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"The Power of the Cloud" - what happened?

Dynasty

Member
Mate sorry, the jump is pretty massive. RFG did destruction on a much smaller scale with the destructible installations being themselves rather spread out on a desert plant.

Crackdown 3 is showing an entire City, one unbroken large map that is 100% destructible.

To claim that RFG comes any close to what has already been displayed by Crackdown is intellectual dishonesty
I mis-typed meant people were saying.
 

JeffG

Member
Mate sorry, the jump is pretty massive. RFG did destruction on a much smaller scale with the destructible installations being themselves rather spread out on a desert plant.

Crackdown 3 is showing an entire City, one unbroken large map that is 100% destructible.

To claim that RFG comes any close to what has already been displayed by Crackdown is intellectual dishonesty

and it is also something that neither the XBox One or the PS4 could do alone.

That is why it is impressive. The fact that it will probably show up on the XBox first has more to do with how companies use their resources. PS4 with PSNow, XBox with Azure use.

All gamers should look at this and say "Cool...I can't wait to see this in use"

If this tech works, it will be adopted by others.
 
I honestly don't know if the ps4 will ever do something like this or if Sony could even respond to this news. Have they showed interest in this or is there any indication that they could do something like this?
 

ShogunX

Member
Not going to get into a big argument with you, yet the hyperbole in your response, kinda sums up my point.

I'm relating my experience and many others I know in IRL say the exact same thing. How experience can be false only speaks to perception. Since I've clearly stated platform neutrality only a leap of paranoia can turn my observation into a biased distoryion some sort.

There is no hyperbole and quite simply you don't have a point. You're bullshitting that this supposed nasty group of ''MS fanboys'' go around attacking everybody on the internet whilst fans of other companies sip tea and eat biscuits.

I'm telling you from years on this forum that this quite simply is not true, it's not an opinion it's a fact. Everybody is just as bad as each other, just as petty as each other and most of all just as immature and to be honest we are all guilty of it from time to time.
 

JeffG

Member
I honestly don't know if the ps4 will ever do something like this or if Sony could even respond to this news. Have they showed interest in this or is there any indication that they could do something like this?

There is no magic being done. I could see Sony sitting on the fence and waiting to see how it turns out. Kinda like how Microsoft seems to be sitting out the VR thing

Companies only have so much money and resources
 
There is no magic being done. I could see Sony sitting on the fence and waiting to see how it turns out. Kinda like how Microsoft seems to be sitting out the VR thing

Companies only have so much money and resources


Would be interesting to have someone ask yoshida what he thinks of all of this. I'm sure some journalist will at some point.
 
What you said in the CD thread:


Sorry but I really doubt you would leave a Sony or Nintendo thread without some heat discussion. Actually I doubt you would even post like that if it wasn't on a Xbox thread, looking at your post history.

I dont know. I think its just stupid enter in a game thread and say its was early announced. Like, how can you know better than the publisher or the dev when they are ready to show their own game? Even so, there's a lot of games that are showed in alpha stage.

Unfortunately this risks devolving into a console wars type of thread, in which I have no side, so I'll only address the parts where you didn't reinforce my original point.

Devs get pressure to show games too early all the time. You hear so much about that in the gaming media, it's not even really worth discussing as a general concept.

If you want to address Crackdown specifically, I thought I was going to get my socks knocked off. After the video, I was still wearing them. So I assumed it was too early, rather than it's a bad looking game. That's giving them the benefit of the doubt...that's usually referred to as positivity.

Anyway, I'm done with this subject.
 
Would be interesting to have someone ask yoshida what he thinks of all of this. I'm sure some journalist will at some point.

Even though I know its completely different, I imagine with the developmentent of PSNow, they are probably at least experimenting with server side stuff like this, but maybe not at the same scale.
 

Alx

Member
I honestly don't know if the ps4 will ever do something like this or if Sony could even respond to this news. Have they showed interest in this or is there any indication that they could do something like this?

