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[Norml]

Once again...


Are people not reading the OP or something? I mean, be as skeptical as you like about if this has any real uses.. but for the love of god, can people stop talking about graphics. The damn OP invalidated your point already... jesus...

Shouldn't freeing up other resources like AI by the cloud should allow for better graphics? I sure didn't see it in Titanfall.

 

[NullPointer]

Shouldn't freeing up other resources like AI by the cloud should allow for better graphics? I sure didn't see it in Titanfall.

That was the exact argument being made for the power of the cloud by MS themselves, repeatedly. I can't blame anybody but MS for people expecting graphical improvements by way of the cloud.

 

[Synth]

Shouldn't freeing up other resources like AI by the cloud should allow for better graphics? I sure didn't see it in Titanfall.

Not really. It's like... Congratulations! Freeing up the AI processing has allowed there to be tons of grunts, Titans and dragons to be all over the map interacting with one another, without killing the CPU. Now it all needs to be drawn... over to you Xbox One. In a situation like this, it's not helping to free up anything that would help the Xbox draw the scene better.

I guess you could say that without it, there would almost certainly be less to actually draw?

 

[jem0208]

Shouldn't freeing up other resources like AI by the cloud should allow for better graphics? I sure didn't see it in Titanfall.

The resources freed up by the cloud are CPU based, graphics are handled by the GPU.

 

[HORRORSHØW]

so, proponents of MS's cloud, are there any real-world examples to substantiate their claims? you can see why some people may doubt, criticize, and even ridicule their statements without any examples of how the xbox one is utilizing the cloud. as some in this thread have said, all MS has to do is demonstrate this cloud potential then all the naysayers would shut up. for the time being, however, any mention of the cloud seems like a bad joke or a future promise that may never materialize as promises often do.

 

[jem0208]

so, proponents of MS's cloud, are there any real-world examples to substantiate their claims? you can see why some people may doubt, criticize, and even ridicule their statements without any examples of how the xbox one is utilizing the cloud. as some in this thread have said, all MS has to do is demonstrate this cloud potential then all the naysayers would shut up. for the time being, however, any mention of the cloud seems like a bad joke or a future promise that may never materialize as promises often do.

There's the build demo which everyone sends to be ignoring...

 

[NullPointer]

The resources freed up by the cloud are CPU based, graphics are handled by the GPU.

In MS' own words the cloud could be used for: (some aspects of) lighting, volumetric fog, physics, fluid dynamics, cloth simulations, AI, environment size and fidelity and ambient background tasks.

 

[GoofsterStud]

If Sony believes their PlayStation Now service can offload 100% of all computational and graphics processing to the cloud and stream the rendered video output over the internet to gamers then in fail to see why MS couldn't beef up the Xbone with some extra power from the cloud as well.

I wish people wouldn't immediately bash MS.

There is a huge difference between streaming games and this. One can be experienced now the other is a myth. All examples are in a environment so controlled that they are not practical.

 

[Freeman]

If you think about it, they could just turn on all the Xbox in their warehouse to power the ones they sell. Feasible and would work particularly well in Japan.

 

[pooptest]

Amazon's Fire TV should be at least as powerful as 1 Xbone since it has the infinite power of the cloud, too.

Spoiler

/s

 

[jem0208]

In MS' own words the cloud could be used for: (some aspects of) lighting, physics, fluid dynamics, cloth simulations, AI, environment size and fidelity and ambient background tasks.

All of which can be done with a CPU I believe.

There is a huge difference between streaming games and this. One can be experienced now the other is a myth. All examples are in a environment so controlled that they are not practical.

Have you tried streaming games? It's awful unless your connection is perfect. There is severe input lag, compression issues etc. It's not a fun experience. Just the fact that it's here doesn't mean it's practical.
The thing is these issues also face cloud computations, however they can be used for more background tasks which aren't latency dependant as well those which might be.

 

[GoofsterStud]

however they can be used for more background tasks which aren't latency dependant as well those which might be.

Do you really believe this?

 

[onanie]

Not really. It's like... Congratulations! Freeing up the AI processing has allowed there to be tons of grunts, Titans and dragons to be all over the map interacting with one another, without killing the CPU. Now it all needs to be drawn... over to you Xbox One. In a situation like this, it's not helping to free up anything that would help the Xbox draw the scene better.

I guess you could say that without it, there would almost certainly be less to actually draw?

