Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?

[djskribbles]

I'm pretty sure that he's doubting that cloud computing can be as helpful as you were suggesting.

 

[Rangers]

Is it really that hard to imagine. Let's say a game is significantly compute bound, ooo like say the BF series. Of the compute tasks required for the game 15% can tolerate some latency. That 15% can happen in the cloud. The 15% decrease in compute may lead to 5 to 30% improvement a graphical performance depending on how bound the game was.

Pretty much.

I'm not expecting miracles but if they could say, offload even one CPU core's worth of processing to start, you know, that's good. That's more than MS's 150 mhz upclock (which amounted to 3/4 of one core).

I put cloud in the "interesting, dont count it out" category, even if it seems no show at launch (besides all the dedi server stuff, which alone is great).

It's interesting to hear a fresh round of MS touting it after they'd seemingly gone a bit dark on the topic for a few weeks (which could have been read as a bad sign).

 

[dumbo11]

Is it really that hard to imagine. Let's say a game is significantly compute bound, ooo like say the BF series. Of the compute tasks required for the game 15% can tolerate some latency. That 15% can happen in the cloud. The 15% decrease in compute may lead to 5 to 30% improvement a graphical performance depending on how bound the game was.

If you can think of 15% that can be offloaded, yes. (tasks not sensitive to latency, upload/download bandwidth and [ideally] able to withstand short periods of unreliability).

AFAICT, after 41+ pages of discussion, we're still looking at whether 1% is possible.

 

[function]

For multi-player games you could run physics, bot AI, map destruction, and possibly elements of the lighting model at a much higher level of detail than a single host machine could process. You then update clients as appropriate for their needs.

Could be a big win if you're calculating once at higher quality instead of 32 times at lower quality. Might even save power consumption relative to having 32 more powerful client/peer machines.

For games that require online anyhoo you might as well make the the experience as impressive, low latency and network tolerant as possible. Fuck host machines. That's a really shit solution.

For online multiplayer, free cloud storage and processing is a much bigger thing than minor cpu and gpu differences. I just hope that this potential isn't gimpified because PC and PS4 don't offer it for free.

This is actually worth paying for Gold for (as opposed to the current fairly tepid offering).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For multi-player games...

For multiplayer games on dedicated servers, you can (and do) do that anyway (within limits, due to the BW and latency limitations impacting opportunities for things like physics calculations). That's not really cloud computing as extolled, nor anything new. The question is what cloud computing can add to the local experience by taking local workloads off the local machine's hands. If nothing can be added in that regard, and the only advantage of the platform is for online multiplayer games, then the answer to the thread question is effectively 'no'. Remote gaming and dedicated servers (both of which could be run on MS's platform) are two different uses of remote computers to cloud computing.

 

[function]

When you're looking at multiplayer games that would otherwise be designed for running on host machines (as with most current games and iirc even the new PS4 Killzone) then moving work to the cloud could have a huge impact on scope and quality. In the context of what current platforms then we are definitely talking about a "transition to the cloud" as per the thread title.

And while server side processing is most certainly not something new, an automatically scalable resource based on a particular game's needs at given time, available for free to every game on the level of an entire platform, and with tight integration to the platform SDK, is most certainly something completely new and completely unique and potentially game changing (pun intended) over the long run.

If we want to keep this discussion based on single player games that have no multilayer elements then the above doesn't warrant further discussion here - although this thread is better than any other to host that discussion afaics - but the truth is that what MS is offering is (as already stated) something completely new, unique and very, very powerful.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

When you're looking at multiplayer games that would otherwise be designed for running on host machines (as with most current games and iirc even the new PS4 Killzone) then moving work to the cloud could have a huge impact on scope and quality.

Moving locally hosted multiplayer to servers, whether distributed across servers in a cloud configuration or with dedicated boxes per game, is online hosting and not cloud computing augmenting consoles.

And while server side processing is most certainly not something new, an automatically scalable resource based on a particular game's needs at given time...If we want to keep this discussion based on single player games that have no multilayer elements then the above doesn't warrant further discussion here - although this thread is better than any other to host that discussion afaics

Feel free to start a discussion on what dedicated servers and online multiplayer advantages/changes there are. I consider that a discrete topic. Everything you have talked about can be achieved with static online servers, so isn't unique to cloud computing. Cloud computing can offer a cost advantage for such online servers, but that's a top of server economics and not cloud compute.

Cloud computing isn't limited to single player games. You could have, for example, a server computing GI lighting for a dynamically deformed world, and sending that lighting info to each player. However, if your doing that server side, one may as well shift the whole game computation to the server, at which point it become server-based gaming and not cloud computation.

 

[scently]

Moving locally hosted multiplayer to servers, whether distributed across servers in a cloud configuration or with dedicated boxes per game, is online hosting and not cloud computing augmenting consoles.

Feel free to start a discussion on what dedicated servers and online multiplayer advantages/changes there are. I consider that a discrete topic. Everything you have talked about can be achieved with static online servers, so isn't unique to cloud computing. Cloud computing can offer a cost advantage for such online servers, but that's a top of server economics and not cloud compute.

Cloud computing isn't limited to single player games. You could have, for example, a server computing GI lighting for a dynamically deformed world, and sending that lighting info to each player. However, if your doing that server side, one may as well shift the whole game computation to the server, at which point it become server-based gaming and not cloud computation.

This is not explicitly true, and already here in this thread and forum, we have discussed the fact that not all tasks are suited to cloud compute. The idea is that those tasks that will benefit from the advantages of cloud could be moved to it, freeing up some more local resources for those that needs low latency access. Augmentation is the key word/concept here.