It's all a matter of cost in the end. The know-how may not be an issue, since the cloud tech is developped by Cloudgine, which seems to produce non exclusive middleware. But to use it, one has to pay for the cloud servers. They don't cost much to MS which has its own Azure services, but Sony or third parties would have to pay full price for those.
 

TI82

Banned
So since Crackdown 3 relies on the cloud for it's city destruction what happens if you play offline? Just a lesser experience or will the destructions not work at all?

(sorry if this was already answered)
 
So since Crackdown 3 relies on the cloud for it's city destruction what happens if you play offline? Just a lesser experience or will the destructions not work at all?

(sorry if this was already answered)

Most likely a lesser experience. I don't think they've specifically said anything about it yet.
 

JeffG

Member
So since Crackdown 3 relies on the cloud for it's city destruction what happens if you play offline? Just a lesser experience or will the destructions not work at all?

(sorry if this was already answered)

Full destruction may only be there for Multi-player, but not confirmed.
 

Synth

Member
So since Crackdown 3 relies on the cloud for it's city destruction what happens if you play offline? Just a lesser experience or will the destructions not work at all?

(sorry if this was already answered)

I don't think anyone knows yet. I can imagine it'd be scaled back, so certain things would just be reinforced with adamantium or something lol. Will probably have smaller localised damage to things like shooting a hole through a wall, and probably not persistent, so once you leave the area it'd be magically fixed again.

At least, those are the sorts of compromises I'd be initially thinking of for an offline version.
 

eso76

Member
If what we've seen in today's demo really is representative of what the game will be like at release, then this is a pretty huge accomplishment.
There's absolutely no denying this.

It's a technical and coding accomplishment, I can't even begin to imagine the headaches setting something like that up must have caused.

I'm still skeptical though.

Also, I want the game to release with a bonus 1M pts achievement for completing the game with the city in perfect conditions.

I don't think anyone knows yet. I can imagine it'd be scaled back, so certain things would just be reinforced with adamantium or something lol. Will probably have smaller localised damage to things like shooting a hole through a wall, and probably not persistent, so once you leave the area it'd be magically fixed again.

At least, those are the sorts of compromises I'd be initially thinking of for an offline version.

They did say it will be scaled back, but still present. I don't think damage being persistent has a lot to do with the cloud though. Just keep overwriting data on Xbox HDD.
 
A huge part of the problem is the MS defense force. (Not all MS super fans, but the aggressive minority)

The truth, imo, is partly obscured because any time you question MS in any way, in an Xbox focused thread anywhere on the internet, you get attacked with rheroric like a democrat guesting on Fox News.

I say this as someone who believes you should buy as many platforms as you can afford. Someone who has strong affections for all platforms.

Yet when I question why Sony did X. People mostly say "good point." When I say "Nintendo has to start doing Y." Mostly people say "worth considering."

Yet when MS releases a demo, like the Crackdown one from yesterday and I say "seems really early, devs deserve more time to polish what I assume is going to be an awesome game." An X-force emerges from a puddle of Rush Limbaugh's stem cells to question my every motivation.

Why can't my fandom for MS be tinged with the same healthy skepticism of my fandom for every single other product? Why am I always forced to "take it or leave it?"

That is why this cloud computing thing gets so heated, because as soon as people started saying "how would it work?" The hordes emerged from the shadows telling is how to enjoy our hobby. Naturally people resent his and attack back.

I don't condone it either way, I really just think everything should be an open discussion. The end product will settle it eventually, anyway...but why not discuss it openly and with civility until then?

This is the funniest post in the whole damn thread. The entire last 3 years have been incessant bashing of the cloud. Memes were made. Look at the first page of this thread even. But it's the Microsoft people who are the problem always defending it in force. No, we just have a fresh batch of crow pie and we want people to eat it up. The arguments floating around here aren't "doubting tech". Let's be honest here, we know what civil and rational discussion is, and when it comes to the cloud we've never gotten it. It's hard to talk about the pluses or the possibilities when every damn response is pr bs, never gonna happen,blah blah blah.
 

kyser73

Member
I'm a bit mystified by the criticisms of this ITT.

