The concept of distributed graphics rendering itself is nothing new, but the actual Microsoft implementation for XBone will still remain to be seen.
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Jonathan Blow Criticizes MSs Claim of Increasing Servers to 300K, Calls It A Lie!
- Thread starter Miles Quaritch
- Start date
FranXico
Member
Another point against the XBONE in my book.
Kvikmyndahús;59710961 said:
According to the links you posted that is for using hardware devices for offline rendering. It's essentially hardware accelerated distributed render farms. It's not real-time it's just REALLY fast offline rendering. It's very very different from sending calculations as described in this thread.
That concept has been around for ages. Nvidia is just using GPU's to further speed up calculations. Before it was just large server renderfarms doing it on CPU's. It seems inevitable Nvidia would do this since they bought Mental Images years ago.
The other issue is renting out a renderfarm to do your rendering for you is prohibitively expensive.
Here is a company that uses the tech described in your links. You can see that it's very different.
http://www.bunkspeed.com/software
not that I would know , what do it even stranger .
Tripolygon
Banned
Are you fucking kidding me? This is the 5th or so time i've read this and it blows my mind every time. Running a whole game engine in the cloud is not simple, in fact it is harder than what Microsoft is trying to do, what makes Microsoft idea harder as in unfeasible is that you cannot split the task as in run graphics offline and offload physics to the server, compute it then send it back in time. It doesn't mean gaikai is simple, it means the internet makes what microsoft proposes a little bit unfeasible at the moment.
Gaikai = Processing Graphics, Physics, Animation, Audio the whole game and Engine in the cloud and sending the result back as video frames
Microsoft = Processing Graphics, Audio, Animation locally and sending Physics to be computed in the cloud and sending the result back as data
Gaikai is possible because you are not splitting the tasks, everything is computed together while in Microsoft's case you are splitting the task.
That being said, I think Microsoft can do whatever the hell they want and come E3 we might just be surprised that Microsoft has made it possible for them to achieve it and stop saying running Graphics, AI, Physics, Animation and the entire game engine in the cloud is simple.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-in-theory-can-xbox-one-cloud-transform-gaming
PERIOD.
Jonathan Blow is right.
PERIOD.
Jonathan Blow is right.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
LOL. This made me laugh. Well done.
Lol Gotta love the MS apologists for trying to defend MS in any way they can. Just getting harder and harder to defend them.
seventynine
Member
Aha, and there was much crow eaten that day.
oldergamer
Member
Johnathan blow is right? What the fuck, this is all speculation on what MS is doing, nobody outside of Microsoft knows what they are planning for cloud based functionality in the future. Exactly how the hell could any of these people be right when MS hasn't told or detailed ANYTHING regarding future functionality?
because as any games programmer knows, it is fundamentally bullshit.
Depends on if Sony uses the Gaikai tech to stream the game to your Vita, vs you streaming from your home network.
oldergamer
Member
Stupid posts for the win, right?
That right there is the problem. They keep on going on about the "infinite cloud" and when they get asked for more specifics on how the cloud will enhance games, then they give bullshit general answers instead of specifics.
Don't blame the consumers and media for wanting more clarification and specific details, blame MS for trying to bullshit their way into making consumers believe the almighty cloud with catchphrases and such.
oldergamer
Member
That's bullshit. Any games programmer worth their weight in gold, would not jump to conclusions on what MS or any company is doing before it's announced. That's just ass hat worthy.
Oh yeah, that's even better! Offload my game, so I have to play online. Like Sim City. EA must be loving MS' new take on things.
I hope, at the end of the day, that MS has EA as their only publisher, and they can sit in the corner, after EA refuses to develop for PS4 since it has no online-required DRM, and think that this was a good decision. Then get struck by lightning.
Not really, because programmers still have a strong knowledge of these types of things and many have experimented with it themselves. That and maths, limitations, facts and figures etc.
This just sounds like the rumours fiasco all over again. Some people just refuse to acknowledge the obvious despite the writing being on the wall.
oldergamer
Member
So what, it's marketing speak by companies, ( remember 240 fps from sony? ) Keep going on about it? They have probably mentioned it 4 times since the xb1 announcement!
