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[SeaOfMadness]

not sure why people are so dismissive of the idea of offloading certain tasks to servers.

Because
a) they don't understand the tech and
b) there haven't been many good examples of why this is beneficial

this is like the third or fourth thread on this subject. people are having a hard time understanding and accepting that this isn't for real time computation, and I think the logical follow up question is, "well what else is there for games?"

 

[oVerde]

The strength of Gaikai/OnLive is being able to quickly compress the video feed and stream it over the net. It's kind of a different beast from raw computing power like Microsoft is hyping, though there may be some overlap.

holy smokes! a game is not a fixed movie lol, you giving more logical cores over cloud computing is hell different from a whole machine doing your game remotely.

Cloud computing is nothing beastly, just wasn't done for games yet, and there isn't a problem with neither is that complicated. Fucking large software environments uses clouds virtual machines to compute hell bunch of data in a blink of eye rather than hours on the client side. Just MS doing it right and it will blow everyone away.

How does Gaikai's cloud gaming platform work?

Games are uploaded to our datacenters located broadly around the world. They are then streamed using high-end servers to internet-connected devices, similar to the way videos are streamed to your computer, except interactively. Our technology is such that we can stream the world's most graphically rich video games and other content instantly to almost any device, anywhere

 

[artist]

Gaikai uses Nvidia's GRID and if you watched their last keynote, they showed off OctaneRender Cloud - which is exactly the same as offloading GPU compute to the cloud and not render on Cloud and stream the video.

 

[BrokenSymmetry]

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.

All developer info for Windows Azure is completely in the open: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dd163896.aspx

 

[LittleJohnny]

Maybe even more. It's one of the main reasons why Sony bought them out. They'll be instrumental in the PS4's growth.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

This. Its complete and total bullshit, and anyone that bought into it is being foolish.

I'd say dismissing it as bullshit is foolish as well. There are lots of things games can benefit from that don't include real time rendering enhancements (which this is CLEARLY not meant to be used for)

 

[TheD]

You can not do only some of the rendering calculations on a remote server.

GPUs need stuff done in the region of only a few ms in the rendering pipeline, it is flat out impossible to send commands to a remote server, have the remote server do the calculations and then send them back and have the inserted into the GPU pipeline for the next step of processing in without stalling the GPU for a long, long time. Don't forget the data would be insanely huge, far larger than what most internet connections can handle.

Any precomputed data set that could not also fit on disc is likely to be too large to stream also.

Using a server to compute some parts of the game logic like the AI is going to cost a lot of money for doing it on a scale that is not possible on the local system and would still be affected by latency.

 

[Cat Party]

Because
a) they don't understand the tech and
b) there haven't been many good examples of why this is beneficial

this is like the third or fourth thread on this subject. people are having a hard time understanding and accepting that this isn't for real time computation, and I think the logical follow up question is, "well what else is there for games?"

That's the big one. All tech is talk until someone uses it in a cool way. I'm interested to see more.

 

[rohlfinator]

people are having a hard time understanding and accepting that this isn't for real time computation, and I think the logical follow up question is, "well what else is there for games?"

People are having a hard time with that because so far Microsoft has been abusing the hell out of their numbers to imply that it is for realtime computation. Nobody is questioning the concept of cloud computing, just the bizarre manipulation of facts coming out of Microsoft.

holy smokes! a game is not a fixed movie lol, you giving more logical cores over cloud computing is hell different from a whole machine doing your game remotely.

Uh, no shit to the bolded, and I have no idea what you're trying to say with the other part?

 

[SeaOfMadness]

Using a server to compute some parts of the game logic like the AI is going to cost a lot of money for doing it on a scale that is not possible on the local system and would still be affected by latency.

I don't think the money is an issue right now. We don't know how much this costs the publisher (if anything) and it doesn't have to be 10x the local computation power. Even if it's the same amount as the local, it can be done remotely so at worst you have a 2x increase in CPU time for AI calculations.

The key is non-realtime. It's been said many times. Latency insensitive computation. What kinds of things are those? I'm not sure. In the other threads, I've suggested stuff like terrain generation while the game is loading, high level AI strategy decision trees, pre-rendered FMV using data from the game you're currently playing (like the way Galactic Reign did its battles), etc...