It's an excellent technical accomplishment and MS deserve kudos for this work - I have no doubt that this will also spur similar development at companies like AWS and Google as the kind of compute offloading this demonstrates has applications far wider and more lucrative than the gaming sphere.

The final proof of sucess will be when it goes live into people's homes, and of course there are still question marks over how this would be supported on a game with poor sales that made use of this technique - but that doesn't for one second take away from the technical accomplishment of this demo, and I'm more than happy to eat some crow on this subject as I was very cynical about how this could be done.
 

VinFTW

Member
A huge part of the problem is the MS defense force. (Not all MS super fans, but the aggressive minority)

The truth, imo, is partly obscured because any time you question MS in any way, in an Xbox focused thread anywhere on the internet, you get attacked with rheroric like a democrat guesting on Fox News.

I say this as someone who believes you should buy as many platforms as you can afford. Someone who has strong affections for all platforms.

Yet when I question why Sony did X. People mostly say "good point." When I say "Nintendo has to start doing Y." Mostly people say "worth considering."

Yet when MS releases a demo, like the Crackdown one from yesterday and I say "seems really early, devs deserve more time to polish what I assume is going to be an awesome game." An X-force emerges from a puddle of Rush Limbaugh's stem cells to question my every motivation.

Why can't my fandom for MS be tinged with the same healthy skepticism of my fandom for every single other product? Why am I always forced to "take it or leave it?"

That is why this cloud computing thing gets so heated, because as soon as people started saying "how would it work?" The hordes emerged from the shadows telling is how to enjoy our hobby. Naturally people resent his and attack back.

I don't condone it either way, I really just think everything should be an open discussion. The end product will settle it eventually, anyway...but why not discuss it openly and with civility until then?

lol
 

moered6

Banned
A huge part of the problem is the MS defense force. (Not all MS super fans, but the aggressive minority)

The truth, imo, is partly obscured because any time you question MS in any way, in an Xbox focused thread anywhere on the internet, you get attacked with rheroric like a democrat guesting on Fox News.

I say this as someone who believes you should buy as many platforms as you can afford. Someone who has strong affections for all platforms.

Yet when I question why Sony did X. People mostly say "good point." When I say "Nintendo has to start doing Y." Mostly people say "worth considering."

Yet when MS releases a demo, like the Crackdown one from yesterday and I say "seems really early, devs deserve more time to polish what I assume is going to be an awesome game." An X-force emerges from a puddle of Rush Limbaugh's stem cells to question my every motivation.

Why can't my fandom for MS be tinged with the same healthy skepticism of my fandom for every single other product? Why am I always forced to "take it or leave it?"

That is why this cloud computing thing gets so heated, because as soon as people started saying "how would it work?" The hordes emerged from the shadows telling is how to enjoy our hobby. Naturally people resent his and attack back.

I don't condone it either way, I really just think everything should be an open discussion. The end product will settle it eventually, anyway...but why not discuss it openly and with civility until then?

what the fuck?
 

Trup1aya

Member
A huge part of the problem is the MS defense force. (Not all MS super fans, but the aggressive minority)

The truth, imo, is partly obscured because any time you question MS in any way, in an Xbox focused thread anywhere on the internet, you get attacked with rheroric like a democrat guesting on Fox News.

I say this as someone who believes you should buy as many platforms as you can afford. Someone who has strong affections for all platforms.

Yet when I question why Sony did X. People mostly say "good point." When I say "Nintendo has to start doing Y." Mostly people say "worth considering."

Yet when MS releases a demo, like the Crackdown one from yesterday and I say "seems really early, devs deserve more time to polish what I assume is going to be an awesome game." An X-force emerges from a puddle of Rush Limbaugh's stem cells to question my every motivation.

