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Doesn't Sony Already Have Gakai To Combat XBone Cloud?

Fezan

Member
the cloud computing stuff is real & can be used for things like having a really large data base of AI commends that could make interaction with the games more natural.

Cloud is very much real and may be future of industry but right now its not feasible at all specially what you are saying.
 

Eusis

Member
No it didn't. They didn't actually try and make the game better with cloud computing like has been proposed with xbone. They just lied and said they did. So no, Sim City proved nothing of the sort and it's absurd people keep bringing this up as an example.
It probably IS an example of why Microsoft doing this is the only way this has a shot at being feasible though, you'd need someone like Google, Apple, or Facebook to try otherwise as next to no one else can compare with infrastructure, at least no company without a closer tie to gaming anyway, and it says something when those three are the closest past Microsoft.

Though I guess Google could do something that Sony/Nintendo could jump in on, cloud computing seems like an area they probably would invest in sometime.
 

user_nat

THE WORDS! They'll drift away without the _!
Why does everyone seem to think streaming video of a game from the cloud is possible and makes a playable game, but streaming other data is impossible?

Are the 1s ans 0s different?
 

Valnen

Member
Why does everyone seem to think streaming video of a game from the cloud is possible and makes a playable game, but streaming other data is impossible?

Are the 1s ans 0s different?

Simply because we have yet to really see such a thing happen in games to the extent Microsoft was talking about. GAF is typically very cynical about unproven things. Especially when they've been lied to in the past about it.

I believe it's possible, but Microsoft is gonna have to prove themselves for people to accept it.
 
Why does everyone seem to think streaming video of a game from the cloud is possible and makes a playable game, but streaming other data is impossible?

Are the 1s ans 0s different?

It's all about latency.

It's possible for Gaikai to have the same input lag as your console (133ms). But 133ms is was too long for the most real-time calculations. The only exception are maybe AI calculations of open world games like calculating people and cars of the entire city and not just in an area around the player in GTA for example.
 

Eusis

Member
Simply because we have yet to really see such a thing happen in games to the extent Microsoft was talking about. GAF is typically very cynical about unproven things. Especially when they've been lied to in the past about it.

I believe it's possible, but Microsoft is gonna have to prove themselves for people to accept it.
Plus I really do think it's going to depend on very situation specific things, generally about processing a larger world behind the scenes rather than what's immediately going on. There might be some potential there strictly for enemy AI as it'd be the same as facing other people, except with a high end bot machine instead of a human, but you might not actually WANT the best AI for a straight shooter or something, maybe for games involving something else like stealth or at least huge teams. And almost anything about improving PERFORMANCE is a farce.
It's all about latency.

It's possible for Gaikai to have the same input lag as your console (133ms). But 133ms is was too long for the most real-time calculations. The only exception are maybe AI calculations of open world games like calculating people and cars of the entire city and not just in an area around the player in GTA for example.
Yeah, and it's why the graphic boosting idea likely wouldn't work: it essentially has to be all or nothing, you can't make Cloud Computing handle some of the graphic processing while the rest is done locally, otherwise we'd have heard about USB add-ons to make games look better by now I'm sure. And getting that data form the cloud will be a fuckton slower than off USB 2.0, nevermind 3.0.
 

onQ123

Member
That's more storage than computing.

Not very exciting.

You're going to need a lot of computing power to quickly go through that data base & pick the right commends for each interaction, just think Google Voice Search but instead of simply doing a google search for the commend that you say it will have a commend or reply for whatever it is that you say & it could read your facial expressions & body language to better understand what you are saying & if you're joking or if you're making a serious commend all types of stuff.
 

USC-fan

Banned
You're going to need a lot of computing power to quickly go through that data base & pick the right commends for each interaction, just think Google Voice Search but instead of simply doing a google search for the commend that you say it will have a commend or reply for whatever it is that you say & it could read your facial expressions & body language to better understand what you are saying & if you're joking or if you're making a serious commend all types of stuff.