I'm sure game creators can come up with this stuff. The problem isn't figuring out ways to use it, it's the fact that they could never be reliant on something like this being there guaranteed until now.

Pretty much every FPS game with a client/server architecture has done this exact thing already. Send the data up to the server, wait for the server to decide if you hit the guy, then it sends the result back to you. It does this pretty much in real time and you don't notice when latency is low-ish because the local game does a decent job of covering up this latency. Of course, when the latency gets bad, you get pissed because lag makes you miss the guy.

 

[onQ123]

I know one thing MS or Sony could use it to fake the hell out of some game play videos using the cloud to render the replays with much better graphics & let people upload them to youtube.

 

[BRocknRolla]

Sony does have Gaikai, but rather than BS the audience, they said its goals were aspirational. MS can get away with saying whatever it wants about the cloud because it's all a bunch of half thought through, vague promises that no one can eventually hold them accountable for.

 

[rohlfinator]

Any precomputed data set that could not also fit on disc is likely to be too large to stream also.

One exception to this would be something along the lines of Google Maps, where there's a huge amount of data, but any given user will only ever see a tiny percent of it.

But I'm not sure what game would ever do that -- developers of late typically don't develop a lot of content that most players will never see.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

People are having a hard time with that because so far Microsoft has been abusing the hell out of their numbers to imply that it is for realtime computation. Nobody is questioning the concept of cloud computing, just the bizarre manipulation of facts coming out of Microsoft.



Uh, no shit to the bolded, and I have no idea what you're trying to say with the other part?

Well, no, not quite. The exact quote from someone at MS was "latency insensitive" which shows me they acknowledge that this isn't for real time computation. That doesn't mean that the 4x or whatever number isn't also valid in some way.

We don't yet know how many CPUs (or GPUs) in the cloud are available for each game. Maybe they're not busy 100% of the time, but with clever design, they will have some use. Maybe not in every kind of game, but I'm sure it will have its use.

But like I said, until we see some games start using it, it will be hard to appreciate what this means.

I think this same argument was had when many other kinds of tech were introduced to games: GPUs, rumble motors, analog sticks, 5.1 surround, and yes, motion controls.

 

[BrbZrk]

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.

are you american?? cos logic seams the be missing in their heads u cant be one of them

 

[TheD]

I don't think the money is an issue right now. We don't know how much this costs the publisher (if anything) and it doesn't have to be 10x the local computation power. Even if it's the same amount as the local, it can be done remotely so at worst you have a 2x increase in CPU time for AI calculations.

The key is non-realtime. It's been said many times. Latency insensitive computation. What kinds of things are those? I'm not sure. In the other threads, I've suggested stuff like terrain generation while the game is loading, high level AI strategy decision trees, pre-rendered FMV using data from the game you're currently playing (like the way Galactic Reign did its battles), etc...

I'm sure game creators can come up with this stuff. The problem isn't figuring out ways to use it, it's the fact that they could never be reliant on something like this being there guaranteed until now.

Pretty much every FPS game with a client/server architecture has done this exact thing already. Send the data up to the server, wait for the server to decide if you hit the guy, then it sends the result back to you. It does this pretty much in real time and you don't notice when latency is low-ish because the local game does a decent job of covering up this latency. Of course, when the latency gets bad, you get pissed because lag makes you miss the guy.

It is always have a cost, stuff like this does not happen for free!
Random generation of terrain can be done on local systems, the local system can also handle high level strategy, FMVs are going out of style, just do it real time.

The simple fact is that this just an attempt by MS at deflecting away from the fact that the PS4 is a fair bit more powerful.

 

[Brashnir]

are you american?? cos logic seams the be missing in their heads u cant be one of them

what the fuck is this shit?

 

[SeaOfMadness]

It is always have a cost, stuff like this does not happen for free!
Random generation of terrain can be done on local systems, the local system can also handle high level strategy, FMVs are going out of style, just do it real time.

That's right. That stuff can be done locally. Anything that can be done remotely can be done locally. That's not the point. The point is this stuff can be done remotely while the local game does other more important stuff.