So, just like a dedicated server of old. And certainly not more impressive than, say, Dark Souls' mobs or Killzone's bots. Of course, that's by Design™, but can you show that Xbone's Cloud™ is more capable of AI than what existed prior to the invention of the Cloud™?

 

[Synth]

Amazon's Fire TV should be at least as powerful as 1 Xbone since it has the infinite power of the cloud, too.

Spoiler

/s

Already addressed...

Well... don't you seem to be misguided. Luckily I got you...

The power of the cloud is infinite, hence "the infinite power of the cloud". However the Xbox One only receives a finite amount of that power. In this case it is about 3x as much power as the Xbox One has naturally. Think of it like picking up a Quad Damage in Quake.

If the Xbox One were to be granted the infinite power, then it too would become infinitely powerful.. this would logically then allow it to infinitely power all other Xbox One's and those in turn would infinitely power all Xbox 360's, and then all sorts of shit starts going horribly wrong.

Here's another way to look at it. God is supposed to have infinite limitless power right? Now if someone prays for God to give them strength, does God then decide to then give that person infinite power so they become a god themselves? No, he doesn't. Because that would be fucking stupid. That person could then start handing out god powers to any other random they come across, after a week everyone is god (everyone who isn't dead at least), and everything kinda breaks down at that point.

tl;dr... It doesn't work like that.

 

[NullPointer]

All of which can be done with a CPU I believe.

But most of which would also be seen as related to graphics, lest people be mistaken into thinking that MS positioned the cloud strictly for AI and non-presentation elements and the like.

 

[jem0208]

Do you really believe this?

Why couldn't they? What's to stop devs from offloading background tasks such as grunt or Titan AI to the cloud to free up resources locally?

 

[Norml]

The resources freed up by the cloud are CPU based, graphics are handled by the GPU.

I was thinking have AI on cloud that takes away from CPU,then put what you can like post effects back on the CPU which opens up more GPU.

 

[Wynnebeck]

Connection has to be perfect to play streaming games? Lol Spoken like someone who hasn't used Gaikai's PC offerings before they got bought.

 

[pooptest]

Already addressed...

Yes, I know. It's just not practical, thus the /s tag.

Amazon isn't competing for best graphics or power, thus no reason to tout the cloud even though their servers are better than Azure's from a subjective standpoint. RackSpace servers can also be considered better in some aspects than Azure, so does that mean Sony has a better cloud than MS? Does the cloud = 4 PS4's?
Sony knows it's BS and Cerny can barely keep a straight face when the topic arises.

 

[Tabular]

so, proponents of MS's cloud, are there any real-world examples to substantiate their claims? you can see why some people may doubt, criticize, and even ridicule their statements without any examples of how the xbox one is utilizing the cloud. as some in this thread have said, all MS has to do is demonstrate this cloud potential then all the naysayers would shut up. for the time being, however, any mention of the cloud seems like a bad joke or a future promise that may never materialize as promises often do.

I'm not a proponent but there was a video I saw demonstration bounce lighting using cloud based processing. Tried and failed to find it though.

 

[onanie]

If you think about it, they could just turn on all the Xbox in their warehouse to power the ones they sell. Feasible and would work particularly well in Japan.

Thinking about it, Japan might be the only market where Microsoft could be generous enough to dedicate three times the computational power to one Xbone from their Azure network.

 

[GoofsterStud]

Why couldn't they? What's to stop devs from offloading background tasks such as grunt or Titan AI to the cloud to free up resources locally?

Name one high latency viable example that has been demonstrated in a high latency non-controlled environment.

In the mean time, PS now beta isn't that bad.

I was thinking have AI on cloud that takes away from CPU,then put what you can like post effects back on the CPU which opens up more GPU.

You would need an incredible low latency that not even Google fiber can provide. Also dedicated hardware just for you. How much would games have to cost to cover this?

 

[Blues1990]

I'm honestly puzzled with why Microsoft are even bothering at this point. Both the Xbox & the Xbox 360 had a difficult time connecting with Japanese gamers, especially with the lengths Microsoft had gone through to court them into the fold. I understand why they are delaying the launch (so they could get Japanese developers on board to make games for Japanese players, as well as to localize hardware), but the mandatory inclusion of Kinect alone would make it a tough sell, what with the required space to make it work.