It's complete bs.

It's just to push always online drm console.

Don't fall for the bs...
 

Clevinger

Member
This cloud bullshit is just a way for Microsoft to deflect attention away from their underpowered machine. It's working too. It's science fiction nonsense that will never come into fruition.

That and the online DRM. I know Harrison said he believes it would be 24 hour online checks, but with them emphasizing this cloud stuff so much that would require a constant internet connection I'm now wondering if they're planning for literally always online DRM.
 

WalkMan

Banned
Why does everyone seem to think streaming video of a game from the cloud is possible and makes a playable game, but streaming other data is impossible?

Are the 1s ans 0s different?

For an audio-visual system like a game console, it probably is the most efficient way. I haven't even thought of very many compute units that can be transferred from cloud to console unless you want a strongly random procedural world that can't generated during gametime. Games in their current state require 99% of the calculations to be done client-side.
 

M3d10n

Member
I think the 'cloud' thing Microsoft is talking about has nothing to do with Gaikai. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in no moment since the reveal they mentioned full-blown streaming of games being run remotely. At most they commented on the possibility of P2P streaming for allowing a friend to take over the game remotely in order to help clear a specific section.

MS mentioned that "every" game gets dedicated servers and that the XBone uses Azure (which doesn't have GPUs, AFAIK). So instead of having one of the players host a P2P match, they can spawn a server-only build of the game on a virtual Azure server to host the match, allowing developers to completely avoid annoying problems inherent to P2P like host migration, host advantage and host overhead.

Since the server doesn't need to do any graphics, it can uses far less RAM than the client build and several of them can be ran on the same virtual machine without problems. 300k virtual machines can easily handle 6+ million concurrent multiplayer games.

Why does everyone seem to think streaming video of a game from the cloud is possible and makes a playable game, but streaming other data is impossible?

Are the 1s ans 0s different?

Streaming other data is possible. Streaming data vital for rendering graphics of the current frame locally and other part remotely is not: the client will complete their job in a dozen or so milliseconds while the server will take 30+ milliseconds to even know there is work to be done. What will the client do? Sit and wait? Start rendering part of the next frames? But the player didn't saw the result yet, what input data is the server going to use? If the client is having to delay it's output while it waits for the server output, why not do the whole thing on the server anyway?

The most a remote server can help with is with simulation. For example, an open-world game where each individual NPC has a very detailed dynamic simulation of their daily routine. The client can only see a fraction of the NPCs at a given time, so the simulation for all NPCs could be done on a server, like a MMO full of bots instead of actual players. However, it's a complete waste of money to spend a dedicated server for a single-player game and such dynamic persistent world would be much better used in a multiplayer setting.
 
Plus I really do think it's going to depend on very situation specific things, generally about processing a larger world behind the scenes rather than what's immediately going on. There might be some potential there strictly for enemy AI as it'd be the same as facing other people, except with a high end bot machine instead of a human, but you might not actually WANT the best AI for a straight shooter or something, maybe for games involving something else like stealth or at least huge teams. And almost anything about improving PERFORMANCE is a farce.

Yeah, and it's why the graphic boosting idea likely wouldn't work: it essentially has to be all or nothing, you can't make Cloud Computing handle some of the graphic processing while the rest is done locally, otherwise we'd have heard about USB add-ons to make games look better by now I'm sure. And getting that data form the cloud will be a fuckton slower than off USB 2.0, nevermind 3.0.

Of course you can. Assassin's creed, or pretty much any open worlded game for instance, have day/night cycles and the lighting/shadows are updated every few seconds to simulate that. Put those calculations in the cloud and you can have pre baked quality lighting in your game (like all the games that doesn't have day/night cycles do), and still remain dynamic.

Given how much lighting can demand on processing, i'd say moving the crud of it to the cloud is not trivial at all, and completely feasible in a lot of cases.

