OnLive - Why Linux Gamers Should Take Notice

[Dragonlord]

I commented on this already on another place so I make it short: Huge pile of shit. Another hype-bubble to burst in the face of the people. On a LAN this is barely possible ( anybody who did Video Streaming knows what I talk about ). Furthermore to get this data across the wire you had to compress it a big time. So a small resolution and all riddled with compression artifacts? That's not gaming, that's a joke.

As mentioned, the solution looks different... and Cloud-Computing is not part of it

EDIT: Oh and another fine one. Somebody hates game XYZ... let's go and DDoS the servers. Whoops... nobody in the world can play the game anymore. Old rule of system maintenance: POF... Point Of Failure. If all goes through one bottle neck it requires only this bottle neck to break down and your entire system breaks down.

[Svartalf]

^ Others have reported that it worked as well. It's playable at GDC. Looks like everyone here is closed minded.

It has absolutely NOTHING to do with closed-mindedness...

1) It doesn't HELP Linux gaming. Seriously. It doesn't help WINDOWS gaming either, if you want to get down to brass tacks. It's a walled garden much like a console, but it brings all the negatives of the vapor Phantom console along with latency concerns.

2) If you've never dealt with latency or scaling on something like this, you'd think they'd gotten a good answer. The problem is, all they're doing is providing a "slick" remote framebuffer and user interface device communications protocol. Seriously. Ever try doing VNC over high latency links? If you've not done so, you're in for a shock if you think that this will scale at all well or not have serious latency issues when the userbase gets larger.

3) There's always a lot of snake oil in the game dev industry. And all the big players jump on board "just in case". This isn't any exception to the rule.

Before you discount my remarks as being part of the "competition", I, not LGP, as a consultant to MANY companies over the many years, have been at doing development for quite a few massively distributed client/server systems in my day. This isn't the way to make gaming work.

[Jonsul]

I joined just to chime in my opinion.
Seems like it's too big an opportunity to miss to me. Imagine if anyone is wrong, and this works amazingly.
Also the game isn't streamed, but the video output is. Technically it's netflix with controls. Also they appear to have developed 'revolutionary' compression technology that near gets rid of lag. Yeah it's alot to take in, and may be crap. But if it's true it could be amazing.

Imagine all the netbook users who can play Prince of Persia, Crysis, or Burnout on their computers! It could change everything.

Plus it can't be garbage. EA, Ubisoft, Eidos, Take2, and Atari must have signed on for a reason. It's a big step to take, supporting a new system, and the fact that so many have signed up with their big name games means their must be something about it.
Honestly I've checked there isn't anything at all like this. No games are stored on the computer at all. Everything is done in servers and the output is sent to you while your input goes to them. It's completely windows and platform independent, all they need to do is have a program that connects to the stream and send out input.

And have you seen the microconsole for it! My MP3 player is bigger then it! Seriously this thing that plays Crysis at full speed is smaller then my hand. It completely takes out the hardware from the picture 90%

You all should really research it. Quite amazing if it's compression technology is as good as they say.

[Wyatt]

...Imagine if anyone is wrong, and this works amazingly....EA, Ubisoft, Eidos, Take2, and Atari must have signed on for a reason....

You know, I feel like you completely ignored Svartalf up there. See, look at 'em, I think he's gonna cry! You might want to apologise.

Also, This cnet article provides some decent insight: "...no lag, so long as their Internet connections meet minimum thresholds. For standard-definition play, that would mean a minimum 1.5 Mbps connection, and for high-def, 5 Mbps."

Now, I don't know if you've all seen what passes for "high definition" these days, but we've had computers, monitors, and games that have been able to do it for more than a decade now. Colour me cynical.

[Pfanne]

if it works, then: hell yeah!
if it doesnt: who cares?
no need to get all aggressive.

[Dosfish]

why not use http://www.streammygame.com, it even has a linux client, if you want to go down that road.

[kUrb1a]

Yea,I even tryed SMG and it's pretty impressive.but it was long time ago when i tried it.And why everyone making suck a fuzz about it.I remember when I saw this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4cUl9WFv7g for the first time!Nothing is changed.

[Dragonlord]

Revolutionary compression? My laugh. There's a certain threshold you can't go below and this is mathematically proven. It's vapor-tech but they know how to wrap it up in honey. You know the .COM bubble also had huge names on board and it burst because it was hype-shit. This is technical and practical nonsense. You can NOT nullify lag. And for those not in the know lag means:

Lag = Static-Latency + Dynamic-Latency.

Static-Latency is stuff like round-trip-time and processing overhead on the routers in between. This can not be avoided, is always there and is already quite a large number. Then on top of this we have Dynamic-Latency which is all sorts of unpredictable slow-downs which can happen all along the way. Sum this up and double the number as your input has to travel down ( 1-way ) and then the image back up ( 2-way ). Try to play a shooter with that much latency.

Note: Some might object that you can use video compression tricks like motion prediction and such. Problem is only that games are a highly in-coherensive experience. In game-dev we call this frame-to-frame coherence. Some stuff changes slightly over time but many things don't... and graphics do NOT belong in this category.

[RealNC]

This is pushed like crazy not because it works (it's over the net, it CAN'T work), but because of people not being able anymore to get warez games over p2p. That's what the companies are after. This ensures that you pay to play. If it works or not doesn't really matter, as long as they get more money.

[Jonsul]

You know, I feel like you completely ignored Svartalf up there. See, look at 'em, I think he's gonna cry! You might want to apologise.

Also, This cnet article provides some decent insight: "...no lag, so long as their Internet connections meet minimum thresholds. For standard-definition play, that would mean a minimum 1.5 Mbps connection, and for high-def, 5 Mbps."

Now, I don't know if you've all seen what passes for "high definition" these days, but we've had computers, monitors, and games that have been able to do it for more than a decade now. Colour me cynical.

I read, But what makes it different from the phantom is the fact that is has all the backing it has. It has funding, and a great library of games.

And it could be good for gaming on all platforms because it opens any game up to be played on any platform regardless of how it's programed. So not only does development cost go way down, but Linux user can finally get in the picture as well.

Well it's not just that these big names are supporting it, it's that they're putting their high profile games on it. There's brand issues, putting their top games on a platform that fails could hurt their profits and name bad. It's a big risk, so there must be something to it to risk their big name products.

Eh, I don't really care about high definition play. as long as it's at least Standard quality I'm good. Plus my connection is way more then 1.5 mbps so it's no big deal.

Hey all I'm saying man is that if it's true it'd be amazing!
I'm skeptical as well, but I'm hopeful this works. I know there could be latency issues, but as long as I'm playing Prince of Persia and Wheelman on my linux box I could deal with a little lag.

If it works, I'm set^^
If it's garbage it's garbage, I'm out what? $20-$30?
I'll chance it

Plus I've signed up to Beta test. I'll hopefully be able to test it out before I have to buy anything. And if I don't I'm sure we'll hear some leaked info on how fast the Beta is^^