GDC: Why OnLive Can't Possibly Work Comments by Richard Leadbetter

Seriously good article.

Those clips make me want to play Burnout. It actually looks quite good... but sadly my Xbox won't load the disc :/

Also do not forget that they basically will have to build datacenters with a few million high end PCs running stuff like Crysis if they want to get rid of consoles all together. Even if they do that.... games still need to be started and will need to be mirrored on some kind of NAS that will load them. This will also take time.

Since google can barely get YouTube to work smooth it really seems more like a venture capital trap.

Another point is that a lot of good video compression treats the whole video as a stream... while OnLive has to compress individual frames since it is realtime (losing some of the advanced features of video compression).

It is an interesting idea... maybe in 10 years.

"Isn't it amazing how random nay-sayers somehow know better than those that worked 7 years to create OnLive? "

A lot of us here have 10-20 years of professional software experiences behind us.... we know more or less that "state of the art" in many fields. People have been working on different facets of the technologies presented my OnLive and we are very skeptical since it goes beyond was is available right now by a wide margin. That rarely happens in computer land... is usually is a slow incremental process.

"I really want this to succeed, the idea of never having to upgrade my PC again is brilliant."

And that, is why they will probably get their investment.

that's where you're wrong. if this really worked (which would be awesome) you'd still have the problem that it would kill an entire industry; and this industry has unsaid amounts of money to burn, so in all probability they'd buy onlive and close it down. much like oil-companies do with designs for cars that run on green energy.

That's a very good article.

I don't have any propensity toward this "cloud" computing, I like the sense of property, control over my own property, and knowing exactly how and why a thing works whatever it may be. I don't get why there's billions of billions poured into turning everything into something centralized and behind-curtains if everything is working fine now. Of course it makes sense in the scenario of a conspiracy theory would put us in a few years later. Are today's computers too slow to do word processing that we need to go back to the terminals concept for that? F***

Or tinfoil producers do with the makers of paper hats, which work just as well.

Great article, sums things up nicely.

I think this could potentially be exactly what I am looking for should it work as advertised. I have all three consoles and Mac. There are a number of PC games that interest me but I don’t have the time; money or know-how to have a PC capable to playing them; plus I have a miss trust of PCs (bad history…hence the Mac)

I love the idea of merely plugging the mini console to my 50” Plasma and enjoying the occasional bout of Crysis or a good RTS or even taking around my parents place when they insist I visit them. My internet connection ranges from 11-14mb so would like to think this should at least tick that box.

Whilst the presence of large publishers is no sure sign of success, surely these companies would have insisted on a real-time demo before they gave the ok? Granted the potential new revenue streams might have blinded their judgment

I find myself sitting on the fence hoping that it works and does not take an age to reach the UK and sure that both Sony and Microsoft are watching carefully; both companies make loss on their hardware (at least during the initial launch years) perhaps a future version (maybe not the next generation) will be of this nature maybe PS4.5 will be merely a piece of software loaded into a SONY Blu-ray player or even OECD Bravia TV.

So you need a 10mb broadband connection for SD resolution.
And a 50mb broadband for HD!!

@dog2_99 "I have a miss trust of PCs (bad history…hence the Mac)"

PC = personal computer. Mac is a personal computer (PC) too. Maybe you mean you have a mistrust of the Windows operating system?

"Also do not forget that they basically will have to build datacenters with a few million high end PCs running stuff like Crysis if they want to get rid of consoles all together. Even if they do that.... games still need to be started and will need to be mirrored on some kind of NAS that will load them. This will also take time."

Yeah...never mind the latency (both incoming and outgoing) issues, the ridiculous hardware and power requirements and the fact that most people can't get close to the connection speeds promised to them by ISPs, this seems like an awful lot of work when you could just, y'know, buy a computer or a console and have it in your home where you don't have to worry that you can't play a game because a BT engineer has accidentally cut your phone line in half. And I do use my computer for other things apart from games.

It's pie-in-the-sky vapourware bullshit that, even if it worked, is just not practical for most of us, the only reason it's getting so much interest from companies is that they love the idea that you don't actually own any of the games. It would eliminate second hand sales and they can fix the prices. If you like the idea of a future where all of your media is rented on a subscription basis then by all means, buy into this bollocks.

"And with ISPs complaining about the load brought about by innovations like the BBC iPlayer, why would they want to be involved with a hugely congestive venture like OnLive?"