Why can't my fandom for MS be tinged with the same healthy skepticism of my fandom for every single other product? Why am I always forced to "take it or leave it?"

That is why this cloud computing thing gets so heated, because as soon as people started saying "how would it work?" The hordes emerged from the shadows telling is how to enjoy our hobby. Naturally people resent his and attack back.

I don't condone it either way, I really just think everything should be an open discussion. The end product will settle it eventually, anyway...but why not discuss it openly and with civility until then?

So it the xbox's defense forces fault that people are actively denying that what took place in the demo is impossible on standard hardware?...

Yeah ok..

It shouldn't matter what platform you choose to game on... Call a spade a spade... MS said all along that this is how they wanted to use the cloud... Now finally, they are showing how it will work... And it's undeniably impressive... And a significant leap over anything we've ever seen in gaming physics computation...

I mean seriously... They give a 10min presentation explaining EXACTLY how it works (complete with nice color coded realtime explanatory overlays), whilst showing it working... and after watching it, your first question is "how will it work?"

You're concern trolling ...
 

Trup1aya

Member
How can it be "moving goal post" when MS set the goal post at 20x the power of the xbox one?

With this demo they say is up to 15x the power of the "physic processing power set aside by the developer for their game on xbone processor" is how high they have gotten so far. Love to see the mental gymnastics it takes to make MS statement true.

Now people are acting like this is the first game that even use "the cloud" on xbone. Forza drivatar "Forza Motorsport 5 is driven by the cloud" and titanfall AI bots.



http://www.usgamer.net/articles/titanfall-dev-demystifies-xbox-one-cloud-technology

Just funny....

Smh... The cpu does more than just physics calculations in game... Including running the xb1 OS and handling background applications... And it would also be used for handling NPC and traffic routines... so naturally, a portion of CPU would be off limits to the developer for the purpose of physics computations... So why should they make their claims including the portion of the CPU that wouldn't be used?

Also, they've said internally, that they've been able to create scenarios that use 15x the physics allotment of the cpu, that doesn't mean that the threshold is not 20x... It means that they haven't even pushed the threshold in testing yet... Which is impressive when you think about it...

Your spending a lot of time trying to find ways to call Ms liars instead of just admitting they've made an impressive technological advancement here.
 
I was skeptical of "The Cloud" at first but the Crackdown video was really impressive and I'm now a believer of the tech. I really hope its successful! And I really hope Sony adopts the tech!

My only concern (lol) is what happens to a game when the servers shut down? I really wish developers could figure out a reliable way to preserve video games long term.
 

Three

Member
Now finally, they are showing how it will work... And it's undeniably impressive... And a significant leap over anything we've ever seen in love physics computation...

I liked the crackdown pre-alpha video as much as the next guy but that is not a leap over anything we've ever seen in love (live?/realtime) physics. We have had realtime physics done locally with more objects tracked in an Nvidia gtx 680 demo. That was done at the same framerate locally in 2013 and the objects fragment more.

https://youtu.be/O04ErnJ8USY

Until we see an actual game beyond pre alpha footage what that person posted isn't concern trolling it's calling the pre-alpha footage rough and showing no gameplay mechanics beyond the person running past/around exploding buildings that's a fair assessment. I'm excited at the possibilities but the overly sensitive posts trying to call that concern trolling only prove his/her point.
 

Revengineer

Unconfirmed Member
Anyone in this thread with technical knowledge of how this technically works?

I imagine they have data optimization end-to-end that allows them to send very, very small pieces of data to servers that calculate the results of the data (maybe just an X,Y,Z coordinate + type of impact, or a series if it's a laser or whatnot), compact it to a similarly small piece of data and send it back, then the XOne has some sort of built-in amazing decompression that streams the results into the game.

Or I'm 100% not even on the right track.
 
I was skeptical of "The Cloud" at first but the Crackdown video was really impressive and I'm now a believer of the tech. I really hope its successful! And I really hope Sony adopts the tech!

