Zuhzuhzombie!!
Member
That's because it's a load of nonsense.
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Xbox One | Understanding Microsoft's Cloud claims | Tech panel and ArsTech article
- Thread starter nib95
- Start date
That's because it's a load of nonsense.
Why do you think that?
NemesisPrime
Banned
It depends. I can imagine a scenario where the lack of a connection will disable or simplify some things in your game, or it could shift everything to local computations and give you longer loading times. It all depends on what you use it for... my personally I would start with things that are not game critical (like generating your Minecraft level on the cloud if internet connection is available).
The connected player would have to wait a few seconds to start a new world, a non connected player a minute or so. Small things... but ultimately they can count.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
Which only leaves first party IP which as Microsoft has already demonstated in recent years will not match up in volume to sony or nintendo first party.
So what we are left with is one, maybe two titles a year that take advantage of the cloud compared to several games, both multiplatform and exclusive on the PS4 that are clearly superior.
Its like people forgot the Wii existed or something. Just because your console can provide unique experiences doesnt mean publishers are going to fund unique development for it, even for multiplatform titles on the best selling console.
Krisprolls
Banned
It's hardly different from what Gaikai does and will do on PS4. Both stream games from servers, the local console is only used as a screen and for the controller.
I suppose you can indeed offload some of the calculation locally on your console, but there's hardly a point if you can get the whole frame from a remote server. It's just making things more complex. You're better either streaming the game from the cloud or running the game fully locally.
Cloud gaming could be great but latency and the need to be online constantly will limit that,at least for now.
I suppose you can indeed offload some of the calculation locally on your console, but there's hardly a point if you can get the whole frame from a remote server. It's just making things more complex. You're better either streaming the game from the cloud or running the game fully locally.
Cloud gaming could be great but latency and the need to be online constantly will limit that,at least for now.
NemesisPrime
Banned
This has nothing to do with Gakai. Zero.
la flama blanca
Banned
Well, either way, I appreciate your posts for being so informative and elaborate. Unlike Dopeyfish, you at least place this type of processing in the realm of possibility for me even though I don't think we're quite there yet.
Krisprolls
Banned
Why ? Explain me what's different. It's running games from the cloud.
What does it bring if part is local and part is remote ? For me, as a gamer.
It's nothing like Gaikai. Like you said, Gaikai renders the whole game and then pushes the game to the console, which just acts as a screen.
But Azure won't be doing that. Developers will just push certain tasks to the cloud. Azure will do the computations and then pass the result back to the console. The console still does most of the heavy processing.
Krisprolls
Banned
So what ? So it's half cloud, half local. What does it bring to the gamer ?
Why do that when you can just run the game on the cloud ?
Interfectum
Member
It really does sadden me that people actually believe this smoke and mirrors horse shit. MS is really going to take some of you for a ride. This is SimCity all over again.
They are going to show us faked demos of games and how they look/run different offline vs. "powered by the cloud" and people are going to lap it up.
The trick:
"Man I need to keep Halo online! Look at the improved water effects holy shit!!"
The reality:
if Xbone == offline: shit water effects;
if Xbone == online: improved water effects;
This is our future next gen. Can't wait!
They are going to show us faked demos of games and how they look/run different offline vs. "powered by the cloud" and people are going to lap it up.
The trick:
"Man I need to keep Halo online! Look at the improved water effects holy shit!!"
The reality:
if Xbone == offline: shit water effects;
if Xbone == online: improved water effects;
This is our future next gen. Can't wait!
DragonSworne
Banned
This whole thing stinks of Sim City and EA claims of cloud computing. That turned out to be bull crap.
This is just another form of DRM.
This is just another form of DRM.
I'm not telling you what it brings to the gamer. I'm telling you why it's nothing like Gaikai, which is what you originally said.
As to why you wouldn't run the whole game on the cloud, well, you would need greater speed/bandwidth to do that (due to the large amount of data that needs to be passed). With Azure, less speed/bandwidth would be needed.
This is only on the priviso that static or pre-baked lighting is used, which is computationally undemanding anyway. I don't want pre-baked lighting, I want dynamic lighting in all next gen games, which means sensitive latency loads, and dynamic one's, which again cancels out the possibility of being cloud computed.
You could use it for things the player doesn't directly impact or become impacted by - the crowd in a sports title for example. They could be much more lifelike and natural, while the player doesn't experience any latency as a result.
I don't understand how people can say latency is a huge issue for computing background, non-essential physics or AI, but it's not a barrier for playing a game over that same connection.
badcrumble
Member
It takes a lot less speed/bandwidth if the game code is already stored in the cloud and all you need to do is send button inputs and receive a video stream in return.
Every time I hear the work Cloud I laugh a little then die inside a bit.
That word has been used and abused and used some more for years now.
Also,
If I can't play my game collection in 10 years because they shut the servers down I probly won't be buying your console or games.
