Microsoft Xbox Reveal Event - May 21, 2013

Status
Not open for further replies.
Believe what you like, Brad. Unfortunately for your worldview, I've actually seen it working.

OK, can you give some examples of a job that would be done on the cloud that would meaningfully impact the gameplay simulation without impacting performance and can be accomplished on a 80KB up/1200KB down connection?
 
They did pretty much what I'd expect, concentrate on what Sony didn't, the overall experience of using the box.
Sorry but either the overall experience is boring or they didnt really show important aspects of the experience.
Sony showed a better idea of the gaming experience with actual gameplay and footage that showed some form of interaction with games/demos.

They also demonstrated aspects that were related to gaming experience such us sharing your gameplay with friends and having the ability share remote play.

Talking to the console to control it is something that I have tried with the 360. Nothing really new. It only does it better. Talking to the console is not something many like doing routinely

The seamless switching from one app to the other was pretty much expected and it is something that is evolving and becoming standard with devices we already own. Its good, but nothing exciting

And the TV stuff was pretty much useless for many of us. Especially those of us living outside the US.

And at a very personal level for me its even worse because I get pissed off when they are trying to sell me political propaganda and stupid reality shows in any way. And they tell me this new XBOX One will be the perfect medium to watch that crap. My TV doesnt switch on (unless its for gaming or to watch a movie) because I am tired of the trash they are trying to feed my brain with. And when they are trying to sell me this as an advantage they are really underestimating my intelligence.
 
But that still doesn't improve the roughly million times worse latency compared to PCI-e on PC.

Which is why I believe it can't be used for immediate kinds of things. But it can enhance RPG and sandbox type games significantly, running AI and simulations on things out of the player's current area. Like you can plant a garden and come back later to see how it developed, or set two factions against each other and see a result based on how well they were prepared. Or erode the land in a Populous-type game and so on.

Basically it can work with any data- and computing intensive calculations that are latency tolerant.
 
Oh, why thank you sir ;)

I don't think they'd know about the other stuff unfortunately.

Fair enough. If you could, however, ask them for clarification on the following:

From what I gather your initial statements were that games were running as VMs. However, from the conference I get a slightly different impression. One, they specifically mention 3 OSes. First and foremost being the hypervisor (derived from Hyper-V tech). On top of the hypervisor, you have two OSes running. The system OS (referred to as the Apps OS) which has a Windows kernel (they didn't clarify which Win kernel) and a game OS which they specifically mention as being lower level then what they've previously done. Based on that it would seem to me the actual VMs are the Apps and Games OSes, and that the games run in the Game OS as an application and not really as VMs. I'm curious to know if that is the case or not. Functionally, that's quite different. Although, now that I think about it, the game OS could be contained within each individual game. Essentially loading the game OS means loading an actual game (which means there is no game OS loaded that's just waiting to run a "game application"). That would make what was said at the conference and what your source said both true. Very curious about that.

On a side note, they also specifically mentioned guaranteed resources for both the game OS and the Apps OS. Guaranteed resources from a hypervisor's perspective almost always indicates resource reservations (versus resource pools). Which would seem to lend credence to the rumors of a hefty chunk of CPU and memory resources being reserved for what at the time was considered the "OS". In actuality its the Apps OS (which is the booting OS) that has the reservation. Makes a lot of sense now. I do wonder if anything is set aside for the hypervisor, though? They normally don't need much at all, nor less reserved.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I can think of some MP-related functions that can be hosted on a cloud service. The server-side code could take player shot vectors and serve as an arbiter for player movement, level geometry, and hit events.

The level of detail for hit geometry for something like destructable terrain or characters would be lower. Fleshing out the details would be better left to the consoles themselves. These are already lag-affected elements already, so it can't be worse.
 
It doesn't record TV. All that appears to be accomplished using the HDMI passthrough, so any recording capabilities would be dependent on the TV box you have. When you tell Xbox to change the channel the Xbox just passes the command along to your DVR or tuner.

Cheers. So basically it is just a different skin to the existing TV guide that I already use. Except the TV guide (and planner with recorded TV) that I currently use is designed for the service which it serves where-as the xbox provided one would presumaby be generic and thus sub optimal.

I'm very dubious until I see this in action, I currently see it as having as much potential to inconvenience my TV experience as to improve it.
 
I do wonder what will happen with Windows Media Center, if the X1 does not have an app for this like the 360 I would not be interested in switching all my consoles over.
 