My only concern (lol) is what happens to a game when the servers shut down? I really wish developers could figure out a reliable way to preserve video games long term.

MS doesn't shut down servers. They own them. All that will happen is that in the future if you go to play a server will be allocated for you automatically
 

Electret

Member
Anyone in this thread with technical knowledge of how this technically works?

I imagine they have data optimization end-to-end that allows them to send very, very small pieces of data to servers that calculate the results of the data (maybe just an X,Y,Z coordinate + type of impact, or a series if it's a laser or whatnot), compact it to a similarly small piece of data and send it back, then the XOne has some sort of built-in amazing decompression that streams the results into the game.

Or I'm 100% not even on the right track.

I'd love to know more as well. One particular thing I'm curious about is how they handle a situation where they can't transmit a physics update at a desired interval. Would the local XBO have logic to "interpolate" based on prior position and velocity? Or would this alone place too much burden on the CPU?
 

YuShtink

Member
LOL wow MS just legitimately bitchslapped today's smart-ass gaming community with the true power of The Cloud. This is fantastic.
 

Overside

Banned
I'd love to know more as well. One particular thing I'm curious about is how they handle a situation where they can't transmit a physics update at a desired interval. Would the local XBO have logic to "interpolate" based on prior position and velocity? Or would this alone place too much burden on the CPU?

I would also like to know to exactly what extent they have information redundancy for dropped and unreadable data.

From what Ive seen in the video, it appears at least a part of the solution is simply warping, changing the trajectory of, or simply removing geometry/pieces when a new packet comes in thats a little disynchronus from the previous. Probably under the tried and true assumption that it wont be nearly as noticable since there is just so much moving, and even less such from the gameplay perspective, and even less as such when you are actually trying to play.
 

kyser73

Member
MS doesn't shut down servers. They own them. All that will happen is that in the future if you go to play a server will be allocated for you automatically

They could cease to run the compute if they chose to do so tho.

Server time costs money, even if it's cents, and this is why I've asked the question about where the viability threshold lies for this service if a game has a small MP community or sells poorly - especially if its a third party title and relies on someone paying MS for the compute time.
 

Chris1

Member
LOL wow MS just legitimately bitchslapped today's smart-ass gaming community with the true power of The Cloud. This is fantastic.
There was someone at Sony that shut it down and said it was bullshit aswell.

They clearly announced it far too early but they proved all the haters wrong. With destruction like demoed in Crackdown, I really hope it makes its way to other games too. People have been wanting something game changing, the cloud can be that.
 
A huge part of the problem is the MS defense force. (Not all MS super fans, but the aggressive minority)

The truth, imo, is partly obscured because any time you question MS in any way, in an Xbox focused thread anywhere on the internet, you get attacked with rheroric like a democrat guesting on Fox News.

I say this as someone who believes you should buy as many platforms as you can afford. Someone who has strong affections for all platforms.

Yet when I question why Sony did X. People mostly say "good point." When I say "Nintendo has to start doing Y." Mostly people say "worth considering."

Yet when MS releases a demo, like the Crackdown one from yesterday and I say "seems really early, devs deserve more time to polish what I assume is going to be an awesome game." An X-force emerges from a puddle of Rush Limbaugh's stem cells to question my every motivation.

Why can't my fandom for MS be tinged with the same healthy skepticism of my fandom for every single other product? Why am I always forced to "take it or leave it?"

That is why this cloud computing thing gets so heated, because as soon as people started saying "how would it work?" The hordes emerged from the shadows telling is how to enjoy our hobby. Naturally people resent his and attack back.

I don't condone it either way, I really just think everything should be an open discussion. The end product will settle it eventually, anyway...but why not discuss it openly and with civility until then?

Lol
 

FordGTGuy

Banned
They could cease to run the compute if they chose to do so tho.