Revenue sharing

There's more to the latency issues here than Mr Leadbetter has touched on. Network latency is patently not the same as input latency, and it's input latency which will be this ideas biggest killer.

150ms latency on a network game does not mean that when you move your mouse, you character moves 150ms later. It means you're playing 150ms behind the server. You can compensate for that quite easily and the game is still instantly responsive anyway.

Some of the top end TFT monitors have an input lag of several milliseconds. This means the display is several milliseconds behind what you're doing with the controls, and it's enough to drive many people crazy when playing fast paced action games. But 150ms of input lag?

The laws of physics simply will not allow a latency over this OnLive system of (conservatively) less than 5 or 6 milliseconds - the speed of light is finite, after all. Add all the rest of the encoding and other challenges on top of that and you're looking at some massive latency figures that far exceed the wost input-lagging PC monitors.

The only way this system can be as responsive as a PC is with time-travel, and if they've cracked that chestnut I doubt their first thought was cloud videogaming.

@Baranga "Isn't it amazing how random nay-sayers somehow know better than those that worked 7 years to create OnLive? Someone should hire these guys."

OnLive didn't give you technical details. The article writer filled 2 pages with technical details covering everything. I fell pity for you since being given these 2 simple facts, you can call the critics "random". I can't believe people like you even exist but I guess there must be a target for bullshit marketing after all.

You are experienced with software and developement, but you still assume these guys haven't figured in 7 years what you figured in 48 hours.

People said TV, radio, telephone and Internet won't ever pick up too.

I'm curious how the beta will be. They wouldn't start it this summer if they weren't sure it works.

@JahB

Well I'm not sure who the "they" are that you are talking about. The whole indsutry isn't likely to club together to buy anything anytime soon.

And IF it works is exactly the point. I'm not convinced.

Interesting. My first reaction when hearing about though, was to check to see if it was April 1st or not...

@dog2_99 "I have a miss trust of PCs (bad history…hence the Mac)"

PC = personal computer. Mac is a personal computer (PC) too. Maybe you mean you have a mistrust of the Windows operating system?

Correct sorry! :(

Would like to add great article!

dog2_99: plug in an external drive, go to your Utilities folder and run BootCamp, install Windows on your external drive, you can now play PC games on your Mac hardware.

"I really want this to succeed, the idea of never having to upgrade my PC again is brilliant."

Yeah, (thinking of suitable metaphor of service providers) like I've never upgraded my Sky set-top-box -- analogue, digital, Sky+, Sky HD, Sky 3D (to come) -- doh! Alright then, like I've never upgraded my cable modem -- doh! Or my mobile -- doh!

You'll always have to upgrade, what if they introduced a 1080p version (rather than 720p) that would mean buying a new box -- doh!

> People said TV, radio, telephone and Internet won't ever pick up too.

Do any of them violate the physical constants of our universe? ;)

As I said before, I've been working (on and off) with technology that does exactly this for 9 years, and while it works fine in a completely controlled environment over short hauls (so a LAN) there are real problems with latency on a WAN and then scalability comes into it and pisses on your chips.

If they *have* solved these issues, why are they bothering with such a niche market instead of redefining the nature of computing?

>People said TV, radio, telephone and Internet won't ever pick up too.

No they didn't.

You are just pulling random bullshit out of your ass now.

maybe they could stream it to a gizmondo?

what happens if the game crashes?! how do you reboot? do on live plan on letting players directly reboot their hardware remotely?!

Yeah, a good article. However - Richard makes one error in his argument..

"On high-action scenes, you're going to be seeing a lot of macroblocking; it's basically inevitable."

If you watch the OnLive guy's presentation he is at pains to point out that their compression system is not stream-based, but is frame-by-frame. Each frame is compressed in isolation. In otherwords the speed and movement of a game will have no effect at all upon the quality of the video.

Anyway.. I for one really hope that this does work, but am pretty sceptical too.

@ StooMonster - yeah i have both Vista and XP on bootcamp (cant get totally away hehe)...its more Apple really is no gaming machine :( well at least my Imac and old-ish Macbookpro aren't.

I think your upgrade point is correct it will not remove such requirements but it might make the experience more user friendly. When I upgraded from Sky+ to Sky HD aside from coughing up too much money I didn’t have to sorry about conflicts; firmware updates or increasing my power management? I understand that this removes perhaps the thrill of the Windows Gamer but for a guy brought up on consoles the thought is prohibitive.