The coming generation will evolve as time goes by, just as the PS3 and the 360 are vastly different and more capable devices compared to the state in which they where launched all those years ago. As this is now a feature of the platform that developers can take advantage of (and FREE), expect to see more uses of It, both novel and as a refinement of previous techniques. I think it will be wrong to discount it because we can't quite think of a way in which it will be used that isn't an extension of the typical use case.

PS: At the start of this current gen, we didn't have SSAO, but now we do and its cheaper than it was at the start, yet your ps360 and mine are still the same machine eh.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

MS providing a service for free or not isn't a technical discussion on what cloud computing can offer. This is a hypothetical, platform agnostic discussion.

Misplaced discussion moved to rumour thread as I couldn't be bothered to find somewhere better for it. May warrant its own thread if someone wants to compare value of the service.

 

[adev]

Virtualized GPUs... http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/10/16/how-vmware-delivers-rich-virtual-graphics-with-nvidia-grid/

The GPU in the Xbox One sits behind a Hypervisor. I wonder if they are considering this model for Cloud game streaming (Gaikai style) down the line.

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate thread for wild Xbox One cloud speculation, I just found the parallels between this article and the GPU virtualization on the Xbox One interesting.

 

[MarkoIt]

Let me do a consideration: if really the cloud compute thing is useful in improving realtime graphics, than Microsoft would have done a tech demo on it. Instead, the only thing we got it's Drive Avatar, which is great, but it's not realtime graphics. So, it may help the game overall, but i don't expect too much from the "power of the cloud".

 

[adev]

Microsoft haven't made any GPU compute or rendering capabilities available via Azure yet, this is all pure speculation but you can imagine it will be available at some point.

NVidia GRID is working behind a hypervisor.

The Xbox One has a virtualized GPU.

AMD is utilising PCoIP from Teradici.

It's fun to speculate sometimes

Microsoft also has RemoteFX: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817578(v=ws.10).aspx more speculation from years ago http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/br...ktops-apps-and-xbox-games-from-the-cloud.aspx

 

[pMax]

The Xbox One has a virtualized GPU.
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/br...ktops-apps-and-xbox-games-from-the-cloud.aspx

I was expecting this, but did MS publicly admitted that?

On a more practical side, given they have win8 on the other side of the hypervisor, do they PAGE also GPU memory as well in it??? I cannot imagine otherwise...

 

[adev]

Yes, in the Eurogamer interview.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-complete-xbox-one-interview

 

[Ceger]

Let me do a consideration: if really the cloud compute thing is useful in improving realtime graphics, than Microsoft would have done a tech demo on it. Instead, the only thing we got it's Drive Avatar, which is great, but it's not realtime graphics. So, it may help the game overall, but i don't expect too much from the "power of the cloud".

There was the NASA asteroid demo which demonstrated something different than Forza, but necessarily GPU as it is CPU at face level...

Using just the Xbox One hardware, Microsoft engineers showed off a concept application that mapped the orbital velocities of 40,000 asteroids from Mars to Jupiter. The effort required roughly 10 times the computing capacity of any of the current generation of consoles.
By tapping into the scalable cloud computing capability available to the Xbox One, the console scaled up to calculating 300,000 asteroids at once. Orbits were tracked at roughly 500,000 updates per second, creating an impressive visualization of the potential that off-site servers bring to bear on Xbox gaming. Real world applications of the Xbox One’s cloud connection could result in near-infinite and persistent worlds within games.

source: http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/201...o-asteroid-maps-next-gen-kinect-and-football/

 

[fehu]

I've downloaded windows 8.1, I'm upgrading all the visual studio express, I'm doing it togheter with the rest of the world and any download is fast.
Now I'm convinced, don't know what it's possible to do server side, but the one that can do it is microsoft

 

[-tkf-]

Is this old?
http://www.computerbild.de/artikel/cbs-News-Hardware-Xbox-One-7753883.html

What it says is that Cloud services are limited to Gold users, because it's essentially multiplayer games that takes advantage of the cloud. Which makes me wonder, was there any word on how Forza 5 would work without XBOX Gold? They just disable the cloud services/features for gamers without Gold?

But it makes sense since what we have seen until now is nothing really new or groundbreaking compared to multiplayer games since forever. And with Cloud services being part of Multiplayer games and not Single player games it doesn't matter that it requires gold.

With that being said, even if it is glorified dedicated servers it's still a very good thing that Microsoft took it on themselve to build and run it.

 

[Gipsel]

Sounds like a direct contradiction to earlier statements. Don't know if it is just a misunderstanding.

 

[fehu]

it can be an error in transaltion
maybe he's only referring to multiplayer support offloaded to their server, and if you want to multiplay you must be a gold

 

[Gipsel]

it can be an error in transaltion
maybe he's only referring to multiplayer support offloaded to their server, and if you want to multiplay you must be a gold

Sounds a bit like that, but judge for yourself. My rough translation for the non Germans:

Since months MS emphasizes that the XB1 doesn't use only the power within the console, additional oomph should come from from the so-called cloud in external data centers. An interesting approach, but one which requires an internet connection. Since online services are usually coupled to Xbox Live gold membership on the XBox, the question arises if also the cloud is reserved to MS' premium members.

Talking to John Bruno, lead program manager of the XBox Live service, CBS digged deeper and wanted to know: Do only gold members have access to the cloud?
Bruno had difficulties with a clear answer and explained that cloud calculations are primarily employed in connection with multiplayer games. Multiplayer modes are in turn restricted to gold members, hence it is "technically correct", that the cloud service is coupled to a gold membership.