 

[Hexa]

Connection has to be perfect to play streaming games? Lol Spoken like someone who hasn't used Gaikai's PC offerings before they got bought.

Or the PS Now beta. I'm flabbergasted at what games manage to work lol. It's amazing.

 

[Synth]

So, just like a dedicated server of old. And certainly not more impressive than, say, Dark Souls' mobs or Killzone's bots. Of course, that's by Design™, but do you have an example to show that Xbone's Cloud™ can be capable of more useful AI?

Yea, it's not doing anything significantly different than a dedicated server would do once the game has started. It's more the creation and destruction of those servers that's different. The flexibility of the service, and whatever discounts MS offers for its use are simply likely to cause more games to make use of these functions this gen, compared to pretty much everything being p2p last gen. It's not really anything revolutionary, because servers are servers at the end of the day... there's not a special magic form of computer that does things no other computer can. This just makes certain things economically more viable.

I haven't played either Killzone Shadowfall or Dark Souls, so I can't really speak on them without coming across as rather ignorant. If you'd like to provide me with any details you think are important, I may be able to comment on them then.

I can't really give you examples of the cloud being used for more complex AI, as there are so few implementations currently. We only have Titanfall for realtime AI, along with Forza 5 and Kinect Sport Rivals for behaviour based AI. There isn't really anything I can imagine AI-wise that you would actually want in a game, but would be unable to pull off with a cloud implementation. It's as simple as letting it do all the calculations and just sending back the response... it doesn't have the sorts of complications that graphics and physics have due to latency. You could play a game of Civ 5 in realtime without sacrificing the complexity of the computers decisions for example... I'm not sure how playable the game itself would be in this case though. Design is pretty much the only consideration for offloaded AI, unlike locally hosted AI where any increase in complexity comes at the expense of all other game world updates.

 

[Dreamgazer]

http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv176403690?ref=top&zroute=index

They're doing it again for anyone interested.

 

[Synth]

Yes, I know. It's just not practical, thus the /s tag.

Amazon isn't competing for best graphics or power, thus no reason to tout the cloud even though their servers are better than Azure's from a subjective standpoint. RackSpace servers can also be considered better in some aspects than Azure, so does that mean Sony has a better cloud than MS? Does the cloud = 4 PS4's?
Sony knows it's BS and Cerny can barely keep a straight face when the topic arises.

I'm a little surprised you managed to take that post even a little seriously. Maybe I should have placed an /s of my own at the end.

As a more seriously reply though... I'd say that Amazon probably does have a better cloud implementation than MS currently. However as these implementations help primarily with CPU based processes, it would be extremely difficult for a FireTV to even display enough to make much cloud processing worthwhile. It's not doing destruction similar to MS' build demo, because it's not drawing that scene regardless of the calculations.

I know very little about Rackspace, but the fact it's not actually Sony's own cloud solution makes it far less flexible. MS can expand the resources used by Thunderhead as long as they maintain a safe buffer of Azure resources. Sony would need to pay for all resources that they use, if it requires more, than they have to increase how much they spend. They're not in a position similar to MS and Amazon. A comparison I made earlier is that for MS it's like running a restaurant, and eating lunch there. It has no real cost to you if that food wasn't going to be sold anyway. Sony can't pull that off at someone else's restaurant. It's not just a case of using the cloud to increase computations, Sony would probably struggle to offer free server hosting, and storage to all developers on their platform, because the bill they would be landed with would likely be crippling in their current state. So no, Sony doesn't have a better cloud than MS as of today.

Name one high latency viable example that has been demonstrated in a high latency non-controlled environment.

In the mean time, PS now beta isn't that bad.

You would need an incredible low latency that not even Google fiber can provide. Also dedicated hardware just for you. How much would games have to cost to cover this?

Didn't the NVIDIA cloud lighting demo show implementations that account for various delayed responses.. up to 1000ms (which nobody online is ever likely to suffer)? Why do you assume these solutions would all require fiber connections to work? Anything that can survive a 3 frame delay (for a 30fps game) would be granted around 100ms to receive an update. This would work fine for plenty of things (and definitely wouldn't be a problem for the demo MS showed).

 

[onanie]

This just makes certain things economically more viable.

To a developer, is it cheaper than other available competing server farms?

 

[Synth]

To a developer, is it cheaper than other available competing server farms?