Does Europe not have a crazy obsessions with managing fantasy sports teams like proper football (FIFA manager or the like) etc?
People interested in managing virtual football teams are those that play Football Manager. An actual football managing game
 
I've actually seen it working.
How could it possibly? Cloud computing which is completely impervious to bandwidth/latency limitations does not exist. What you have seen cannot be what has been claimed in these videos, because how would the game continue to function smoothly and correctly while your internet connection is having repeated 500ms+ hiccups for example, through the power of magic pixie dust perhaps...?
 
maybe they doubled the ESRAM to 64 MB? That would take care of the "missing transistors" and the memory bandwidth.

If they really doubled it you're looking at a 3.2 billion transistor ESRAM and the ability to claim 270GB/s+ bandwidth. I don't think so.
 
I have doubts about how long the cloud compute stuff will be relevant. Sure you get more control (for MS/publishers) and a potentially more coherent experience, but... compute power in devices is going to continue to scale. It may make sense today, but in 3 years when many tablets have a better CPU, some with just as much or more bandwidth? IOW, I don't see any reason to expect local, personal compute resources to not continue to scale at a fairly dramatic rate.
 
OK, can you give some examples of a job that would be done on the cloud that would meaningfully impact the gameplay simulation without impacting performance and can be accomplished on a 80KB up/1200KB down connection?

Path finding
AI for none local enemies
Persistent world stuff
One world shared between multiple people

There are lots of things that don't require instantaneous response in a game.
The only real criteria is that the cloud have data available, and the computational cost be relatively speaking large compared to the result packet size.

You could do all of that with your own services today though, it's just not worthwhile.
Having said that, it won't be ubiquitously used unless it's free and it doesn't cut out a lot of your market.

The more interesting things to me is the possibility of persistent state when not playing, allowing interaction potentially from other devices.
 
. Based on that it would seem to me the actual VMs are the Apps and Games OSes, and that the games run in the Game OS as an application and not really as VMs. I'm curious to know if that is the case or not. Functionally, that's quite different. Although, now that I think about it, the game OS could be contained within each individual game. Essentially loading the game OS means loading an actual game (which means there is no game OS loaded that's just waiting to run a "game application"). That would make what was said at the conference and what your source said both true. Very curious about that.
Yes, games are shipped as encrypted, self contained VMs with everything needed to run the game already on there. The hypervisor just loads the VM into memory and goes from there.


I do wonder if anything is set aside for the hypervisor, though? They normally don't need much at all, nor less reserved.

I think it'd all be part of the existing system reservation.

These are all my VM related post by the way:
http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1736331&postcount=3210
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Path finding
AI for none local enemies
Persistent world stuff
One world shared between multiple people

There are lots of things that don't require instantaneous response in a game.
The only real criteria is that the cloud have data available, and the computational cost be relatively speaking large compared to the result packet size.

You could do all of that with your own services today though, it's just not worthwhile.
Having said that, it won't be ubiquitously used unless it's free and it doesn't cut out a lot of your market.

The more interesting things to me is the possibility of persistent state when not playing, allowing interaction potentially from other devices.

Sounds like basically stuff you have MMORPG servers do.
 
Yes, games are shipped as encrypted, self contained VMs with everything needed to run the game already on there. The hypervisor just boots the VM and it goes from there.

Also means you don't need to do title updates and the like to update your machine ( or the game OS VM if it worked like that) to play newer games.

These are all my VM related post by the way:
http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1736331&postcount=3210

Ah I see, excellent. I spend too much time with infrastructure so the system using a hypervisor and running VMs gets me way more excited then it should. Independent of the end result to me as a consumer its damn interesting stuff. :D

I think it'd all be part of the existing system reservation.

I would expect so too.
 
Also means you don't need to do title updates and the like to update your machine ( or the game OS VM if it worked like that) to play newer games.
What, how do you reach that conclusion, would the console load a full OS also each time you load up a game? That'd be really nuts. Besides, I don't see how it would obsolete either title or OS updates. If anything it would complicate updates, if everything sits encrypted inside a VM as if the title was actually running on a system even when stored on disc. MS hasn't made an OS yet that can be updated without constant restarts and shit. ;)
 
Cheers. So basically it is just a different skin to the existing TV guide that I already use. Except the TV guide (and planner with recorded TV) that I currently use is designed for the service which it serves where-as the xbox provided one would presumaby be generic and thus sub optimal.

I'm very dubious until I see this in action, I currently see it as having as much potential to inconvenience my TV experience as to improve it.

I would be very happy with my console changing STB channels without some ugly hacks. STB interfaces and management are simply slow and terrible. Xbox One even looks like one, it should be able to act like one (TM). :)
Of course many smartphones/tablets come with infrared nowadays so that feature is a little mute.

Also one needs to check power consumption for TV passthrough and additional hardware requirements before a decision but of all the things I read from the reveal TV control feature seems to be most positive to be honest, however minor.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top