News OnLive will work, says founder

but at what time of the day do you do those two hours? i very much doubt much is done at 5 in the morning, but that is the time you would probably find your concurrent pc isnt being used (or attempting to be used) by 10 other people.

plus, if my 8mb connection fails to provide me with a decent game of l4d at peak times i cant see how its going to be able to play crysis at 720p on a pc 1000 miles away. seems to me at least here in the uk our infrastructure is nowhere near good enough yet, i think someone else said they should have tried this in japan or similar fibre countries first, why start in europe?

the fact that all these major companies have invested in this shows it has potential, whether that potential can physically be realised is another matter. for one thing i definately dont think this is 'omg the end of the hardware industry!!!1111!1!1' there are always gonna be people (current pc gamers) who want to play their games any time they like, without 35-40ms lag and at a higher res than 1280x720. in fact we could find more people coming over to our side of the tracks once they've tried some of these titles and want to see the full extent of pc gaming.

time will tell, its certainly going to be interesting either way!

 

same, even if it works I can't see my Virgin powered conn being able to handle this

 

They tested it live from a server 50 miles away, not a LAN connection.

 

And according to what I've heard from journalists I trust, such as the Idle Thumbs group, there was still a noticeable feeling of delay in some of the games they had at GDC.

 

What if the servers go down? You can't play any games.

 

If that's 5mpbs sustained, I can see ISPs fighting this. They might expect you to grab a sizeable chunk of the upstream feed for a short period (file download, for example) but in their shared model, pulling off a 5mbps chunk (per user) for a sustained period of time is going to result in limits or outright banning... or price increases.

 

And what kind of connection did they have between the client and that server? Not a domestic DSL line, I bet. Also, how many subscribers will live within 50 miles of the 2 servers they are rolling out at launch? My point was that the technology may work acceptably in controlled "best case scenario" conditions, but I would be surprised if the experience is as good in the real world.

 

They say in that article that 40ms is an expected average, maximum of 80ms, try my little latency experiment I find 60ms or less playable, and I'm not a particularly fussy or hardcore gamer, so I think they're going to need a better maximum round trip latency than 80ms if they want to dominate the market.

 

*facepalm*

Yep, my bad. Either way, I use Citirx on a daily basis (exactly the same concept, but for Office apps) and any kind of delay at all (let alone 40ms) is not only very noticeable but very annoying. The problem is when you do anything that is not based on *looking*, *acting*, *looking to see if it worked*, *acting again*. A lot of time gameplay is not like this, you pre-empt what your actions will do.

Take an FPS. You see an enemy is 15 degrees to your left, so you spin and shoot. You don't think about it, you just react and you get the kill. With a 40ms delay on your input affecting the screen's update, and given this latency will change over time (it may jump from 40 to 50 and back again in a second) you'll probably not only miss, but you won't even know if you aimed correctly until the game catches up. What's more, the command to "fire" may make it to the server quicker than the command to "turn". This is the Internet afterall, and you end up shooting too early. You end up doing everything half as fast because you're not 100% sure of what effect your inputs will have.

I really hope to be proven wrong, but it was a real shock to the system when I started using Citrix. Even just opening the file menu and pressing New on Excel suddenly felt awkward and difficult. You have to go to File, press open, wait, then move down to the New and click on it, and wait. This would totally kill a quick-reaction game.

 

Good test, but totally different in an FPS, any slight lag is annoying, it's smooth or nothing.

And with that block, 80ms was fine for me, and I used to be a hardcore FPSer.

 

I couldn't think of who had something like OnLive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel

 

Let say it work IF and only IF you're the only one who is playing a game. What happen when 100, 500, 1000.... of people wanted to play the same game you're playing? That's remain to be seen to believe.

 

not even, with virtualization, one server can probably run 4 or more people depending on the game, on top of what you said they'll be for concurrent users. That's way more efficient they can have 4x the amount of users on a £1700, and make more money that if it were 1:1, pc:active user.

 

Wait, Epic gave their stamp of approval?

I need OnLive!!!11

Because everyone knows Gears of Lag provides the best online gaming experience...ever..

 

Been playing FIFA 09 on PS3, and that for me is laggy, even those both connections are smooth, the delay with SP vs MP is pretty big for me anyway.