MS is claiming to provide cloud hosting and processing for free for X1 titles (not sure what the limitations are). I don't imagine that any other providers divorced from any console platform would be willing to strike a similar deal.

 

[ChiliManiac]

All the jokes and knee jerk reaction aside they're talking about computational power this time. Not a graphics increase...

 

[onanie]

MS is claiming to provide cloud hosting and processing for free for X1 titles (not sure what the limitations are). I don't imagine that any other providers divorced from any console platform would be willing to strike a similar deal.

I imagine it would only do so if there were exclusivity arrangements, much like other financial incentives. Without such, how does the cost compare to other service providers?

 

[Synth]

I imagine it would only do so if there were exclusivity arrangements, much like other financial incentives. Without such, how does the cost compare to other service providers?

They stated that they are free for all games published on X1. They didn't say anything about exclusivity being required. That may be BS, but I'm not willing to make assumptions based on a lack of information showing otherwise. For other platforms, I imagine devs pay the standard rates (which afaik are price matched against Amazon).

 

[onQ123]

Why is this so unbelievable?

It can provide 3X the power of a Xbox One.


The question is can it transfer that power to the home user fast enough to make a big difference?

 

[Synth]

Why is this so unbelievable?

It can provide 3X the power of a Xbox One.


The question is can it transfer that power to the home user fast enough to make a big difference?

For AI? Yea easily.

For physics? Eh... that starts to depends on how much shit we're talking about, and how often they can be affected.

 

[SPDIF]

I imagine it would only do so if there were exclusivity arrangements, much like other financial incentives. Without such, how does the cost compare to other service providers?

Also to be clear. One of the benefits of publishing games on Xbox One – ALL game developers get Dedicated Servers, Cloud Processing, and “storage” (for save games) free.

If you want to do dedicated servers on other platforms, you have to prop them yourself. But on Xbox One, while developers can choose to use their own methods, we make it available to everyone.

There should be no confusion on this point. We do not charge developers for Dedicated Servers.

.

 

[Handy Fake]

All hyperbole aside, the simple issue is any game that uses the Cloud will be pretty much redundant if there's a 'net drop. Si?

Balls to extra power, extra CPU etc. The last time this inherent need for a game to be *ran* via 'net access was Diablo III.

This talking about a recent game that only needed 'net access for essentially MP based around SP. The fallout from games requiring stable 'net access to actually run a game is ridiculous. Plus, on the MS side, you've got at least three walls governing your Internet: YOUR net, MS GOLD, and then this CLOUD. Too. Many. Parameters.

 

[onanie]

They stated that they are free for all games published on X1. They didn't say anything about exclusivity being required. That may be BS, but I'm not willing to make assumptions based on a lack of information showing otherwise. For other platforms, I imagine devs pay the standard rates (which afaik are price matched against Amazon).

There is no such thing as free, friend. We can take real world economics into account, and critically evaluate Microsoft's claims. Why would Microsoft give away an expensive resource for free, if developers are putting their games on the competing platform anyway, and end-users do not appreciate a difference?

 

[not_so_special]

Yep and they use speculation and total baseless assumption to try and make it sound like titanfall, forza and kinect sports benefit greatly from cloud lol. Either of these games would run and look better on ps4 with zero concessions.

well if you look at avatars or post history you will find why a lot of these dudes "believe this" its just their great white hope on the grim future the xbox one is gonna face againts a better hardware like pc or ps4

as a atheist this whole "the clod will make the xbox one 3 times more powerfull" and peole who belive this remins me of the religious zealots who use the "u need to have faith" when you use any normal logic to disband their mumbojumbo arguments..because its the magic word..faith...like the cloud

the cloud will save all of us...yay...

 

[onanie]

.

I see, Albert has never been caught wrong before.

 

[SPDIF]

well if you look at avatars or post history you will find why a lot of these dudes "believe this" its just their great white hope on the grim future the xbox one is gonna face againts a better hardware like pc or ps4

I've used a laughing GIF recently so I wont use one again, but it is pretty hilarious that you're talking about post history while quoting BigSpleenRupture. Have you taken a look?

 

[not_so_special]

I've used a laughing GIF recently so I wont use one again, but it is pretty hilarious that you're talking about post history while quoting BigSpleenRupture. Have you taken a look?

i dont know about this guy...you believe this "the cloud will make the xbox one x3 powerfull"? seriously?

edit-...you are quoting master of pr bs penello...so wellcome to my ignore list

 

[Synth]

There is no such thing as free, friend. We can take real world economics into account, and critically evaluate Microsoft's claims. Why would Microsoft give away an expensive resource for free, if developers are putting their games on the competing platform anyway, and end-users do not appreciate a difference?