Also, the CPU of the remote server is likely much larger than the local one so very complex things can be done in a fraction of the time. That's precisely what cloud computing has to offer in a general sense. So that terrain generation that can be done locally can now be done with way, way, way more complexity in a fraction of the time. That means a better game experience. Oh and it won't affect the loading time either.

Now apply that same concept to some other game tech, and you can hopefully see where this is going.

 

[artist]

what the fuck is this shit?

Serious business.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

The simple fact is that this just an attempt by MS at deflecting away from the fact that the PS4 is a fair bit more powerful.

I don't think so. I think it's more about "hey we have Azure and games can use it too." It certainly won't add more GPU ROPs to the console

 

[Denur]

I'll be sidestepping a bit here. I don't believe that cloud computing will be reliable enough (latency, varying network availability, etc) in the near future, to give any game on any console an extra boost. But how would things work out when e.g. the Vita is hooked up via USB to a PS3? In that case you'd have a fixed and reliable connection, with a known latency and computational power. If this could work (with some FW updates for sure), how would games be able to benefit from this: frame rate increase, more anti aliasing, better textures.....?

 

[JWong]

Sony is not worried about a lie.

 

[Man]

What the fuck is XBone Cloud.
Let's wait til Microsoft actually release something concrete. Let's wait and wait and wait...

 

[rohlfinator]

Well, no, not quite. The exact quote from someone at MS was "latency insensitive" which shows me they acknowledge that this isn't for real time computation. That doesn't mean that the 4x or whatever number isn't also valid in some way.

One guy said the "latency insensitive" thing, the rest of them have been running with the "300,000 servers" or "40x Xbox 360 power" or whatever. And articles like this one suggest that it'll be used for lighting and physics, which, I'm not a dev, but those sound pretty real time to me.

Their messaging on this has been kind of mixed (hey what else is new) but in general they've been more interested in throwing out big-sounding numbers than actually explaining the tech or real-world cases of what it could be used for. From the way they talk about things, I'd be really surprised if we see any concrete examples at E3.

 

[yurinka]

Let's toss another topic on the pile. I, for one, am excited for any and all new technology that is released. I am glad to see all of the topics related to new hardware recently as this is one of the most exciting times on a site like NeoGAF. It only happens every 5-10 years.

Anyway on to my question...


Sony already has plans to utilize Gakai for remote computations that stream back to the local console. I know the implementations are different, but couldn't Sony easily leverage the Gakai technology to combat the cloud that Microsoft is promoting? Instead of performing calculations for past games or demos they should be able to move to expanding the computational aspects of the local console for current games.

I am not saying it would be a smart idea, but the potential is there correct?


*The reason I don't think this concept is a good thing is that you cannot guarantee a flat line user experience with cloud computing. There are too many variables involved. Do people with slower internet connections get a lesser quality product or does it not allow them to play? What happens when the connection slows down temporarily?

Gaikai is a working, real system. MS Cloud as of now is just a promise really hard to believe. People with certain technical knowledge will tell you that cloud computing won't improve the game visual quality without adding lag.
So Microsoft is the one who have to combat something, starting with proving that their stuff work and is something more than a promise.

 

[goomba]

Any retail cloud assisted game is going to require a constant stable Internet connection and when they can cut off the servers your game is useless.

IMO there should be 100% disk games and 100 % cloud powered game. Anything on a disk should not need online for anything except updates and multiplayer.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Not to be a downer, but does anyone truly believe Gaikai's server and cloud infrastructure can compete with Microsoft's? That doesn't mean that all that stuff about how it could be used to make XONE games better is all 100% and not even remotely just a little bit too optimistic, but I'd have to imagine that Microsoft's operation and facilities significantly dwarf anything that Gaikai may have.

Gaikai is a working, real system. MS Cloud as of now is just a promise really hard to believe. People with certain technical knowledge will tell you that cloud computing won't improve the game visual quality without adding lag.
So Microsoft is the one who have to combat something, starting with proving that their stuff work and is something more than a promise.

Microsoft's Azure platform is far from just a promise. It's more proven than even Gaikai is. Again, this doesn't mean that I expect all the stuff said about cloud boosted xone games is true, but Microsoft's Azure platform is working, real and is already in use on countless of Microsoft's products and services. They even provide services to other companies.

 

[macewank]

Any retail cloud assisted game is going to require a constant stable Internet connection and when they can cut off the servers your game is useless.

IMO there should be 100% disk games and 100 % cloud powered game. Anything on a disk should not need online for anything except updates and multiplayer.

unless you know your console is under-powered and you're trying to hype some imaginary remote computation garbage to make folks think the gap isn't as big as it actually is.

 

[djshauny]

Can someone explain to me how the cloud can make our games look better?

 

[Pandemic]

This may be off-topic, but I remember a while ago Gaikai had a few demos available to play, so you could try out their service. But I can't find the page anymore?


Also, can't Sony just invest into Gaikai, and get the technology needed to do what Microsoft is claiming with their cloud system?

 

[GoofsterStud]

Also, can't Sony just invest into Gaikai, and get the technology needed to do what Microsoft is claiming with their cloud system?

They would if it wasn't just a PR buzzword.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

Can someone explain to me how the cloud can make our games look better?

No. For the 1 millionth time. Cloud won't realistically make games *look* better, but it can do a lot to make the gameplay better. Better AI is possible, bigger, more complex worlds, massively multiplayer environments are available to *all* games, things of that nature.

Think of it this way. Many 360 games used servers to help out in some way. But it was really only the really big budget games like 1st party or major 3rd party that could afford to host their own servers and maintain them.

This tech supposedly enables *all* games to use this service, even lower budget ones where they can't afford to host their own servers. I'm sure there's a cost to it, but I would guess it's much less than it would cost if they had to do it all themselves.

This is where the "all games now have dedicated servers" comment came from. So at the very least, an MP game can use a dedicated server to be the host of the match. But they can do a lot more than that.

What they won't do is real time lighting or physics or AI, but anything that can be done in the background over time is a good candidate. I'm sure we'll see how that's used at some point, but right now, it's up to the imagination.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

This may be off-topic, but I remember a while ago Gaikai had a few demos available to play, so you could try out their service. But I can't find the page anymore?


Also, can't Sony just invest into Gaikai, and get the technology needed to do what Microsoft is claiming with their cloud system?

It might simply just come down to money. One side simply has more. I don't know. Personally, I'm excited to see what both sides do and welcome any potential innovations, no matter how pie in the sky they may sound. Either way, there may just be a chance Microsoft isn't blowing smoke up people's rear on this one, but time will tell. I think even if games aren't immediately taking advantage of it, they should demo it somehow for us to see the benefits.

 

[Phonomezer]

Sony is not worried about a lie.

He's pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

This may be off-topic, but I remember a while ago Gaikai had a few demos available to play, so you could try out their service. But I can't find the page anymore?


Also, can't Sony just invest into Gaikai, and get the technology needed to do what Microsoft is claiming with their cloud system?

They're 2 completely different technologies. Other than both having "lots of servers," it's really apples to oranges.

From what I understand, Gaikai is very similar to OnLive (which incidentally, failed miserably). Games are hosted in the cloud and frame buffers are sent to the local console to be displayed. There really isn't any local processing going on. The local console sends inputs up to the cloud, it does the processing and sends the screen frames back down. This enables some cool scenarios, but they're really in a different class from the ones enabled by Microsoft's system.

MS's system is built on Azure which is more than just a bunch of servers. It's a tech that is way more complex, allowing VMs to run in the cloud and act as remote CPUs, basically extending the computing power of the local box. It's subject to the same laws of physics and latency of Gaikai, so there's no difference there, but if it's used properly, latency (unless ridiculously bad) won't be an issue because none of the things it does would need to be done in real time.

Converting one of these systems to the other isn't a trivial task for either company. That wasn't the goal anyway. They each have their strategy and we'll see which one works better.

 

[artist]

Converting one of these systems to the other isn't a trivial task for either company. That wasn't the goal anyway. They each have their strategy and we'll see which one works better.

Admire your optimism but;

Gaikai uses Nvidia's GRID and if you watched their last keynote, they showed off OctaneRender Cloud - which is exactly the same as offloading GPU compute to the cloud and not render on Cloud and stream the video.

 

[SeaOfMadness]

Admire your optimism but;

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/15/nvidia-tailors-its-graphics-chip-for-cloud-based-gaming/

The tech is still the same: Remotely rendered games and inputs processed locally. It's not the same thing. It's designed specifically to enhance GPU/rendering. These servers will not be hosting MP matches using that tech, for example. Not saying it's bad tech, it's just different and we'll see how this plays out.

For the short term, anyway, I'm pretty sure Sony's plan with Gaikai is to do something similar to OnLive, as well as using it to provide a BC story. But everyone complaining about MS's solution and how their house only has a 1Mbps, high latency connection certainly won't be enjoying the Gaikai version any more.

 

[Tellaerin]

It's funny.

There was a time, at the dawn of the personal computing age - not very long ago, in the grand scheme of things - when the idea of being able to actually own your very own computer was a revolutionary thing. You wouldn't have to rent time on a mainframe somewhere for your computing needs, leaving you at the mercy of technical issues you had no control over. The hardware - and all your data - would be right there in your home, to do with as you wished.

And this was rightfully seen as an amazing thing.

Now it seems like companies are pushing hard to turn back the clock and return us to those "good old days" where you were leasing your processing power from someone else.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

[artist]

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/15/nvidia-tailors-its-graphics-chip-for-cloud-based-gaming/

The tech is still the same: Remotely rendered games and inputs processed locally. It's not the same thing. It's designed specifically to enhance GPU/rendering. These servers will not be hosting MP matches using that tech, for example. Not saying it's bad tech, it's just different and we'll see how this plays out.

For the short term, anyway, I'm pretty sure Sony's plan with Gaikai is to do something similar to OnLive, as well as using it to provide a BC story. But everyone complaining about MS's solution and how their house only has a 1Mbps, high latency connection certainly won't be enjoying the Gaikai version any more.

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=29544

Again, the rendering is being offloaded to the cloud (or Nvidia Grid) in this case. That's different from a video streaming service like Gaikai/Onlive.

 

[IHaveCandy]

Simply consider this. We talk about system bandwidth in triple digit GBps. We talk about system latency in single digit nanoseconds.

Offloading tasks to a separate server would give you a bandwidth in single digit MBps. We're talking about triple digit milliseconds of latency


This is not feasible for anything that would show an immediate reaction. The only thing I can think is having AI run actively at far distances. It could make something like a single player PlanetSide 2 work where each AI is actually being simulated instead of dice rolled. But who wants to play PS2 without real people?

 

[Krilekk]

PhysX enviromental effects could be easily done by the cloud, enhancing graphics in a way that is claimed. They have no influence on gameplay and you would never notice particles like dust hovering around with a 200 ms lag.

 

[IHaveCandy]

PhysX enviromental effects could be easily done by the cloud, enhancing graphics in a way that is claimed. They have no influence on gameplay and you would never notice particles like dust hovering around with a 200 ms lag.

The GPU has to actively draw it per frame. When a physics interaction is sent to the cloud and spits the data back, its already 10+ frames behind at even the most optimistic conditions. Imagine a racing game doing this where the destruction effects are handled on the cloud. You hit a tree and the effect occurs a half-second later than it should. It would look awful.

 

[TheD]

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=29544

Again, the rendering is being offloaded to the cloud (or Nvidia Grid) in this case. That's different from a video streaming service like Gaikai/Onlive.

No it is not different!

They render on the cloud and then stream the data as video back to the local system!

 

[gofreak]

I think there's lots of misunderstanding about all this.

Don't let MS's PR approach to this convince you throw out the idea altogether.

It obviously cannot be thought of as some general multiplication of local processing power. It obviously is not 'infinite' - in that even backend processing capability available to a single player's session was infinite, bandwidth would limit update possibilities (though that bottleneck would go away in the case of full game streaming, rather than a hybrid model). The best way to think about it is that it could let you do some things that you don't need a result for in the next frame, faster than the local machine. And for those bits of processing, the network overhead added on top still might make it worth while. And if the economic cost to the developer to use this per user makes sense.

So that's lots of qualifications. But in some situations all these things might make sense.

As for the OP's question - yes. In building a backend for game streaming they'll have a perfectly suitable backend infrastructure for handling game jobs - in fact more suitable than a generic infrastructure that generally targets web service processing ala Azure (although I fully expect MS to ramp up their inventory of boxes targeting game processing, with good GPUs etc). The software interface to let a dev do this is not a huge deal. I fully expect Sony to offer a number of cloud features to devs as part of PS4's SDK, including at some point or other, remote computation. It's an easy way for Sony to make additional money off the infrastructure they're building.

PhysX enviromental effects could be easily done by the cloud, enhancing graphics in a way that is claimed. They have no influence on gameplay and you would never notice particles like dust hovering around with a 200 ms lag.

Any such effects that involve user interaction might not be suitable if you want a 'local' experience wrt latency. In other words, dust going around that doesn't react to interactions processed locally might be a candidate. And perhaps preferably dust - or whatever - that's a bit away from the player.

I think the BIGGER question, rather than technical feasibility, is actually economic feasibility. Presuming a pub has to pay for resources used by players playing their games, I'm not sure a pub will greenlight the usage that could be regarded as superficial. At least depending on the business model of their game. If you are doing subscriptions or have good recurring revenue from players (e.g. through microtransactions), you might be more willing to allow it. And before someone asks...no, I don't think MS will let pubs use this freely, beyond a certain point at least.

 

[charsace]

Gaikai doesn't compare to Azure.

 

[IHaveCandy]

No it is not different!

They render on the cloud and then stream the data as video back to the local system!

Gaikai does it wholesale. Xbox cloud does it piecemeal. Gaikai turns your PS4/Vita I to a streamer. Xbox Cloud still has the One running the game on its own hardware, but the cloud is trying to help accelerate it more.

 

[TheD]

Gaikai does it wholesale. Xbox cloud does it piecemeal. Gaikai turns your PS4/Vita I to a streamer. Xbox Cloud still has the One running the game on its own hardware, but the cloud is trying to help accelerate it more.

Read what I responded to.

If something has been rendered remotely then the only way to send the data back is via some form of video.

 

[gofreak]

Gaikai doesn't compare to Azure.

Yeah.

Every Gaikai box is tailored for running games, with big GPUs etc.

Most Azure stock to date is probably CPU/RAM/IO heavy, targeting transaction and web service processing. Most of them probably don't have a GPU of note, last I read GPU computing isn't exposed to users of Azure.



( Now I fully expect that to change... but the comparison of Gaikai's relative size to date cuts back the other way in terms of relative focus and capability of individual boxes on Azure's side, to date )

 

[charsace]

Yeah.

Every Gaikai box is tailored for running games, with big GPUs etc.

Most Azure stock to date is probably CPU/RAM/IO heavy, targeting transaction and web service processing. Most of them probably don't have a GPU of note, last I read GPU computing isn't exposed to users of Azure.



( Now I fully expect that to change... but the comparison of Gaikai's relative size to date cuts back the other way in terms of relative focus and capability of individual boxes on Azure's side, to date )

I'm sure that Azure can handle graphics seeing as how Pixar uses Azure for its movies.

I've read things about people running ray tracers via cloud computing. It's feasible that MS could off load things to the cloud.

 

[gofreak]

I'm sure that Azure can handle graphics seeing as how Pixar uses Azure for its movies.

Renderman for cloud runs on CPUs.

If I wanted to do remote rendering for a game, or offload GPU compute for a game, I'd much rather have a beefy GPU on the server for that than a) porting my local code to CPU and b) running it less efficiently on CPU than I could on GPU. And for cloud, efficiency = cost. Offline rendering on CPUs in the cloud may make economic sense for movie studios who otherwise maintain their own server farms...it's totally another matter for realtime rendering in a game.

Like I say, though, I am sure if MS is pursuing this in a serious way that they'll have a new fleet of machines targeting Xbox, that will let devs more easily offload local code (targeting CPU or GPU). But the optimal kind of machine is already inherent in Gaikai's focus to date, even if their network has been smaller. Conversely I expect Sony to ramp up Gaikai's server volume well beyond its prototype size.