Wanting clarification is one thing, saying "it's bullshit" and "they can't do it" without knowing what they have planned is simply idiotic. No need for any apologists, jumping to conclusions in the media is fucking dumb, no matter how you look at it.
Lol It's natural for people and the media to ask questions and want answers. Oldergamer though, just wants to believe in the next "blast processing." Some of the defending going on here, is downright foolish.
UntoldDreams
Member
Not really. You are on the wrong side of the argument.
Microsoft announces "anti-gravity and perpetual motion machine". Someone calls bullshit. What's wrong with calling bullshit. Its up to MS to prove they have anti-gravity and perpetual motion.
Cloud processing during rendering? Breaking "laws of physics level" latency is obviously what people think of. Oppositely why the hell are YOU defending this?
oldergamer
Member
Are you kidding??? there's hardly any programmers that have any true knowledge of cloud based computing and how it relates to games outside of the totally obvious drawbacks. Again, without knowing what MS is planning on doing, the negative talk is just nonsense. What if MS is planning something similar to gaikai or other streaming functionality, we just don't know.
Maybe then, they should... Oh I don't know, just let us in on their plans...? Or wait, maybe they're just BS'ing all along!!! Sony gave specifics during their reveal. There's no reason for MS to be general about anything.
Gold_Loot
Member
Right. As of right now, the word "cloud" is basically the new "cell" buzz word. At the end of the day, it'll mean very little for gamers if anything at all.
UntoldDreams
Member
I actually have been programming in the cloud and I still don't get it. If they were just planning Gaikai then they completely misrepresented (30X using infinite power of the cloud).
If I'm a game dev trying to build and finish a game right now, while MS hems and haws about the details of their cloud computing augmentation methods, do I have any choice?
Business doesn't wait on MS or any company to achieve clarity on what their own practices are going to be.
It really is somewhat foolish and promotes PR speak over logic and evidence based knowledge.
Wow... For the sake of defending a draconian machine, you just insulted a bunch of talented programmers in the world... Seems like you're the one living inside a bubble. It's natural for programmers and such to question, you on the other hand just keep on taking what's being fed to you by MS.
Do you honestly believe that developers only get the PR releases that we do? Or that when MS reps turn up they just start talking about the infinite power of the cloud in the developer's offices?
Developers have a much better idea of what it can and can't do than we do.
oldergamer
Member
OMG Anti gravity? are you serious? That's a horrible analogy. cloud processing during rendering what exactly? we don't know! Latency isn't one of the laws of physics. Like i said outside of obvious drawbacks of cloud based processing or rendering, we don't yet know what is planned. I'm not "defending it" I'm saying it's idiotic to assume we know what MS is planning before it's announced.
I know many of you on this board seem to think MS is stupid or something, but considering they file more graphics related patents then any other company, perhaps they could have researched something that is applicable. We just don't know.
LOL! Oh man...
They probably have a much better idea than Microsoft's PR and talking heads as well. You really think Kaz Hirai or Jack Tretton have the development and technical knowledge of an actual developer working on their PS4 dev kits? I doubt it very much.
EVEN IF everything is technically possible, as advertised. No limitations. They find a magical workaround for latency and BW issues. It still makes absolutely no sense.
What are 300,000 servers going to do when you have millions of people playing games?
Are developpers willing to not only make games for a new architecture, but also a whole lot of additional work to take advantage of that potential over a network, meaning heavy networking routines, and most likely having to deal with an additional, different architecture.
Microsoft is basically telling us that they'll have 3 Xbones (or something equivalent to it) sitting somewhere for each console sold. Really? That'd be a shitload of money to invest with no ROI, instead of just creating a beast of a hardware to begin with.
So, yeah, that's a whole lot of BS.
Didin't know Pachter was working for Sony now.
What are 300,000 servers going to do when you have millions of people playing games?
Are developpers willing to not only make games for a new architecture, but also a whole lot of additional work to take advantage of that potential over a network, meaning heavy networking routines, and most likely having to deal with an additional, different architecture.
