Yeah I'm skeptical with regards to how this will all work in the finished product. But I can understand why some people fail to see this as a technical accomplishment. Sure, to them, the destruction physics have improved but not by orders of magnitude better than what was achievable in previous gen. Subtle visual effects like how the debris all interact with one other, which I can imagine take a LOT of processing power especially given the scale of Crackdown, are lost on them.
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"The Power of the Cloud" - what happened?
- Thread starter JohnnyFootball
- Start date
Yeah I'm skeptical with regards to how this will all work in the finished product. But I can understand why some people fail to see this as a technical accomplishment. Sure, to them, the destruction physics have improved but not by orders of magnitude better than what was achievable in previous gen. Subtle visual effects like how the debris all interact with one other, which I can imagine take a LOT of processing power especially given the scale of Crackdown, are lost on them.
Alx
Member
That's because you're limiting the definition to cloud storage, while "cloud" covers much more than that. It's actually a catch-all term that is more or less equivalent to the previous catch-all "online", except it stresses out that modern online services are more available, sharable, scalable etc.
Sure it's a buzzword, but it's a real and important phenomenon nevertheless. "The cloud" changed the way we listen to music, watch movies, track our fitness activities, write and share documents, book a taxi, organize our tasks,... and also process data.
Cloud services are becoming a bigger market than OS and regular software, and it's no accident that the new CEO of Microsoft comes from that field.
AWS or GCC would probably be a step up from the patchwork of Sony's current CDN partners...
Also - that Dilbert cartoon cracked me up.
damn, really? these kinds of posts exist here?
GAF aint what it used to be.
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
They thrive here.
The cloud-based destruction in Crackdown is apparently only for multiplayer. What happens when the servers get shut down is the same thing that happens when any other game's servers get shut down.
What game is that? What console?
Oh yeah...
Pre-alpha footage of an actual game in development . To be release to retail vs a standalone tech demo... Not to mention the nvidia video (which is pretty sick btw) doesn't even have physically built structures of various material that collapse under dynamic stresses... the geometry simply crumbles...
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
It's not quite the same situation though, is it? There aren't going to be a number of servers designated as Crackdown servers. Your system will request resources from Azure as a whole. I have no idea how long games using Azure will be supported but I would imagine it's more likely to be persistent than history would have us believe.
That's my understanding anyway. I'm not worried about long term support, much as I wasn't with Titanfall but I can understand that it's a concern for some people.
TheOhrenberger.
Banned
Holy shit this might be the saltiest thread on GAF right now! Just had a blast reading some of the past pages since the bump.
You're assuming the XboxOne gpu can handle that AND render other assets expected in a Crackdown openworld game. Also bear in mind, the tall skyscraper that was brought down in the demo is also traversable environment, each floor being accessible to the player... we don't know what the level of interactivity of the building model offers in that Nvidia tech showcase other than being a destructible centrepiece.
You're giving folks too much credit.... This stuff isn't 'lost' on anyone... Not the gaming enthusiasts who would frequent this site... Every last one of them knows they've never seen an entire city block being demolished so convincingly in real-time. And they also know that this feat it orders of magnitude more complex than knocking down a shed in a barren wasteland on last gen hardware...
Lurgan1337
Banned
This was all PR bullshit talk for people to swallow. I remember when they told that all this AI units in Titanfall was only possible thanks to cloud. Like really? Stupid ass bots only possible thanks to cloud? And what about 360 version? Bots are here as well without your cloud shit.
A friend I usually see at work also tried to convince me once that x1 was infinitely powerfull thanks to the cloud. And I'm not even gonna talk about ping between server and internal resources usage lol.
A friend I usually see at work also tried to convince me once that x1 was infinitely powerfull thanks to the cloud. And I'm not even gonna talk about ping between server and internal resources usage lol.
There's no streaming being done. Physics calculations are being done on a remote machine, then the results of that calculation are sent to your console...
Think of a typical P2P multiplayer game of battlefield... You tell the host that you shot a wall. The host machine (which is simply some other guys xb1 running the same game) calculates what should happen to that wall, then sends the result of that calculation to your machine, and every other machine in the match. Your machine then renders the scene based on the info received from the host.
With Crackdown that host is replaced by several Virtual servers, that each have more compute pwr than an individual xb1 and they are fully dedicated to your game session.. Now when you tell the "host" that you shot a wall, it can handle doing a much more complex calculation.
The 360 version of Titan fall also uses the cloud for AI, bruh...
You call such a guy a friend? Pffff....
Lurgan1337
Banned
We'll have to wait and see what MS does as these games get older. But it does sound reasonable that they could just keep them going indefinitely.
Lurgan1337
Banned
English is not my native language and I was trying not to use such a difficult word as "acquaintance" lol.
Kikorin
Member
I think what they shown is impressive, always dreamed a game where you can destroy about everything. I was a fan of the first Red Faction and I'm pretty excited about Uncha 4 and it's really interactive levels. But now I'm super hyped for this too, honestly I always thinked "the cloud" was some sort of bullshit and we would never see something really using it, but luckily wasn't a lie.
Are you asking if they're lying when they show the on-screen indicators telling you how many cloud compute units are in use at any one time?
"alpha gameplay". They showed us the tech through Crackdown so they had to get at least something running to show the tech. I doubt this will be in any way representative of what CD3 will look like.
Didn't get that far to be honest
Probably not no. Probably.