I think the 'cloud' thing Microsoft is talking about has nothing to do with Gaikai. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in no moment since the reveal they mentioned full-blown streaming of games being run remotely. At most they commented on the possibility of P2P streaming for allowing a friend to take over the game remotely in order to help clear a specific section.

MS mentioned that "every" game gets dedicated servers and that the XBone uses Azure (which doesn't have GPUs, AFAIK). So instead of having one of the players host a P2P match, they can spawn a server-only build of the game on a virtual Azure server to host the match, allowing developers to completely avoid annoying problems inherent to P2P like host migration, host advantage and host overhead.

Since the server doesn't need to do any graphics, it can uses far less RAM than the client build and several of them can be ran on the same virtual machine without problems. 300k virtual machines can easily handle 6+ million concurrent multiplayer games.

They have everything to do, full blown streaming require the servers to compute the game, render it, code the video and them send to the player.

Ms, along with storage for every game to host their servers, are enabling developers to borrow processing power from the cloud and directly allocate to do computations for games, which is about the same gaikai is doing minus rendering the frame and them making a video of it.

I think the 'cloud' thing Microsoft is talking about has nothing to do with Gaikai. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in no moment since the reveal they mentioned full-blown streaming of games being run remotely. At most they commented on the possibility of P2P streaming for allowing a friend to take over the game remotely in order to help clear a specific section.

MS mentioned that "every" game gets dedicated servers and that the XBone uses Azure (which doesn't have GPUs, AFAIK). So instead of having one of the players host a P2P match, they can spawn a server-only build of the game on a virtual Azure server to host the match, allowing developers to completely avoid annoying problems inherent to P2P like host migration, host advantage and host overhead.

Since the server doesn't need to do any graphics, it can uses far less RAM than the client build and several of them can be ran on the same virtual machine without problems. 300k virtual machines can easily handle 6+ million concurrent multiplayer games.



Streaming other data is possible. Streaming data vital for rendering graphics of the current frame locally and other part remotely is not: the client will complete their job in a dozen or so milliseconds while the server will take 30+ milliseconds to even know there is work to be done. What will the client do? Sit and wait? Start rendering part of the next frames? But the player didn't saw the result yet, what input data is the server going to use? If the client is having to delay it's output while it waits for the server output, why not do the whole thing on the server anyway?

The most a remote server can help with is with simulation. For example, an open-world game where each individual NPC has a very detailed dynamic simulation of their daily routine. The client can only see a fraction of the NPCs at a given time, so the simulation for all NPCs could be done on a server, like a MMO full of bots instead of actual players. However, it's a complete waste of money to spend a dedicated server for a single-player game and such dynamic persistent world would be much better used in a multiplayer setting.

The whole point is to use data that's not needed until a very few frames XD
 

Dunk#7

Member
I think the 'cloud' thing Microsoft is talking about has nothing to do with Gaikai. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in no moment since the reveal they mentioned full-blown streaming of games being run remotely. At most they commented on the possibility of P2P streaming for allowing a friend to take over the game remotely in order to help clear a specific section.

MS mentioned that "every" game gets dedicated servers and that the XBone uses Azure (which doesn't have GPUs, AFAIK). So instead of having one of the players host a P2P match, they can spawn a server-only build of the game on a virtual Azure server to host the match, allowing developers to completely avoid annoying problems inherent to P2P like host migration, host advantage and host overhead.

Since the server doesn't need to do any graphics, it can uses far less RAM than the client build and several of them can be ran on the same virtual machine without problems. 300k virtual machines can easily handle 6+ million concurrent multiplayer games.

Did you read the OP, or just the title?

Not claiming they are exact same thing, but Sony should be able to utilize Gakai in a similar manner since the technologies are similar. A lot of the groundwork is already in place.
 

jaypah

Member
Of course you can. Assassin's creed, or pretty much any open worlded game for instance, have day/night cycles and the lighting/shadows are updated every few seconds to simulate that. Put those calculations in the cloud and you can have pre baked quality lighting in your game (like all the games that doesn't have day/night cycles do), and still remain dynamic.

Given how much lighting can demand on processing, i'd say moving the crud of it to the cloud is not trivial at all, and completely feasible in a lot of cases.

Would that work for time-of-day changes in racing games? If so I hope Dan was briefed.
 

M3d10n

Member
Of course you can. Assassin's creed, or pretty much any open worlded game for instance, have day/night cycles and the lighting/shadows are updated every few seconds to simulate that. Put those calculations in the cloud and you can have pre baked quality lighting in your game (like all the games that doesn't have day/night cycles do), and still remain dynamic.

Given how much lighting can demand on processing, i'd say moving the crud of it to the cloud is not trivial at all, and completely feasible in a lot of cases.

The shadows in modern games are not updated every few seconds: they are updated every single frame. These games don't use lightmaps because the memory requirements for detailed shadows for such large environments are simply prohibitive.

Please educate yourself about Cascaded Shadow Maps.

Lightmaps for an entire city in a next-gen version of a game like Assasin's Creed could easily end up in the hundreds of megabytes. Also, what's even the point in downloading them on-the-fly versus pre-generating them for each time of day and including them in the disc? If they change only every few seconds, they cannot be used for dynamic objects at all (if you move a crate, it's shadow would remain there), so they could be all generated offline and stored along the game data.

Did you read the OP, or just the title?

Not claiming they are exact same thing, but Sony should be able to utilize Gakai in a similar manner since the technologies are similar. A lot of the groundwork is already in place.

Yes, going from full-graphics server tasks to non-graphics server tasks is much easier than the other way around. Still, I'm not sure if the Gaikai architecture is as well-oiled for this specific task (running dedicated servers) as Microsoft's, which has been battle-tested on enterprise customers.
 

Ushae

Banned
An E3 demonstration is the only way we will find out I guess.

P.S. Has nobody heard of Windows Azure? Billion dollar tech?
 

SPDIF

Member
An E3 demonstration is the only way we will find out I guess.

P.S. Has nobody heard of Windows Azure? Billion dollar tech?

Some people hadn't. Before the X1 reveal some people were wondering if MS would buy OnLive to compete with Sony's Gaikai purchase.
 

nib95

Banned
Of course they could theoretically. Any cloud could depending on the hardware and quantity of servers. But I think Sony is being wise to use their Cloud for backwards compatibility games streaming instead of computing. Sony would be also wise to use some servers for dedicated online use IF Microsoft offer this service too.
 

Carl

Member
It is, but it's doing the computations for a PS3 game (or PS2 or PS1). As far as I know anyway, they're not planning on streaming PS4 games are they?

LTTP here, but yeah they are planning on streaming PS4 games. Or, demos at least. Probably full games.
 
LTTP here, but yeah they are planning on streaming PS4 games. Or, demos at least. Probably full games.

Huh, interesting.

Have they said anything about how they're going to handle PS3 games? Can they emulate those or are they running on native PS3 hardware?
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
he is right but consider this also

not for real time rendering tasks
For the record, I don't think either Gaikai or MS' cloud computing solution are feasible with today's internet infrastructure.

MS' cloud computing is at least useful for asynchronous tasks. Gaikai is about 50 years away from giving me a reason to use it. Not playing anything virtualized with anything more than one frame extra of lag.
 

Dunk#7

Member
For the record, I don't think either Gaikai or MS' cloud computing solution are feasible with today's internet infrastructure.

MS' cloud computing is at least useful for asynchronous tasks. Gaikai is about 50 years away from giving me a reason to use it. Not playing anything virtualized with anything more than one frame extra of lag.

The difference is that Gakai is optional and something you choose to use. MS Cloud is billed as part of the system and game expectations are being built around it. What happens if you end up with a slow connection or no connection at any point in time? Do you get a lesser quality product or does the console refuse to function?
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
The difference is that Gakai is optional and something you choose to use. MS Cloud is billed as part of the system and game expectations are being built around it. What happens if you end up with a slow connection or no connection at any point in time? Do you get a lesser quality product or does the console refuse to function?
Pretty sure it's still at developer's discretion whether they use the cloud or not or to what degree they implement it. But if we do find out that MS is forcing every developer to use part of the cloud, then that'd be pretty fucked up.

It's essentially useless for the biggest proponent's game too, T10's Forza. No way it can be fast enough to even augment physics calculations. Maybe to process temperature of parts of the track for the next lap, but for refreshing physics 360 fps alongside the tires? Yeah right.

It is MS trying to save face for an underpowered console, but I think that's their PR spin ATM rather than an integral design they're trying to force in, especially if they forewent always online where you literally need to be always online.
 

Dunk#7

Member
Pretty sure it's still at developer's discretion whether they use the cloud or not or to what degree they implement it. But if we do find out that MS is forcing every developer to use part of the cloud, then that'd be pretty fucked up.

It's essentially useless for the biggest proponent's game too, T10's Forza. No way it can be fast enough to even augment physics calculations. Maybe to process temperature of parts of the track for the next lap, but for refreshing physics 360 fps alongside the tires? Yeah right.

It is MS trying to save face for an underpowered console, but I think that's their PR spin ATM rather than an integral design they're trying to force in, especially if they forewent always online where you literally need to be always online.

Well then, it is very unfair for them to talk about the cloud in terms of making the console overall more powerful if it is not a constant. Seems like they would have to say "developers that choose to use the functionality of the cloud may be able to exceed the capabilities of the local hardware".

If they are not making the cloud mandatory for developers then they cannot use it to overstate the power of the console.
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
Well then, it is very unfair for them to talk about the cloud in terms of making the console overall more powerful if it is not a constant. Seems like they would have to say "developers that choose to use the functionality of the cloud may be able to exceed the capabilities of the local hardware".

If they are not making the cloud mandatory for developers then they cannot use it to overstate the power of the console.
I am completely with you on that.

I think during the architecture conference they referred to it like that too, but clearly MS is about sending mixed messages right now. Douse the public in confusion to cover up for or dampen negative responses to the Xbox One's bad design choices.
 

Dunk#7

Member
Wait. I don't get it. Why combat it? I thought cloud computing was bullshit anyway and had no place in games?

You ever think in the theoretical?

Just asking in the event that Sony needed to combat it. Even if it doesn't work the media and incompetent individuals of the world are going to talk about it as if it does. Sometimes you have to combat what doesn't exist to please people that don't have an appropriate mental capacity to ascertain the situation.

**For the record any negative remarks in my post are intended to target the general public and not any particular individual directly.
 
You ever think in the theoretical?

Just asking in the event that Sony needed to combat it. Even if it doesn't work the media and incompetent individuals of the world are going to talk about it as if it does. Sometimes you have to combat what doesn't exist to please people that don't have an appropriate mental capacity to ascertain the situation.

So, let me get this straight. You're suggesting Sony spend countless millions of dollars on a cloud infrastructure not because it has some benefit to games, but because it will "please people that don't have an appropriate mental capacity?" That's one solution, I suppose.
 

Pandemic

Member
Are their any examples of what Microsoft's cloud can do though? Like, I don't get what this ''cloud'' will be able to do in making the XO however many times more powerful?

Anyone able to explain it to me with examples? Be appreciated.

Will it like, for example, GTA V, will cloud process all the cars, pedestrians, etc, while the system handles everything else?
 

Eusis

Member
In the sense of countering Microsoft's cloud: I think you actually have the right idea, but for the wrong reasons. They should emphasize the strengths of their streaming scheme, and why Microsoft's may not really be all that good (and certainly not universally useful as game streaming: there's always a use to showing off a game to a friend who's online and on the fence about it.)
 

Chris_C

Member
I thought Gakai was just a game streaming service for older games, kind of instead of BC?

Gaikai can and will eventually (according to Sony) be used for BC. The backward compatibility will likely be implemented by PC's running PlayStation emulators and streaming the video to the local PS4/PSVita.

Strictly speaking, there's no technical reason these same servers can't be upgraded to run games that are technically superior to games rendered locally.

I'm not sure how/why Gaikia couldn't be used to enhance elements of PS4 gameplay in the way that MS proposes with Azure.

One thing I'm curious about however, is how many servers Sony is planning for Gaikai, and where they will be located. At the Sony conference I believe David Perry said it was the worlds fastest gaming network, how does that compare to Azure? It's unlikely that Gaikia will have as many servers, but I suppose each individual server will probably be considerably more powerful, and is also likely to use algorithms and software more tuned to gaming (isn't Azure a general computing service?)
 

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Simply because we have yet to really see such a thing happen in games to the extent Microsoft was talking about. GAF is typically very cynical about unproven things. Especially when they've been lied to in the past about it.

I believe it's possible, but Microsoft is gonna have to prove themselves for people to accept it.

This, I'm not convinced on it, but I'm not going to dismiss it as "science-fiction" and "bullshit
", there are some embarrassing posts in this thread.
 

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
not sure why people are so dismissive of the idea of offloading certain tasks to servers.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
This, I'm not convinced on it, but I'm not going to dismiss it as "science-fiction" and "bullshit
", there are some embarrassing posts in this thread.

In order to understand that the way MS tries to sell this tech is complete fiction you only need to know what computers are made of, how and why. It's useless for most gaming-related tasks and is already redundant for others.

not sure why people are so dismissive of the idea of offloading certain tasks to servers.
Let's just put this in layman's terms: there's a reason your CPU, your RAM and your video card are so close together in physical space.
 

Dega

Eeny Meenie Penis
I think the "cloud" could very well help with video games. I don't have access to the documentation that developers have but as a programmer I would be very interested in what MS has developed and how game developers can utilize it. I don't think it's total bullshit at all.
 

Fezan

Member
Are their any examples of what Microsoft's cloud can do though? Like, I don't get what this ''cloud'' will be able to do in making the XO however many times more powerful?

Anyone able to explain it to me with examples? Be appreciated.

Will it like, for example, GTA V, will cloud process all the cars, pedestrians, etc, while the system handles everything else?

cloud cant be used for realtime computational task like AI or physics calculation no matter how much fast your internet is.
It can only be used for storing stated in game that happen over time in game world. for example take skyrim example on ps3. the problem arises when player makes to much changes in world and memory is not enough to store these changes. in this scenario these changes can be stored on cloud. but you still have to take in account that how much fast internet is that when you load game next time these changes appear to you instantly which is again quite hard.
it may be useful for always online games like MMO or multiplayer modes.

people who think that this can help achieve some how better graphics are in complete denial. unless xbox one streams the games and every thing is happening on cloud
posting again for the third time in the same thread.
And i do work on Cloud Platform(Amazon )

Another example for people who think how it works is just sync your files on Internet even small files takes some time. now imagine much bigger files.
there is a reason why people were joyed by GDDR5 in ps4 and why sony and microsoft have gone APU route
 

Teletraan1

Banned
This cloud stuff is hilarious. If the line of thinking is that multiplatform devs wont really even use any more of the local power that the ps4 has over the xbone since they are so "lazy" then they sure as hell aren't going to fuck around sending calculations to the cloud and having to deal with the latency ramifications.

Its on MS to show me how this works. Show me an example of something just using the power of the XBONE and then show me how that is enhanced by the cloud. Until I see that this is just empty marketing bs.
 
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