Its a trap... for VC money ;)

Actually when I first heard about it, I called bullshit. Their PR sounds like the crap that Sun Microsystems used to come out with in the 90s, the old 'The network is the computer' nonsense.

I can't imagine any serious gamer would put up with the network latency that will be present on such a system. Even if they did, they would surely have an issue with a system that only lets you play your games when the datacenter hosting them is up. What happnens when you want to play at 3 in the morning and their, no doubt, huge datacenter is offline and their call centres are closed? Do customers have any quality of service guaranteed or are we once again just revenue streams to be exploited?

It will amount to nothing and many people will invest and lose.

Even if they get it to work to an acceptable standard, what happens to games which are considered 'old' or 'out of favour', will these games get the same support and distribution their end to enable to best possible experience at home just because people arent playing them any more?

Say if i wanted to play halo3 again, in a couple of years time, would it still be accessable, or would I have to submit a request for them to load it on their servers or what?

I just cant get round the logistics of it would all work, but then i guess thats why i didnt come up with it! i cant comprehend, that they're gonna support and distribute every game they release for as long as someone wants to play it.

Sorry, rambling, but it does say speak your brain.

Hmmm shud i hav red sauce or brown sauce on my sandwich

RE: Input Latency

In the world of high end AV are Video Processors (VPs), products designed to improve video reproduction for use in home theatre their technologies get spun off into 'upscaling' optical disc players and into modern displays; these VP are made by the likes of DVDO, Lumagen, Crystalio, Calibre and others.

A couple of years ago VPs had to introduce 'game modes' for their processing, which essentially pass-through the signal from games consoles. Why? Because customers complained that when games consoles were connected to these VPs the few milliseconds of input latency lag they created (i.e. you moved your control, then thing on screen moved) by their video processing made games unplayable, particularly where accuracy is need (e.g. Mario or sports games).

This system would have latency upstream and downstream; so based on what happened with localised hardware latency I'm a skeptical of games playing right when network latency is considered.

Well, I am sure that they could play it at CERN on their Grid network. they should give it a go, and if it works, they should invest all of the goverment stimulus packages into upgrading the current Interenet infrastructure to a high end fibre network, all bells and whistles included! that would surely be a good investment.

10 years ago, the idea of YouTube would have been pretty insane.

What?! You can upload video and a server will process it in to streamable video automatically, for MILLIONS of users worldwise at the SAME TIME?!! For FREE!?!!?

Madness! You could never afford the amount of server side processing and storage! Impossible!

...It's inevitable.

"If you watch the OnLive guy's presentation he is at pains to point out that their compression system is not stream-based, but is frame-by-frame. Each frame is compressed in isolation. In otherwords the speed and movement of a game will have no effect at all upon the quality of the video. "

That makes the compression seriously fucking innefficient. That's basically a motion jpeg, which is nothing like as good as h.264 compression. If every frame is an "I Frame" then the bandwidth required will go through the roof... or the quality will go through the floor.

I can't even get an acceptable Quakeworld ping on Virgin Fecking Media. Colour me extremely sceptical.

I've got a way for it to work that involves strapping virgins to a centrifuge and feeding priests to Satan, but I just can't get anyone to fund it.

We should talk...

"What?! You can upload video and a server will process it in to streamable video automatically, for MILLIONS of users worldwise at the SAME TIME?!! For FREE!?!!?"

Big difference between streaming a video with a maximum 10 minute length and streaming a game. The YouTube servers only have to encode a video once.

I've always wondered with this stuff if it's going to mean a move away from having one machine running each instance of the game, which ever end of the network it's on - it'll be interesting if 5 or 10 years in the future we're all learning more parallel processing tricks and running many instances of our games on very large computers with lots of data sharing, which might shake things up quite a lot for the development side

@tonynibbles - "10 years ago, the idea of YouTube would have been pretty insane.

What?! You can upload video and a server will process it in to streamable video automatically, for MILLIONS of users worldwise at the SAME TIME?!! For FREE!?!!?

Madness! You could never afford the amount of server side processing and storage! Impossible!"

YouTube has pretty lousy video quality though due to horrid compression. Even the HD stuff looks poor IMO. That's not real-time video either unlike the system that OnLive are offering. It's not hard to imagine that in the real-world it'll be absolutely terrible with the streaming ruined by lag and poor video quality. I mean YouTube is hardly perfect even with SD stuff!!!