Microsoft is basically telling us that they'll have 3 Xbones (or something equivalent to it) sitting somewhere for each console sold. Really? That'd be a shitload of money to invest with no ROI, instead of just creating a beast of a hardware to begin with.
So, yeah, that's a whole lot of BS.
Didin't know Pachter was working for Sony now.
I completely agree. That's why I'm confused by the claim that developers are stuck waiting while MS hems and haws. I would imagine that some of them have a much better idea of what it can and cannot do than either we or the PR guys have.
The engineers et al who work on Azure at MS probably think the idea of it being used for graphics is as much PR bluster as forum goers do, for that matter.
You're right, we just don't know and so we question and ask and what do we get... BULLSHIT ANSWERS.. It's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt when this whole system reveal has been a mash-up of general answers, outright confusion and contradictions galore. Blame MS for this, not the consumer.. Clearly, MS wasn't ready for all these questions and that is entirely their fault.
They should have expected hard questions, and even more what with all the rumors before the reveal.
Ok, so you raise a point. Why argue about this when we don't know the application. Well, there's the better counter-point, why defend this when you don't know what it is? The only thing this is, is a buzz-word "ooh"-thing. It doesn't mean anything, so it's an insult to throw at anyone who knows what 'the cloud' is. MS is for all intents and purposes just lying straight to your face. If they had a great application, you'd assume it would be great PR, as it would blow us away. But this just goes towards the fact that they don't.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
The 40x figure was obvious PR bullshit but using the cloud to offload non-latency things isn't bullshit at all. Devs have done it in the past. If devs have access a bunch of those servers then they could probably do more with it than they usually do.
sechsterangriff
Member
Any decent programmer has a good idea of what kind of tasks cloud computing is suitable for.
With current limitations there are simply very few game related tasks cloud computing can be relevant to. That's just the way it is right now.
The other problem with this is will third parties even bother coding for this. You have the MS fanboys saying that devs use the low spec machine as base. If they're that lazy, I don't see them wasting time and money just to use the cloud as well.
No, of course not. Please pay closer attention to the context of my reply, directed at oldergamer. My point is that there are times when this info doesn't exist, when companies like MS may really not have hashed out all of the details about their programs for 3rd parties and so what is the hypothetical "games programmer worth their weight in gold" of oldergamer's post supposed to do? Just wait because no professional ever dared jump to conclusions? Sometimes, that's all you can do.
And in truth it doesn't really seem like MS has sorted this all out yet. If they had managed to be explicit about details with developers by this point, I'd think the sentiments towards Microsoft's claims would be trending more positively from the developer community.
The only time I'd see cloud computing to be practical is through asynchronous gameplay, which we're already seeing on mobile devices. If this was really an option, you'd see people already implementing it on other devices. The simple fact that it hasn't yet begs the question of how much computing power can you really offload and, if so, how much latency you'd allow this information to have when being passed from the cloud to the platform.
The average american male weighs about 200 lbs, and gold is worth about $1400 an ounce. I can't think of many programmers worth $4.5M.
lol, don't hate..
UntoldDreams
Member
Its comical how anyone can even attempt to defend this as "benefit of the doubt".
Really its not hard to define how this is supposed to work. Distributed computing has been around for a very long time now even the LAYMAN understands the basics now.
So why should MS get a free pass ala Milo and Kate? Many devs called BS on there being an AI inside every 360 allowing full interaction. And you know what? They were RIGHT.
So defending "the infinite power of the cloud" in light of recent history seems... "innocent to a FAULT" at best and fanboyish at worst.
Really its not hard to define how this is supposed to work. Distributed computing has been around for a very long time now even the LAYMAN understands the basics now.
So why should MS get a free pass ala Milo and Kate? Many devs called BS on there being an AI inside every 360 allowing full interaction. And you know what? They were RIGHT.
So defending "the infinite power of the cloud" in light of recent history seems... "innocent to a FAULT" at best and fanboyish at worst.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
If they see use in it, I think they will use it. Will most? Probably not. Will be a case by case thing. Open world and multiplayer focused titles will use it the most I would guess.
Forza 5 is supposed to use it so we'll get our first taste of what the "infinite" power on the cloud at E3.