kid to sleep we even pick up all sorts of Dutch children's songs and stories from it. Very good listening excercise for him and he enjoys it a lot. I sometimes have a song play on his left side while I sing along on the right ... he seems to enjoy that better then when I block him out. Or I bring my guitar and play along.

I think it is probably in the interest of most industries if we never actually own anything on our devices. That alone should perhaps mean streaming will be our future eventually (at least for those of us in the West and for 'regular' use - don't forget that vinyl still exists today). I think there's a good chance internet speeds will become fast enough for most of us for that part to become irrelevant over the next 10 years (it took 12 years for me to go from 220KB/s to 5MB/s for similar prices. If 50MB/s becomes a normal speed and latency improves similarly, I think we'll be good to go).

But I wouldn't want to put money on this happening much quicker than that for everything, including games. Games could stream content from the web while playing though, so hybrid approaches could happen.

Onlive is great for demoes though, I agree, that's for sure.

 

[Rangers]

Gamespot to offer instant demos through Onlive...pretty intriguing

http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/30/o...-game-fan-site-gamespot/#.Tl0_Ihwx0-M.twitter

Video game news site GameSpot will start offering visitors the ability to instantly test games online with live game demos. The free demos will be offered though an on-demand service powered by cloud-gaming firm OnLive.

GameSpot is one of the largest game fan-news and review sites. This new feature will give its readers a real “try-before-you-buy” experience at the moment when they’re reading about a game. They can instantly access demos by clicking a link embedded in game reviews. That’s better than going to the store or waiting several hours for a demo download.

Onlive seems to be really making it's mark for sure and becoming quite disruptive. I think the problem for them going forward is competition with bigger financial backing, starting with Gamestop's Impulse...

I always likened Onlive to a possible Netflix, a small name rising up in a new field to become a major player, but we'll see if it plays out like that or they get snipped by bigger competitors.

The interesting thing about Impulse to me, is that it supposedly features PS3/360 games.

Edit: Just tried the Splinter Cell Conviction demo on Gamespot, which is first time I've played Onlive. The blockiness of the graphics is actually worse than I expected, especially blown up to 1080P full screen on my monitor (as expected it's not as bad when played in a window), it's pretty bad. Would like to try and see if other games are any improvement. OTOH I didn't notice lag. Splinter Cell wasn't a good choice to test out Onlive as it's very dark and obtrusive to play being a stealth game. I tried to access two more demos (homefront and another) and both wouldn't connect, not sure if it's a gamespot issue with the new demos or what. I wonder if these types of "free demos" may utilize lower quality streaming than the regular service? You do need an existing Onlive account, it's not completely on demand in browser as you might hope, but with an account it's fairly seamless.

 

[Brad Grenz]

GameSpot, not GameStop.

 

[tabs]

If games actually start to be configured for this could we see things like HUDs and text being allocated more bandwidth (if they need it) so we get sharp text at the expense of more compressed 3D stuff? Having macroblocking on essential in game info would kill the service for me personally. If there was some sort of tier system for streaming decided by the devs that would be good.

For example in a racing game have high priority for HUD, 2nd for cars and kerbs, less for crowd and trees. I have no idea how this would fit into the sort of video compression pipelines we have now though. Seems like it would be a massive integration into the game streaming paradigm. Might be something for the future though, when all games are streamed.

 

[Rangers]

99 cent Arkham Asylum Onlive? I've never played it so I'm down Could be the game I finally put Onlive through it's paces with.

http://www.facebook.com/OnLive?sk=app_193542757379387

Also Newell made some comments referencing Onlive recently in a positive manner (specifically, how it's built into TV's), and saying Steam will be radically different in the future, definitely suggesting to me Steam is going to copy Onlive streaming one of these days.