Streaming games? Isnt there an app for the ps3 ( linux ) that does this? Streams games to the ps3 to your telly. Infact Ive seen Eve Online run this way and it works okay.

>People said TV, radio, telephone and Internet won't ever pick up too.

No they didn't.

You are just pulling random bullshit out of your ass now.

Yes, they actually did. You should read A Social History of the Media: From Guttenberg to the Internet, among others.

Let's just wait three-four months 'till the beta, OK? Then we'll see who was right. OnLive's representatives have enough time to update and tweak the service, their first patents expire in 2020.
Seems to me most people here think it's an April's Fools joke. But who in their right mind would embark on such an adventure and reveal it if they wouldn't be sure it works? Even the article we're posting under provides solutions to make it work. You really think the armies of suits and consultants of all those companies who already signed up are oblivious to all the theoretical problems?

Oh-boo-hoo, their encoding is better than anyone else's. Seriously, is that a reason to doubt the service? If Sony came up with such a technology, would people still be bitching?

Am I really the only person who read this article and didnt understand the vast majority of it? I cant be surely? If so it doesn't make me feel good at the end of the day.

Come on someone join me in ignorance.

dog2_99: I play old PC games on my MCP. :)

When I upgraded from Sky+ to Sky HD aside from coughing up too much money I didn’t have to sorry about conflicts; firmware updates

First models of Sky HD had HDMI conflicts that bricked HDMI functionality of certain Pioneer plasmas.

Firmware updates, delivered over the air, to Sky HD have caused recording problems and all sorts of shenanigans. I also note that their big planned major NXE type update to the GUI has been pulled (was due to launch last September); I guess that is due to bugs or hardware compatibilities (there were a lot of models of Sky Digital boxes from many manufacturers).

@tonynibbles, sure it's inevitable. The argument is that the next tech generation needed to bring this to life, ain't gonna happen 'till summer.

The tech can move along all it likes but if the problem you're running into is with one of the laws of physics it's not going to do you much good.

What's the betting that if this doesn't work someone will be back with something very similar that uses Quantum computing and entangled photons in a couple of years :)

Coin-Op wrote:

"This is the guy who wrote a essay on how choppy....
So forgive me if I don't give a fuck what Richie Rich says from now on ."

Go ahead ignore real factual findings, while the rest of us just ignores you :-)

Once 50 meg and up broadband is the standard globally, then I can imagine it being possible. But it just seems economically dubious to me that the service provider can keep the system going AND meet the demands a consumer base large enough to make it commercially viable would place upon their systems.


...did any of these guys by any chance work for a company by the name of "Infinium"?

@ StooMonster I agree that very few upgrades are perfectly executed but I think to the average Joe in the street this model (of upgrades mainly being performed behind the scenes by Online or whomever) is vastly more appealing than doing it themselves.

With regards to compression, I'd like to know what the picture implications would be of compressing the data, rather than the video- essentially sending 60 .bmp files in .rar format every second, and unzipping them at the other end, rather than any attempt at video- would this be faster server-side, or require less data transfer?

Let's put it this way, when Cloud computing comes along and companies ARE able to provide this kid of service, then the OnLive guys will be able to get lots of money via the patent.

Let's put it this way, when Cloud computing comes along and companies ARE able to provide this kid of service, then the OnLive guys will be able to get lots of money via the patent.

Wouldn't be so sure, at least four different companies have been working on the same system for years. There'll be YEARS of legal action ahead on this one.

"What happnens when you want to play at 3 in the morning and their, no doubt, huge datacenter is offline and their call centres are closed?"

I think the one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that they wouldn't shut the service down at night. Your internet connection doesn't close down at night, so no reason to assume this would.

This all very much smells of some sort of investor scam. It sounds fantasic until you actually understand the technical barriers they have to overcome. Aside from the latency issues (maybe they have invented stabel worm holes) I can not see anyway that they could make money off of this given what their hardware requirements will be at each data centre.

To me this seems to be aiming at investors who have seen gaming go mass market with the Wii and are now looking to get in early on whatever the next big thing is going to be.

It's certainly going to be interesting to see how well the Beta stacks up and if any memebers of the general public ever get to be Beta testers.

Another thing to take into account is the amount of protection money they'll have to pay the Russian mafia not to DDoS them all the time.