Because the resource isn't expensive to MS. It's expensive to people that purchase from MS. Continuing with the restaurant idea... you can go to a fancy restaurant and spend a few hundred on a meal. That meal didn't cost the restaurant a few hundred dollars to make. They could eat the same thing casually for dinner. If they have contacts that can help their business in other ways such as a favourable review, or cheaper ingredients) the restaurant may be happy to provide these people with free meals, as they have an abundance of ingredients that otherwise often go unused.

MS' Azure network is almost certainly never close to capacity. If the resources are not being sold at the moment, then they simply sit idle the majority of the time. Why not use these to bolster their console's standing. At the same time they may cause devs to start buying time on the servers for PS4 and PC, when they need servers to match those they received on the X1 for free. So $300 of server time goes for $200, which is still massively more than it costs for MS to provide it.

I've used a laughing GIF recently so I wont use one again, but it is pretty hilarious that you're talking about post history while quoting BigSpleenRupture. Have you taken a look?

Forget BigSpleenRupture... you're obviously not familiar with not_so_special....

 

[SPDIF]

I see, Albert has never been caught wrong before.

Difference is, I'd imagine by now plenty of devs would have spoken up (or at least anonymously leaked it out) that he was lying. The only thing we have to go against his word is Respawn, just after E3, saying that it was cheap not free to use MS's servers. I'm guessing they've probably changed policy since then and made it free. Or who knows, maybe he was lying. I'm sure we'll find out eventually.

 

[SPDIF]

i dont know about this guy...you believe this "the cloud will make the xbox one x3 powerfull"? seriously?

edit-...you are quoting master of pr bs penello...so wellcome to my ignore list

You don't have to know him. Just look at his post history, like you did with those other "dudes". As for the bolded, well, good for you I guess. I'm sure you'll probably still read this post anyway.

Forget BigSpleenRupture... you're obviously not familiar with not_so_special....

I certainly wasn't. It was fun while it lasted though.

 

[not_so_special]

Forget BigSpleenRupture... you're obviously not familiar with not_so_special....

excuse me for no wasting entire hours of my time championing or defending every piece of pr bs microsoft uses to lie to people

keep writing long posts dude...maybe some day anyone will believe a single word

 

[vcc]

All hyperbole aside, the simple issue is any game that uses the Cloud will be pretty much redundant if there's a 'net drop. Si?

Balls to extra power, extra CPU etc. The last time this inherent need for a game to be *ran* via 'net access was Diablo III.

This talking about a recent game that only needed 'net access for essentially MP based around SP. The fallout from games requiring stable 'net access to actually run a game is ridiculous. Plus, on the MS side, you've got at least three walls governing your Internet: YOUR net, MS GOLD, and then this CLOUD. Too. Many. Parameters.

For diablo they opted to make the game mostly run server side for,

• Legitimacy
• syncronization
• DRM

The trade off is rubber banding, slight continuous game lag, occasionally bad lag and play is unavailable if anything is up with the servers.

 

[tazz3]

MS is really makeing stuff up now.iam sure the cloud is awesome but 32 360s no way.

 

[SFenton]

Dedicated servers are dedicated. Not hard. 1996 called.

Right, but if you honestly believe that Sony has the capital to fund something on the scale of Azure, or even rent it for their games, I don't think it'd be unfair for me to say that's a far-fetched idea.

 

[Synth]

excuse me for no wasting entire hours of my time championing or defending every piece of pr bs microsoft uses to lie to people

keep writing long posts dude...maybe some day anyone will believe a single word

Yes, we should all be more like you. Fuck discussing anything on a discussion forum. It's all about dropping in, leaving a quick one-liner about MS, PR and lies, and calling anyone disagrees a fanboy.. before moving onto the next target (thread).

That's what NeoGAF should be all about.

 

[vcc]

Right, but if you honestly believe that Sony has the capital to fund something on the scale of Azure, or even rent it for their games, I don't think it'd be unfair for me to say that's a far-fetched idea.

They aren't even trying; they're partnering to buy capacity from Rackspace. They don't need to match Azure in size just provide a reasonable portion of the services.