 

[patsu]

OnLive's cloud rolls across the pond, UK gamers now welcome:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/21/onlives-cloud-rolls-across-the-pond-uk-gamers-now-welcome/

OnLive promised that it was coming, and the company has now brought its cloud-based gaming service to the UK right on schedule. That, of course, is identical to the service elsewhere, which lets you play a variety of PC games on any supported platform, including OnLive's own game system. UK gamers can also take advantage of a range of promotions coinciding with the launch, including their first OnLive PlayPass Game for £1 (up to a £39.99 value), and a free OnLive Game System to those attending the Eurogamer Expo (while quantities last, of course).

... [Press release in the link]

 

[Rotmm]

Picked one up today at the Expo, will probably give it a whirl at the weekend.

 

[Turok]

I have Deus Ex: Human Revolution for OnLive, and the framerate and response times are terrible. It's odd though, because I tried the demo for Fear 3, and it was incredibly responsive. Felt like I actually had it installed on my PC.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Comments on the Eurogamer article say results are poor, with terrible lag and video quality. I wonder if the UK internet infrastructure slows things down a lot? Would like a DF comparison!

 

[manux]

I played some car game on onlive(in US) and the lag was closer to 500ms. To me it was horrible. Some people seemed to still be able to play and like it.

 

[djdev]

Here is excerpts from Rock Paper Shotgun review. They said it was okay. They tested during UK launch, which did have high loads, but OnLive has been adding more servers constantly for added capacity so issues that were during launch should die down soon.

Here’s the thing: playing games on a PC, I’m sat there with my face stuffed right up against my monitor, at the kind of proximity I would only otherwise have with a lover, and I’m both accustomed to and expecting a crisp, clear picture. On a console, I’m sat a few feet back on a sofa, and I’m accustomed to blurry edges and fuzzy detail, even at the current gen-standard 720p. On the OnLive thinger, I’m being streamed an image of a PC gaming playing at high res with all bells and whistles turned on, including nerdtastic but genuinely splendid features such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. It doesn’t suffer from the handicaps that (the vast majority) of console games suffer from. But it does suffer from the kind of loss of detail, especially during busy of fast-moving scenes, that you’d expect from a streaming video – and to be honest often more so, as it’s also streaming God knows what other information necessary to make the whole shebang interactive back and forth.

Combined with being sat back at a distance and thus losing scads of fine-detail that way, the net result is that the compromises of OnLive sort of cancel out the compromises of console gaming – and the resultant average image isn’t dramatically inferior to simply playing on an Xbox 360 or PS3. It is inferior, but not to the point where I’m bothered after the first few minutes.

Obviously, if you’re actively looking for shortfalls they are very much there and you’re going to see them, but if you can relax into actually playing the game rather than poring over its flaws – holy shit. This thing actually works.

On my low-end 40″ 1080P TV at a distance, I happily played an hour of Deus Ex Human Revolution and kept forgetting it was happening via video streaming. On Space Marine, the rather busier scenes meant a noticeably blurrier but still tolerable picture, while the sedate Tropico 4 was genuinely startling in its visual clarity – though the image did of course degrade if I busily panned the camera around constantly. On my PC at 1920×1200 fullscreen, any and all of these games were just that bit too far gone, though of course this is just my experiential account – faster connections could make a big difference.

As for lag, I could feel a slight delay but for the games I played it wasn’t enough to impair the experience. No way I’d play a multiplayer shooter with it, but I had no problem at all headshotting [redacted's] goons in DXHR or shotgunning bandits in STALKER’s first mission (for which I picked up six spectators, all witness to my embarrassing death as I faced a wall while trying to remember what the Use Bandage button was as a man repeatedly shot me in what I think was the kidney).

I don’t think it can replace playing a game locally on your own hardware, but I think it can co-exist very happily, and pretty much right now rather than years down the line. To some extent, it’s a bit like when MP3s and YouTube first cropped up – you put up with the hit to the quality because the ease of having everything directly to hand is super.

I guess the take-home message from this, then, is don’t count OnLive out – on its own hardware and in a lounge-based situation it seems a whole lot more impressive. Those two USB ports are particularly tantaslising, too – because they in theory make this the world’s cheapest gaming PC. You’d sacrifice choice and mods and playing offline and about a thousand other aspects the modern PC gaming experience involves, but as a lounge-based companion it’s onto something.