Server time costs money, even if it's cents, and this is why I've asked the question about where the viability threshold lies for this service if a game has a small MP community or sells poorly - especially if its a third party title and relies on someone paying MS for the compute time.

Probably the millions of people paying yearly for the service.
 
How can it be "moving goal post" when MS set the goal post at 20x the power of the xbox one?

With this demo they say is up to 15x the power of the "physic processing power set aside by the developer for their game on xbone processor" is how high they have gotten so far. Love to see the mental gymnastics it takes to make MS statement true.

Now people are acting like this is the first game that even use "the cloud" on xbone. Forza drivatar "Forza Motorsport 5 is driven by the cloud" and titanfall AI bots.



http://www.usgamer.net/articles/titanfall-dev-demystifies-xbox-one-cloud-technology

Just funny....

I think going from "it's impossible, it's not real, it's bullshit" to "that demo only showed a 15x multiplier instead of the full 20x, so technically it's still a lie!" is the ultimate goal-post shift, but that aside...

...what's wrong with the Titanfall quote? It really did use dedicated servers for the AI and collisions. Unless you have proof it's a lie, what was the point of posting that quote?
 

Synth

Member
I think going from "it's impossible, it's not real, it's bullshit" to "that demo only showed a 15x multiplier instead of the full 20x, so technically it's still a lie!" is the ultimate goal-post shift, but that aside

That's not even simply moving the goalposts... that's swapping them for a hoop, and attaching it to a rocket.
 

joecanada

Member
On the scale and detail it's being shown in the video then yes it needs cloud computing to work like this on the Xbox One. Not sure how you could watch the entire video and come away not knowing that answer.

Ya I was clear on what they said. Still waiting to see it in actual finished state.
 

jryi

Senior Analyst, Fanboy Drivel Research Partners LLC
We also don't know if it has anything to do with cloud computing like does this mean a pc could not run that MP? Or a PS4?
Cloud computing is just distributed server side computing. There is nothing that PC or PS4 could not take advantage of in a similar fashion.

I honestly don't know if the ps4 will ever do something like this or if Sony could even respond to this news. Have they showed interest in this or is there any indication that they could do something like this?
Yes, Sony could do this, if they saw the benefit. They wouldn't even have to use Azure, which is just one of the cloud infrastructures. Amazon has at least as robust system in place, and Google is probably in the same ballpark.

The question is rather if they should do this. Is there enough there to benefit the gameplay to justify the costs? This is not free for Microsoft, either, but they have unused computing capacity, so we are probably only talking about a negligible opportunity cost. But I highly doubt that MS is growing their computing capacity just to give it away to game developers for free. It's not probably even that much cheaper than running everything at Amazon Web Services.
 
So it the xbox's defense forces fault that people are actively denying that what took place in the demo is impossible on standard hardware?...

This is entirely the crux of the issue though. People are being sceptical because of Microsoft's entire history with Cloud related information and the XB1, yet they're being demonised for questioning it rather than just accepting it. When did we start taking pre-alpha demos as final products? I understand some people are excited by the possibilities, I understand that some people are excited by the justification of the Cloud mantra, but it must also be obvious why some people are "concerned" or sceptical about the whole thing.
 

c0de

Member
I think the interesting part is not that it can be used in Crackdown to simulate destruction but that the tech itself works. You actually can offload things for computing in the cloud and the destruction in Crackdown is only one example to show this to people.
It's of no use to say "well, that doesn't look much better than x" because it is still the tech itself working that is impressive. How devs will use it in future games, we have to see (and I hope they release more technical details on how they do this and how they "share" the computing load on the servers).
 

tearsofash

Member
"cloud" always bothered me. I was like..."Duh? Lots of things use online storage for things? Dropbox, steam saves?" aaaaaah marketing >: >: >?:
 

c0de

Member
"cloud" always bothered me. I was like..."Duh? Lots of things use online storage for things? Dropbox, steam saves?" aaaaaah marketing >: >: >?:

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