Game Streaming Platforms and Technology (xCloud, PSNow, Stadia, GeforceNow, Luna)

If you want to get into a semantics argument I suggest you go find a five year old. I'm sure we will both enjoy that more.

 

That's what this is all about, semantics....

 

Semantics aren't the same as legal distinctions.

 

Thanks to @Eolirin for pointing this out in the MS Acquisition thread...

https://bethesda.net/en/game/orion



WHAT IS ORION?
Orion is technology that enhances the experience of a streamed game. Orion technology reduces latency and bandwidth while streaming a game, making streamed games accessible to more people, in more areas, at higher quality.

Orion is a game- and platform-agnostic technology that optimizes game engines for streaming. In contrast to game streaming services that focus on hardware solutions to stream games, Orion is a game engine-level software solution. Integrated within the game engine itself, Orion can achieve dramatic latency reductions of up to 20% per frame as well as up to a 40% reduction in required bandwidth.

What is Orion?
Orion is patented game streaming technology that optimizes game engine performance in the cloud. It is game engine and cloud platform agnostic.

Who is it for?
Orion technology will make streaming games better for everyone. Orion was designed to improve the player experience by mitigating latency and reducing bandwidth requirements. Orion was also created for publishers, streaming providers, and developers to lower their streaming costs and ensure that games perform at the high quality they intended. Orion makes it possible for streamed video games to reach more players in more places without compromising quality.

For players, Orion means enjoying high-speed performance with imperceptible latency even in a twitchy shooter; lower usage against ISP bandwidth caps; and a wider availability, making quality play available to players living far from data centers.

For developers, the Orion SDK is easily integrated into a game, which means they can be confident in delivering a best-in-class streaming experience to players, with minimal additional effort.

For streaming providers, Orion means reaching a bigger audience, at reduced costs, with a superior level of service. Orion makes possible substantially reduced capital investments in data centers, and can materially lower the cost in operating a streaming service.

 

Orion announced in June 2019 and nothing since?

 

Interesting, its a SDK so would mean some level of code update.

If works as advertised MS could roll it into their cloud aware api. To reduce latency some more.

 

Another new platform enters the fold from Amazon, called Luna.

The general discussion thread for that is over here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/amazon-luna-cloud-gaming-2020.62028/

 

I dont think Sony can compete. All the other companies providing cloud services are betting on streaming games running through PCs which are upgradeable and can provide higher end experiences that are subject to the streaming quality.

MS will offer also local and streaming services which are not subject to the fixed console hardware.

Google, Amazon and MS own huge servers and infrastructures.

Sony has to rent infrastructure, and almost of their PS games exist on PC which can run them at higher settings than Playstation. Sony differentiates itself only through some exclusives but all the other companies will have exclusives too and can go above the console settings.

I dont know whats in PS Now that can compete against those multi billion companies where they specialize in markets were they generate billions of profits, act almost as monopolies or massive market leaders

 

Still have that same thought now?

 

Well Nvidia service was too good so the big publishers killed it. Google service was looking very promising too...until it actually launched. Let's see how Amazon fare.

 

Luna uses windows + turing t4. Also other interesting information in arstechnica article.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020...-existing-windows-games-on-turing-level-gpus/

 

Interesting. Want to see how much it costs. They have to pay for the hardware, windows licenses and pubs licensing fees.

I wonder why a service like Stadia and Luna doesn’t just provide the hardware and underlying service support while just charging the pubs to host their own subscription service. Have the pubs work with MS regarding the cost of window instances.

 

They already have a lot of hardware / licence agreements for EC2 G4 instances. There's a cost if they need more specifically for Luna. It's a question of how much more,and how much non Luna utilisation it also sees.

 

No they killed it because they didn't sign licensing deals, Nvidia has always sailed close to the wind legally so their lawyers clearly told then "Not a hope here sunshine"

 

And this is the smart way to do it. Fast web-front end and no platform-specific app development. This really demonstrates the different mindset of the operations sides of Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon bee-lined standard web technologies but they are the original web commerce, it's all they've ever known.

 

I wouldn't say spending over 2 years working on it as being "bee-lined". I'm going by Eastman's statement that development was ongoing when he worked at Amazon. They just kept it out of the public knowledge space so when it announced it looked like they were so quick with it.

 

Luna and soon Gamepass as progressive web apps. I wonder if Apple expected this eventual outcome from supporting them? I guess they had no choice. It would be hard for them to justify breaking standards.

 

Apple still has only limited support for PWA in iOS 14. Personally I think the majority of those so-called "apps" are not necessary, as they can be easily replaced with a PWA, or even a simple web site.
Apple even says something like this in their App Store review guideline:

So at least they are not entirely against it, but I do hope they have better support for PWA.

 

Haven't seen these videos talking about Gamebus shared here.

@21:37

 

Daft question alert:

With the talk of VRR for next gen it got me thinking how this might apply to game streaming.

Can you encode a video stream with a variable frame time, and if so can a VRR screen play it at as the frames arrive to try and avoid frame time fluctuations. Time from server to client will fluctuate so the quicker a frame can leave the better the chance it arrives in time, if it does not VRR would mean it can be displayed without waiting for the next natural refresh?

I lack deep understanding in both vsync and VRR despiite watching many videos on it.

What if we invert that and the cloud actually retards it's own frame start time effectively allowing extra time for controller response and then uses dynamic resolution or VRS to generate the frame in whatever budget it now has. The higher the latency to you the more the server reduces quality so it can hang on as late as possible to get input.

Again possibly daft questions, but it seems for cloud it will be a sum of many small gains that help it, so every little helps.