I’m pretty sure PC gaming, in all its infinite variety doesn’t really have to worry about this as any kind of threat, though it might well become a useful companion technology in time. If I made traditional consoles though, I’d be very, very worried right now.

 

[patsu]

OnLive Brings L.A. Noire, Batman: Arkham City to Tablets
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/12/07/onlive-bring-l-a-noire-batman-arkham-city-to-tablets

After making its original announcement at this year's E3, OnLive has released a new update to its Android and iOS app to bring PC-quality high-definition gameplay to a wide range of smartphones, media players and tablet, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and even the Kindle Fire.

Available on Thursday, December 8, the new app will add complete gameplay support for any game offered on the service, which includes some of the richest, most graphically intensive titles available, such as Batman Arkham City, L.A. Noire, Assassin's Creed: Revelations and more.

...

 

[AzBat]

Here's another article giving some props to OnLive...

http://kotaku.com/5866705/heres-why-you-need-to-stop-dismissing-onlives-tablet-gaming

Shifty sounds like your tablet console may already be here. Yes, you can use the OnLive controller with any tablet.

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

2 grassroot efforts to make Xperia Play buttons compatible with OnLive:

http://www.xperiablog.net/2011/12/1...per-app-brings-xperia-play-support-to-onlive/

Last week we brought you news of a hack that you could use to get the joypad working and now another unofficial solution has sprung up in the form of the OnLive Helper app.

The app works by creating custom profiles for each game using a txt file. A template is provided here for you to follow and so far only two games are supported (LEGO Batman and DiRT3). However, it seems like a promising solution at least until OnLive get their act together and bring official Xperia PLAY support. Also, there is no need to root your phone to get this to work.

http://www.xperiablog.net/2011/12/0...makes-all-games-xperia-play-compatible-video/

OnLive, the cloud game streaming service, recently launched the OnLive app for Android smartphones and tablets. This means you can theoretically play high-end PC games on your Sony Ericsson Xperia smartphone as long as you have a decent wireless connection. One annoyance for Xperia PLAY owners is that the app is not customised to support the joypad. This means that for most games you can only use the touchscreen controls.

However, one enterprising Xperia PLAY owner, Matthew Twin, took matters into his own hands to get the Xperia PLAY joypad to work with OnLive games. He mostly got it working bar the touchpads and you can see the result in the videos below.

...

 

[whome0]

I have HPTouchpad (with rooted Android 2.3.7) and tried OnLive client. It works as expected only issue really is a controller scheme. Onscreen overlay controls don't work in most games for longer and serious gameplay sessions. I have to wait for CyanogenMod9 (android ICS 4.x) release and test how bluetooth pad controllers work.

Have bought DS3 tool (Dualshock 3 control support) android app. I''m able to use DS3 in Samsung Spica cellphone when playing emulators. It creates a new input device in android keyboard settings. Tool runs fine in HPTouchpad, bluetooth says its registered but DS3 key presses are not shown in a test dialog. Would be great to reuse existing PS3 pad in OnLive games but guess its a long shot.

 

[patsu]

OnLive now fully supports the Xperia Play, virtual thumbsticks and external controllers need not apply:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/22/onlive-now-fully-support-the-xperia-play-virtual-thumbsticks-an/

OnLive, Inc., ..., today announced that its free OnLive app for Android has been updated to support the slide-out game controls on the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY smartphone*, enabling gameplay of almost all OnLive games, including the latest AAA console-class titles.

...

"From the moment we launched our OnLive Android app, gamers began asking about Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY game control support," said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO. "We listened and delivered. Now Xperia PLAY gamers in the US and UK can play almost all of OnLive's 200 premium titles-including hit AAA games like Saints Row: The Third and Assassin's Creed: Revelations-on their Xperia PLAY smartphone with a full console-class experience, including multiplayer and social features."

[etc. etc. etc.]