Again it was an honest question, I'd only watched a minute or so of that video just now and first thoughts were that it's just downgraded in one department to improve another. As the guy above says though, perhaps it's just a tech demo. Who knows, not me (we've established that
).protomouse
Member
I don't think any fanbase is above or below the rest, and those who try to push such a narrative seem awfully petty to me.
llAuburnll
Banned
I think this is what is so weird for some of us. I will openly admit I have an Xbox and not a ps4. I also game on pc, which means windows 10. So I'm really a Microsoft person all around. That said, I don't purposely bash competitor tech and then defend it even when I'm wrong or something. Like psnow. Cool technology with a poor price plan, but it's a cool idea. VR/AR I personally think is still a novelty and we won't see it in gaming mainstream use for a long time, but I won't crap on what they've done or what they are doing regardless of my console of choice. We should be rewarding competition and innovation. I love 2nd place Microsoft, we are getting a ton of great features and games. You think if Sony was having to work for it this gen, that you would be paying the same amount for Psnow,
Or ea access would only be on xbox? If you do, fine. I don't.
Shia_Labeouf
Banned
lol @ this. This whole website should just be called SonyGAF.
This thread is sure going places.
It's going somewhere all right.
Shia_Labeouf
Banned
This has been my favorite thread in a while.
llAuburnll
Banned
It's better than where it started. Now there's two sides!
Honestly though, some of the best comments I've seen in awhile are in here.
Didn't get that far to be honest
Probably not no. Probably.
Again it was an honest question, I'd only watched a minute or so of that video just now and first thoughts were that it's just downgraded in one department to improve another. As the guy above says though, perhaps it's just a tech demo. Who knows, not me (we've established that
How about watching the entire alpha gameplay video then?..
As for other posts, do people not realize how stupid they look when responding to the original thread title?
It's so funny reading some posts in here. People still sounding and posting totally obliviously.
llAuburnll
Banned
I don't get it
So bad
I want a superman game with this level of destruction. They should release a $20 downloadable title, where you get to play as superman and fight against doomsday, Zod and Supergirl, throughout the city. Would be awesome. The heat vision would actually cut building in half. Would be the 1st good superman game
Shia_Labeouf
Banned
I want to turn this entire thread into a coffee table book.
If the cloud part of Crackdown 3 works as good in real-life gameplay with varying to delays to the servers and potentially millions of people playing at the same time, I'll eat a whole tub of crow for sure.
As it stands now in a controlled environment the tech looks super exciting but we'll see how it scales into real life.
As it stands now in a controlled environment the tech looks super exciting but we'll see how it scales into real life.
Well mostly just because it's incredibly unlikely I'm ever going to play the game itself, I just wanted to see some of the destruction as that's what this thread is about in a round about sort of a way. I saw some of the destruction right at the start and that was enough. If I thought I might end up with the game down the track I'd have watched the whole thing (or more likely I'd have watched it live the other day).
Alx
Member
By the way, I did wonder about the technical conditions of that demo. Had it taken place on the MS campus, I would have assumed that they had a stellar network connection, but I wonder what they got on the showfloor.
TBH MS only have themselves to blame for all the doubts - after the whole Hololens thing (and of course previous 'creative with the truth' moments) some people won't believe it until they see it.
I tend to side with the 'it'll likely work but not as well as advertised' - much like Linect and Hololens.
I tend to side with the 'it'll likely work but not as well as advertised' - much like Linect and Hololens.
Xbox using the Cloud was before Hololens. People doubted it just because that was the high time to bash MS and also people don't understand the cloud unless you are a tech enthusiast (or software developer/tester as I am) who actually tried to understand it and/or work with it.
Hololens is another story as it is not out (just as this isn't out) but from all stories told, the only thing is the FOV. With only developers, enterprise (and probably enthusiast early adopters) getting their hands on it within the next year, the "growing pains of new tech" will be on them, not regular consumers. Also, Hololens does work, just the FOV isn't the same, the hard part, for the most part does. But I won't derail this thread into Hololens talk.
People have just come to be more pessimistic over things that they don't understand. Understandably so but it's not like MS didn't show off this tech (for games) a year ago.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
The lack of complexity of the geometry is not enough to offset the cost of physics calculations on tens of thousands of objects, it simply a design choice.
I can make a 10k poly plane in Maya that is peanuts for the computer to process in the viewport but if I apply a complex cloth simulation to it it's gonna bog down my machine.
Why does it have to be a console? Especially as we are in the early stages of the generation. You said it's a significant leap over anything we've ever seen in love [sic] physics computation. I was merely pointing out that we have had demonstrations of realtime physics that were comparable. That's not to say crackdowns tech isn't great just that we have some amazing realtime physics computation today.
There are several Apex destruction demos out there on PC running in UE3. As the generation matures we may get these 2012-13 demonstrations making their way to the new generation. The last part of your post doesn't make sense btw. The fracture is advanced and more computationally taxing than simple rigid bodies falling. There isn't different materials in crackdown or the nvidia demo, they are rigid bodies. They don't calculate stress/strain because the objects do not deform. The materials are cosmetic not physical in nature oustide of perhaps a different fracture map.
I didn't assume it could be done locally on an xbox one at all even before rendering anything. I was merely pointing out the nvidia demo I linked is done locally. Traversable simply means it has collision detection. The nVidia physics demo has collision detection on all objects. Adding a player would make little difference becuase it is simply another object. All debris have collision detection.There are Unreal engine 3 demos of Apex destruction where the player walks around destroying the buildings with a rocket launcher too and the rigid bodies have player collision detection.
No. This thread is about the power of cloud computing on the Xbone, which that whole demo was about. It doesn't matter if you are planning on purchasing this game or not. This thread isn't about if you want Crackdown. That's a different thread.
If only there were some sort of game that was recently demoed that shows off this technology to enable discussion...
*Cloud enabled rolleyes*