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

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

 

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).

 

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.

 

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).

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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".

 

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

 

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...

 

Yes, in the Eurogamer interview.

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

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: