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Xbox One | Understanding Microsoft's Cloud claims | Tech panel and ArsTech article

nib95

Banned
So Microsoft has made some lofty claims regarding "cloud computing". It's been a rather vague affair, and gauging the reality from the PR fluff has been tricky, especially with grand claims such as their Cloud offering 4x more power than the Xbox One itself. So how much is PR fluff, how much truth is there to it? How much is simply linked the the benefits of Dedicated Servers versus P2P? And how much is just to mask an otherwise DRM and always online envisioned agenda?

Obviously cloud computing is not a new phenomena, it's been happening for some time, namely on the storage front, but also with low latency computing as well. Plus we have OnLive and GaiKai (now owned by Sony) offering Cloud based game streaming systems. So it's there, and ever evolving, but what about Microsoft's promoted Cloud offering?

The basic gist is that there's a massive difference between getting the cloud to compute latency sensitive loads, and latency insensitive loads. It's the latter (insensitive) one's that could theoretically be branched off to the Cloud for computation, but not without a vast array of potential issues and logistical obstacles, especially on current average internet connections and speeds, as well as the cost of the server arrays.

The notion of latency sensitive loads being dynamically computed by the Cloud however, is a pipe dream, and something that is not viable any time in the foreseeable future.


So a few titbits on understanding Microsoft's Cloud promises.


----

EDIT: Update to OP with Digital Foundry article. Quotations taken from GAF thread.


Digital Foundry | In Theory: Can the Xbox One cloud transform next-gen gaming?

NeoGaf | Digital Foundry's evidence-based analysis on Xbox Cloud potential

Latency said:
To put this in perspective, when the logic circuits of a CPU want some data, they have to wait a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second) to retrieve it from its cache.... If the CPU were to ask the cloud to calculate something, the answer won't be available for potentially 100ms or more, depending on internet latency - some 100,000,000 nanoseconds!

Bandwidth said:
The PS4 memory system allocates around 20,000MB/s for the CPU of its total 176,000MB/s. The cloud can provide one twenty-thousandth of the data to the CPU that the PS4's system memory can. You may have an internet connection that's much better than 8mbps of course, but even superfast fibre-optic broadband at 50mbps equates to an anaemic 6MB/s

Economy said:
Beyond the technical considerations of what is and isn't possible due to bandwidth and latency constraints, there are of course economic considerations. Running a server to provide a solo player game is extremely expensive. It makes far more sense to use the servers to run multiplayer games

Lies said:
When you play Battlefield 3 on your Xbox 360, do you have the equivalent power of a dozen Xbox 360s because the server is notionally that powerful? Microsoft's claims seem pretty wishy-washy against such a comparison, and without the explicit clarification that they are literally installing four teraflops of server power for each and every Xbox One bought, the claims of that power target can only be considered bogus PR hand-waving to try and detract from the performance deficit with their rival.

Deceit said:
What's obvious at this point is that the concept of cloud computing looks uncertain and unlikely, and Microsoft needs to prove its claims with actual software. Yet based on what we've been told, the firm itself isn't sure of what uses to put it to, while the limitations of latency and bandwidth severely impede the benefits of all that computing power.

Put up or Shut Up said:
Microsoft needs to prove its position with strong ideas and practical demonstrations. Until then, it's perhaps best not to get too carried away with the idea of a super-powered console, and there's very little evidence that Sony needs to be worried about its PS4 specs advantage being comprehensively wiped out by "the power of the cloud".


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Ars technica | How the Xbox One draws more processing power from cloud computing

Ars said:
While Tuesday's Xbox One presentation answered some questions about Microsoft's upcoming system, it left just as many or more unsettled. Luckily, Ars got a chance to sit down with General Manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms Matt Booty to try to get more answers. While he wasn't able to answer some of the most pressing questions about the system, he was able to dive deep into some of the technical details.

Our first question had to do with the 30,000-server cloud architecture that Microsoft says the Xbox One will use to help support "latency-insensitive computation" in its games. What does that mean exactly, and can laggy cloud data really help in a video game where most things have to be able to respond locally and immediately?

"Things that I would call latency-sensitive would be reactions to animations in a shooter, reactions to hits and shots in a racing game, reactions to collisions," Booty told Ars. "Those things you need to have happen immediately and on frame and in sync with your controller. There are some things in a video game world, though, that don't necessarily need to be updated every frame or don't change that much in reaction to what's going on."

"One example of that might be lighting," he continued. "Let’s say you’re looking at a forest scene and you need to calculate the light coming through the trees, or you’re going through a battlefield and have very dense volumetric fog that’s hugging the terrain. Those things often involve some complicated up-front calculations when you enter that world, but they don’t necessarily have to be updated every frame. Those are perfect candidates for the console to offload that to the cloud—the cloud can do the heavy lifting, because you’ve got the ability to throw multiple devices at the problem in the cloud."

Booty added that things like physics modeling, fluid dynamics, and cloth motion were all prime examples of effects that require a lot of up-front computation that could be handled in the cloud without adding any lag to the actual gameplay. And the server resources Microsoft is putting toward these calculations will be much greater than a local Xbox One could handle on its own. "A rule of thumb we like to use is that [for] every Xbox One available in your living room we’ll have three of those devices in the cloud available," he said.

While cloud computation data doesn't have to be updated and synced with every frame of game data, developers are still going to have to manage the timing and flow of this cloud computing to avoid noticeable changes in graphic quality, Booty said. “Without getting too into the weeds, think about a lighting technique like ambient occlusion that gives you all the cracks and crevices and shadows that happen not just from direct light. There are a number of calculations that have to be done up front, and as the camera moves the effect will change. So when you walk into a room, it might be that for the first second or two the fidelity of the lighting is done by the console, but then, as the cloud catches up with that, the data comes back down to the console and you have incredibly realistic lighting."

Does that mean that Xbox One games will feature graphics that suddenly get much more realistic as complex data finally finishes downloading from the cloud? "Game developers have always had to wrestle with levels of detail... managing where and when you show details is part of the art of games," Booty said. "One of the exciting challenges going forward is a whole new set of techniques to manage what is going to be offloaded to the cloud and what’s going to come back.”

And what about those times when a gamer doesn't have an active Internet connection to make use of the cloud's computational power? Microsoft has confirmed that single-player games don't have to be online to work, but all this talk of cloud computing seems to suggest that these games might not look or perform as well if they don't have access to a high-speed connection.

"If there’s a fast connection and if the cloud is available and if the scene allows it, you’re obviously going to capitalize on that," Booty told Ars. "In the event of a drop out—and we all know that Internet can occasionally drop out, and I do say occasionally because these days it seems we depend on Internet as much as we depend on electricity—the game is going to have to intelligently handle that." Booty urged us to "stay tuned" for more on precisely how that intelligent handling would work, stressing that "it’s new technology and a new frontier for game design, and we’re going to see that evolve the way we’ve seen other technology evolve."

---


And another discussion from the Xbox One Microsoft Tech Panel.

Xbox One Architecture Panel

Microsoft tech panel said:
Dan Greenwalt: It's also connected to the cloud, this gives us creators the ability to offload some of the processing that we would do on this powerful box, and also do processing that we can't do even on this powerful box, because of the power of the cloud. Because we can move things, physics, AI, worlds, we can move incredible rendering capabilities to the cloud, and that means this box is going to evolve. So this is a radically different way of thinking about how we creators work with the box.

Todd(?): With Xbox Live when Mark was talking about the number of machines that were added, this is a big deal, next gen isn't just about having lots of transistors local, its also about having transistors in the cloud and the best way I can explain it is that to me next gen is about change. I've got these games to stay the same, I've got these apps that are changing but now, you start throwing in servers that are just one hop away, that can start doing things like, hmmm, you know you look at a game, and there's latency sensitive loads, and there's latency insensitive loads, lets start moving those insensitive loads over to the cloud, freeing up local resources, and effectively over time, your box gets more and more powerful. This is completely unlike previous generations, you've got a fixed number of transistors in your house, and a variable number of transistors in the cloud, as we get smarter about which loads we can move in to the cloud, that frees up local resources to do things about the here and now, and that's really exciting.

Matt(?): But now what we get, is the power we can tap directly in to, to offload processes, and do again those low latency processing we want to put out there. So now we have the best of both worlds, we have a stable platform that we can create from, and we have an ever evolving world that we can tap in to.

Todd(?): I think that really is a fundamental difference between this generation and the last generation. In the last one, that box was fixed, and the game was all about optimise, optimise, optimise, the games that we see now on the 360 look tremendously better than the games we saw at launch on the 360 because, we deeply understand that chip. That's going to happen in this generation, but add to it, the number of transistors in the cloud, that are really not that far away, that you can start to move those loads on to. You can start to have bigger worlds, start to have lots of players together, but can also take maybe some of the things that are done locally and push them out, this generation is about improving and embracing change and growth, whilst still maintaining the predictability the game developer needs. This is a balancing act that we have to achieve.

---


Could Microsoft's (or Sony's) cloud systems really be used to compute traditionally locally processed latency insensitive loads of the kind described? Or is this PR fluff?

The thing that strikes me from the quotes above is that it becomes a very different and non-viable beast when the computation is required of something that is game dynamic. Matt Booty mentions that lighting does not necessarily have to be updated every frame, therefore could be pushed to the cloud, however, I would have assumed that next gen most games would have dynamic lighting, which would potentially need to be calculated every frame. Same thing could be said for physics calculations and even AI, if they were to be required in a particular scene, dynamic in use, on a frame by frame basis.

I have no doubt however, that with Dedicated Servers, more players could be added to an online game, or that the maps or worlds could be larger. But this is less to do with the cloud, and more to do with the low latency benefits of Dedicated Servers versus P2P, something that has always been the case.

Thoughts?


EDIT: Updated OP with Digital Foundry findings.
 

coldfoot

Banned
There are a number of calculations that have to be done up front, and as the camera moves the effect will change.
Since the camera moves at every frame, this is just PR fluff, you'd have to compute everything from scratch at every frame for truly realistic lighting. Or you'd just have prebaked stuff loading from tables.
 

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
They have not demonstrated this for any game yet. I'd have to wait and see, but I am extremely doubtful to say the least.
 

nib95

Banned
Since the camera moves at every frame, this is just PR fluff, you'd have to compute everything from scratch at every frame for truly realistic lighting. Or you'd just have prebaked stuff loading from tables.

Ironically, at this present time based off the screenshots and initial trailer, Forza 5 does use pre-baked lighting. Which surprises me, since I thought most tent pole games going forward would be using dynamic lighting.
 

Riggs

Banned
Check the ars comments ... tons of speculation as to how this would be efficient in real world scenarios. My internet is bogged down, lighting turns to shit.

I ll believe this when I see it working in real time, in my home.


MS is stretching this guys, I will eat crow if proved wrong but I have zero faith that the cloud will be used to offload anything graphically.
 

charsace

Member
Of course it has some truth to it. How can people play MMO's and not have an idea of how you would utilize a network in a game?
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
Since the camera moves at every frame, this is just PR fluff, you'd have to compute everything from scratch at every frame for truly realistic lighting. Or you'd just have prebaked stuff loading from tables.

It's not prebaking when it is being calculated in real time

You take grey scale images which compress extremely well and apply them to textures

May be a couple frames off or so but for GI? It's great stuff.

Also other things handled by cloud... Foliage :)
 
Thoughts?
I think its a really interesting idea with potential down the road, but I also see it effectively killing offline gaming. Not cool.

The first quote in the OP speaks to having some way to intelligently handle situations where you lose your connection, but doesn't offer any details. The second quote is the kicker though, since he speaks directly towards moving more and more processing to the cloud over time to actually in-place upgrade the graphical capabilities of the console. That to me means they want and expect offline gaming to deteriorate in quality and effects over the lifetime of the console.

An always online console is fine, provided you can guarantee uptime and quality to the extent that say, electricity is dependable, but you can't. Always online is also a measure of control, an ad delivery mechanism, a possible invasion of privacy via kinect, DRM, and one way to justify requiring a subscription account.

So for right now I see it far more about control than about possibility.
 

farisr

Member
Just not going to happen. We aren't going to get games w/ the tagline "you must have a X Mbit connection in order to play this game's single player mode" This type of stuff is entirely dependent on the connection of the user.

Will require a ton of coding to account for variances in connections, and devs will just deem it not worth the extra effort to do so. Just like most multiplatform games, they will go for the lowest common denominator when developing a game.

That's my prediction.
 

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
Booty added that things like physics modeling, fluid dynamics, and cloth motion were all prime examples of effects that require a lot of up-front computation that could be handled in the cloud without adding any lag to the actual gameplay. And the server resources Microsoft is putting toward these calculations will be much greater than a local Xbox One could handle on its own.

Physics calculations that is not latency dependent already implies that they cannot directly be interacted with by the player, in which case they can simply prebake the physics calculations, a tried and true method that already exists and does not presuppose a stable internet connection. There are things I do not understand about this claim. Maybe someone who have actually made a game may help me with this.
 

USC-fan

Banned
Has NOTHING to do with DRM

They are using "the cloud" to hide to DRM check ins. Its why the console needs to be connected to the internet. ITS JUST ABOUT DRM.

Yeah i'm sure YOU believe that slow 2.5 MB/s laggy connection is going to increase the performance 4X. LOL it so stupid, its funny.
 

Riggs

Banned
Just not going to happen. We aren't going to get games w/ the tagline "you must have a X Mbit connection in order to play this game's single player mode" This type of stuff is entirely dependent on the connection of the user.

Will require a ton of coding to account for variances in connections, and devs will just deem it not worth the extra effort to do so. Just like most multiplatform games, they will go for the lowest common denominator when developing a game.

That's my prediction.

And you will be proved correct most likely.
 
And the server resources Microsoft is putting toward these calculations will be much greater than a local Xbox One could handle on its own. "A rule of thumb we like to use is that [for] every Xbox One available in your living room we’ll have three of those devices in the cloud available,"

Three servers for each console? Am I reading this right?
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
I think its a really interesting idea with potential down the road, but I also see it effectively killing offline gaming. Not cool.

The first quote in the OP speaks to having some way to intelligently handle situations where you lose your connection, but doesn't offer any details. The second quote is the kicker though, since he speaks directly towards moving more and more processing to the cloud over time to actually in-place upgrade the graphical capabilities of the console. That to me means they want and expect offline gaming to deteriorate in quality and effects over the lifetime of the console.

An always online console is fine, provided you can guarantee uptime and quality to the extent that say, electricity is dependable, but you can't. Always online is also a measure of control, an ad delivery mechanism, a possible invasion of privacy via kinect, DRM, and one way to justify requiring a subscription account.

So for right now I see it far more about control than about possibility.

Maybe you should look at it as less in terms of deterioration and more in terms of enhancements enabled by online


They are using "the cloud" to hide to DRM check ins. Its why the console needs to be connected to the internet. ITS JUST ABOUT DRM.

Yeah i'm sure YOU believe that slow 2.5 MB/s laggy connection is going to increase the performance 4X. LOL it so stupid, its funny.

But they already have DRM... This stuff is down the road, likely wont be in any launch games or anything.

But yes, it's totally DRM!

Don't confuse EAs marketing spiel with real life usage scenarios.
 
I really only seeing this coming into play in MMO and similarly persistent/ connected games. MS won't want to waste the entire Gold membership profits on this, and publishers won't want to pay for these servers just so their games have better physics or whatever, so I can't imagine anything but subscription-based games taking advantage of this.
 

Dany

Banned
Now this sounds exciting.


Considering what Destiny is expected to be, I imagine a lot of this 'cloud tech' will be used for that game.
 
Show us.

It's that simple. Right now it sounds like a bunch of buzzwords and slight of hand.

People doubt gaikai and that's a thing that actually existed and was used (to various degrees of success). The feeling with gaikai is show us. The feeling with remote play being lagless on the vita is show us. The feeling with 'the wii u has more power' is to show us and the thing with this cloud computing stuff that has never been done in even 1/8th of what they are describing is to show us. Until then it's just not worth getting excited about.


And then if this does work, what stops nintendo, Sony and pc devs from doing it, essentially neutralizing the advantage...?
 

Godslay

Banned
Maybe you should look at it as less in terms of deterioration and more in terms of enhancements enabled by online

Good point. You will get the baseline when offline. Which if it's a good game, is all that should matter. If you get some gains by connecting online persistently, it should be icing on the cake.
 

coldfoot

Banned
300k servers and 3 for each Xbone means they can only serve 100k Xbones concurrently. Let's assume a concurrency factor of 4 and this means they only plan to sell 400k Xbones or they're simply talking out of their asses.
 
D

Deleted member 8095

Unconfirmed Member
I would love a demo of this at E3. Sounds neat in theory, but I need to actually see it to believe it.
 

charsace

Member
I don't play MMOs and have no interest in understanding the under-pinnings of how they work.

Let me help you and other people out. Cloud is just a buzzword. You have had games since at least the early 90's that rely on a server to function. For as long as people have been connecting other computers the Cloud has technically existed.

Show us.

It's that simple. Right now it sounds like a bunch of buzzwords and slight of hand.

People doubt gaikai and that's a thing that actually existed and was used (to various degrees of success). The feeling with gaikai is show us. The feeling with remote play being lagless on the vita is show us. The feeling with 'the wii u has more power' is to show us and the thing with this cloud computing stuff that has never been done in even 1/8th of what they are describing is to show us. Until then it's just not worth getting excited about.


And then if this does work, what stops nintendo, Sony and pc devs from doing it, essentially neutralizing the advantage...?
Gaikai does not compare the Azure.
 
Maybe you should look at it as less in terms of deterioration and more in terms of enhancements enabled by online
I predominantly play single player games and usually can't stand multiplayer modes, especially versus ones where the lion share of focus seems to be placed.

For what I appreciate in gaming, this reliance upon the cloud has far more negatives than positives. Maybe MS should look at things from my perspective a bit more.
 

kadotsu

Banned
I have searched google scholar for anything related on partial cloud rendering but I couldn't find any papers on it. If someone could point me to some peer reviewed research done on this mater I would appreciate it.
 

nib95

Banned
Three servers for each console? Am I reading this right?

Yes, which is another thing I don't find to be realistic and potential PR. Especially if the XO sells millions. It just is not financially sound.

So this has a shred of truth potentially?

Seems like nonsense honestly to a leyman

It does, but it also does not seem like it would be a sensible or viable option at present due to current speed and bandwidth constraints on many internet connections and with most ISP's. Add to that, it becomes less and less likely to be viable with dynamic environments or processes, which I'd imagine in this next generation will be more plentiful.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but I feel like such cloud computing really only benefits non immediate and non dynamic low latency processes, but these are probably things that don't require much in the way of hardware resources at a local level anyway.
 

harSon

Banned
It's definitely a technology with some awesome (and alarming) implications down the line. I found this quote regarding Azure and Xbox One: http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-azure/
“It’s not like on day one, everyone will have figured out how to take advantage of that power,” Microsoft interactive entertainment CMO Marc Whitten told Wired. “It’s just one of those stakes we’re placing.”

The technology is going to be in place, but I think it's something that won't truly be tapped until well into the console's lifespan. That's not necessarily an issue considering it takes years before a console is majorly taxed in the first place. Microsoft is definitely going to have to lead the charge though, and give developers examples from its own first party titles as to what exactly Azure can offer their games if utilized. That may ultimately prove to be a problem though, because with the Kinect, I don't think Microsoft achieved this level leadership by example, and it's ultimately going to be needed if the technology is to ever be employed in a manner that's not painfully basic.
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
You are reading it right but it is bullshit marketing speak.

Its not really bullshit, he's just emphasizing how much computational power relative to one console

He could have said hundreds.

I assume though when he says 3, that may imply there's a 3-4 TF limit per session as its developer handled
 

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
The amount of devs tapping into this is probably the same amount that tapped into the power of the Cell: no one, except first party games, and probably years from now.

The good news out of this really is that the One isn't burdened with an expensive chip for the rest of it's life. So there's that.
 

Riggs

Banned
Even my dad laughed at this, this is buzz word marketing guys. We will see, but I need to see benefits. Tired of being bullshitted.
 
300k servers and 3 for each Xbone means they can only serve 100k Xbones concurrently. Let's assume a concurrency factor of 4 and this means they only plan to sell 400k Xbones or they're simply talking out of their asses.

I don't believe the hype on this thing yet but clearly it's one server can service many consoles. The power of the server would be 4*xbone per user.

Which isn't exactly the 'infinite power of the cloud' but hey... lying about these things isn't a problem. Each console developer fibs greatly before each console is released.
 

USC-fan

Banned
But they already have DRM... This stuff is down the road, likely wont be in any launch games or anything.

But yes, it's totally DRM!

Don't confuse EAs marketing spiel with real life usage scenarios.

Yea i sure no launch game will use it lol. THis is how it works:

1. MS wanted all console on the internet to check drm. [Huge backlash with the 4 min check, change to 24hr]
2. How can they make consumer go for this, whats the advantage we can sell them?
3. How about cloud compute? 40x the performance with "the cloud."
4. Genius....

Its why they dont says how game will use it and it just silly. Now they are saying 4x the performance with "the cloud." Its just nonsense...
 

EP8

Neo Member
Every time Amazon's cloud service goes down, it breaks the Internet, what would happen if MS Azure goes down?
 
I wish I could understand all those fancy terms. It sounds so crazy and unbelievable to me that you can have one part of the one streaming on top of the other :O. (If that how it even works?)
 

bbjvc

Member
They are using "the cloud" to hide to DRM check ins. Its why the console needs to be connected to the internet. ITS JUST ABOUT DRM.

Yeah i'm sure YOU believe that slow 2.5 MB/s laggy connection is going to increase the performance 4X. LOL it so stupid, its funny.

what they claim is when connected to cloud, the game will be prettier, and game still perfectly playable when offline, I cannot see how is that DRm
 
D

Deleted member 8095

Unconfirmed Member
Even my dad laughed at this, this is buzz word marketing guys. We will see, but I need to see benefits. Tired of being bullshitted.

Oh, your dad laughed at it? Guess we can put this one to rest.
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
Yea i sure no launch game will use it lol. THis is how it works:

1. MS wanted all console on the internet to check drm.
2. How can they make consumer go for this, whats the advantage we can sell them?
3. How about cloud compute? 40x the performance with "the cloud."
4. Genius....

Its why they dont says how game will use it and it just silly. Now they are saying 4x the performance with "the cloud." Its just nonsense...

They said 40x Xbox 360 FYI

They say one is 10x 360

So that would mean that one in your home and 3 in the cloud equals 40x 360

Is simple math really that difficult
 
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