That word has been used and abused and used some more for years now.
Also,
If I can't play my game collection in 10 years because they shut the servers down I probly won't be buying your console or games.
Krisprolls
Banned
In one case you run full cloud, keeping only the screen and controller locally, in the other case there's some local calculation. Both are cloud gaming.
Yes, the bandwidth is smaller, but what is useful in cloud gaming is rendering the frame, so you lose most of what you would have gained here by going cloud.
If your image quality is still limited locally by the power of your console, then why use cloud gaming to begin with ?
Interfectum
Member
It's only just begun. Just wait for the faked cloud demos at E3. It's going to be legendary.
I'll admit I've not exactly read much into this sort of thing, but I'd be willing to bet that having to stream a 1080p video for a number of hours would use more bandwidth than what MS are proposing with Azure.
dragonbane
Member
Sounds interesting, but I suspect no third party will bother with this unless Sony implements it too. Which means MS looses this advantage.
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
Is this the new "Complex server-side calculations!" ?
Krisprolls
Banned
Gaikai would be able to do it too for PS4, you just have to send isolated numbers instead of whole frames, the tech is already here.
In the real life though, current local CPU can do such calculations (crowd behaviour, AI...) very well alone without the need of cloud gaming.
The main calculations are linked to the frame rendering itself (visual effects), not AI or anything else. Our CPUs don't need external power for anything except graphics.
What I mean is the main benefit of cloud gaming lies in rendering the frames themselves on the remote server, the only part which really benefits from more power.
maabus1999
Member
Gaikai streams video only.
Cloud computing processes CPU cycles but (usually) does not do video cycles.
180 degrees different, even though both are on a "Cloud" infrastrucutre. BUt one is streaming, the other is computational.
And if you talk to developers, it isn't graphics that is always the bottleneck on software, but more often the CPU, especially on a closed system. Just everyone sees "graphics" and is the only thing they process as an improvement or work.
And if you are still confused, let MSFT prove it (or fail misearbly) at E3 and beyond. They are obviously not backing down from the Cloud part, even with all the questions still rolling in.
Any cloud cluster can do compute in the same way. There's no server clusters that can only do streaming or only do compute lol. Still doesn't mean it's feasible mind.
tfur
Member
Again, there is nothing special about Azure. This is all PR for selling services, pay wall and Gold memberships. It deflection.
Amazon does both large cloud computation, as well as stream video for Netflix. There is nothing special about these systems, and they have been in use forever. You would think this concept was just created by the way MS spreads its propaganda.
That's because there's no reason to back down from deliberately unsubstantiated, obfuscated PR nonesense - it would defeat the purpose of obfuscating in the first place!
And why wait? No time like the present, or the past several years even - they've had an 8 yr console lifecycle to put this into action with a console that's fully network integrated.
Delusibeta
Banned
Excuse for constant-internet-required DRM and nothing more. Don't believe the lies.
The Albatross
Member
Agreed. Cloud Processing is very common in software and highend computations. I'm struggling to think of how it can be applied in real time to games, but don't doubt that the capabilities are being explored.
That's pretty much it, Cloud = another fancy way of saying online DRM.
rohlfinator
Member
No, that's still going to be too expensive to give away for free. It might work for short bursts of compute time (like the procedurally generating levels example that NemesisPrime mentioned) or for serving up lightweight pre-baked data that doesn't require a ton of CPU/GPU resources (such as aggregate player stats, leaderboards, or Dark Souls-like multiplayer interactions).
But it would not be cheap to give each player 2-3x the power of their console for the full duration of their play session, which is what MS is implying with their PR spin. There are certainly cool possibilities with what can be done with the cloud, but the way Microsoft is hyping it is total console war nonsense.
NemesisPrime
Banned
You have no clue, why do you even insist of having an opinion about this?
link1201
Member
This is a year old article I found from NVIDIA about Cloud Gaming....entitled "NVIDIA GeForce GRID—A Glimpse at the Future of Gaming" I found it pretty interesting. They seem to believe they have solved some of the latency issues. I am not here to defend or attack cloud gaming though just thought I'd share the article.
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/geforce-grid
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/geforce-grid
Zuhzuhzombie!!
Member
Because it's incredibly impractical and doesn't even address the technical limitations of the Xbone. Cloud based computations aren't going to make up for the lack of anti aliasing and aren't going to increase FPS.
pr0cs
Member
It sounds promising. People thinking that the cloud couldn't offer any benefits for gaming are putting their head in the sand instead of being open minded. There are a lot of already immediate applications for cloud based computing, stuff like procedural generated worlds, statistics for game rules, lighting, etc all would work just fine and stuff like procedural worlds would make some games a lot more replayable when starting a new game could potentially be a brand new game world as well.
It's too early to get too excited but I suspect people just writing this off as "DRM" are just being negative for the sake of bitching.
It's too early to get too excited but I suspect people just writing this off as "DRM" are just being negative for the sake of bitching.
Zuhzuhzombie!!
Member
Procedural generation isn't that terribly intensive and pre baked lighting looks awful, much less "next gen".
I won't even respond to statistics.
As an indy/hobby game programmer, I wouldn't want to develop a game that used the cloud unless it required an always on Internet connection to avoid having to write two completely different versions of the game - one to run offline and one to run online, with a degraded experience for offline.
Any time you hear "in the cloud", by the way, replace it with "on a computer that exists somewhere else".
Things I can imagine implementing in the cloud:
- A multiplayer game with dedicated servers, which would allow more than 12 to 16 players to play in the same game space. Client/server architecture rather than peer to peer.
- MMOs, with most game logic on the server. AI, physics, etc.
- A static lighting generator for a map editor. Edit the geometry of the map (terrain, buildings, caves, etc.) and send the geometry up to a server or server cluster to generate the static lighting for high quality baked lightmaps.
- Storing and sharing user created content (such as maps with the lightmaps baked in). Lightmaps take a lot of space, but then again, high quality user created maps are worth a 40mb to 100mb download.
Mostly it comes down to the same sort of things that you can do right now with always online games. Look at Defiance and Bungie's Destiny.
Would I use Microsoft's Xbox Live cloud rather than going with one of the existing cloud services, such as Amazon EC2 or Rackspace or whatever? It depends. Can you develop a cross platform game and still use Microsoft's cloud? They will certainly be licensing these cloud services out - don't expect that developers will get to use these services for free. Other services you either pay by Virtual Machine instance, or by CPU hours, in addition to bandwidth and storage costs. If MS has beefier servers than are on offer by other cloud providers, and maybe even hardware that is specifically tailored towards games I could see it being useful.
Personally, I think Microsoft is gearing up for it's own OnLive / Gaikai implementation. And then they can say the XBone is future proof, with upgraded visuals as time goes on, since the visuals are coming entirely from the server hardware, which can be upgraded with newer technologies.
Many great looking games still use a combination of pre-baked lighting and realtime lighting and shadows, including Gears of War, Halo 4, etc. I believe Killzone 4 still uses a combination of baked global illumination and realtime lighting. Baked lighting is less computationally expensive than realtime lighting, and typically looks more realistic at the moment than realtime lighting can achieve, in my opinion.
Any time you hear "in the cloud", by the way, replace it with "on a computer that exists somewhere else".
Things I can imagine implementing in the cloud:
- A multiplayer game with dedicated servers, which would allow more than 12 to 16 players to play in the same game space. Client/server architecture rather than peer to peer.
- MMOs, with most game logic on the server. AI, physics, etc.
- A static lighting generator for a map editor. Edit the geometry of the map (terrain, buildings, caves, etc.) and send the geometry up to a server or server cluster to generate the static lighting for high quality baked lightmaps.
- Storing and sharing user created content (such as maps with the lightmaps baked in). Lightmaps take a lot of space, but then again, high quality user created maps are worth a 40mb to 100mb download.
Mostly it comes down to the same sort of things that you can do right now with always online games. Look at Defiance and Bungie's Destiny.
Would I use Microsoft's Xbox Live cloud rather than going with one of the existing cloud services, such as Amazon EC2 or Rackspace or whatever? It depends. Can you develop a cross platform game and still use Microsoft's cloud? They will certainly be licensing these cloud services out - don't expect that developers will get to use these services for free. Other services you either pay by Virtual Machine instance, or by CPU hours, in addition to bandwidth and storage costs. If MS has beefier servers than are on offer by other cloud providers, and maybe even hardware that is specifically tailored towards games I could see it being useful.
Personally, I think Microsoft is gearing up for it's own OnLive / Gaikai implementation. And then they can say the XBone is future proof, with upgraded visuals as time goes on, since the visuals are coming entirely from the server hardware, which can be upgraded with newer technologies.
Many great looking games still use a combination of pre-baked lighting and realtime lighting and shadows, including Gears of War, Halo 4, etc. I believe Killzone 4 still uses a combination of baked global illumination and realtime lighting. Baked lighting is less computationally expensive than realtime lighting, and typically looks more realistic at the moment than realtime lighting can achieve, in my opinion.
In the Sim City case offload simulation computations on the server would have make sense.
In that case it doesn't both technically and business wise.
Of course if the "cloud" is just a server for online playing makes sense but in that case it's already happening since the first online game. The host is doing "cloud computing"
In that case it doesn't both technically and business wise.
Of course if the "cloud" is just a server for online playing makes sense but in that case it's already happening since the first online game. The host is doing "cloud computing"
That's not true. On nearly every PC game benchmark, the GPU has been overwhelmingly the potential bottleneck for higher frame rates. Solid CPU designs remain stable for much longer periods of time.