hydrophilic attack
Member
we should have listened
why didnt we listen
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Crackdown 3 uses cloud-based physics processing to enable environmental destruction
- Thread starter mocoworm
- Start date
we should have listened
why didnt we listen
This guy gets it.
It's streaming a bit of the game, in this case the physics. If it was streaming the whole thing we might expect better graphics as well. The Vita/PS4 argument is just as valid as the XBO/Azure one, and it's just there to highlight that it's a pretty dumb argument to be having in the first place thanks to a silly PR piece.
It's cool tech and could be used for some really interesting things, particularly in world simulation for online open world games. Imagine a GTA online where the city population is simulated in real-time, crimes in one area change the population dynamics, increase police activity, change the economy, etc. Instead of cops disappearing in a matter of minutes, they would investigate any evidence you left behind and use it to track you down over the course of hours or days. The next time you log-on you find your safe house is surrounded and you have to fight your way out and find a new place to lay low.
Funnily enough, I don't think the use in Crackdown is very interesting at all. I'm sure similar destruction (skyscrapers knocking down skyscrapers) could easily be achieved without the servers but it just wouldn't be as realistic, which hardly seems relevant when you're knocking down skyscrapers with super powers.
Age of Ascent's Azure costs for supporting 100,000 concurrent players is $75 an hour. Assuming 100,000 concurrent every hour of every day for a year(the extreme worst case) we are looking at $650,000 a year. If you have 100,000 people concurrently playing your game, a little over half a million dollars to support them seems ok.
Some irony here
NinjaBoiX
Member
Well kind of, but it was vastly more primitive. Red Faction's tech effectively consisted of making large angular chunks of the geometry disappear into thin air.
This is procedural, real time destruction of hugely complex physical objects.
It's akin to comparing Southpark to Toy Story, it's not so much "next level" as it is a quantum leap.
To be fair the last bit of your post is true
Respawn's experience with Titanfall 1 using the cloud (however minimal) will benefit Titanfall 2 players on PS4 and XBone.
I'll be interested to see how heavy they push the cloud marketing speak for that sequel.
Newtype-001
Member
🏃
SEGAvangelist
Member
Holiday 2016 could actually put it into the end of the third year since many of those games tend to launch in Oct - early Nov. to beat Black Friday. The game is targeted for Summer 2016 anyway, though.
gamechanger87
Member
That's also assuming MS charges them full price for this which is unlikely here
maquiladora
Member
Dat title tho....
Savinowned
Member
This.
You're right, you can, I wouldn't advise it but you can, and why does this have to be an argument? That comment wasn't even about crackdown at all, it was about somebody spewing nonsense about average connection speeds.
llAuburnll
Banned
If Sony was doing this I would still say wow, how cool is that. I love innovation. It's exciting and curious.
LookAtMeGo
Member
I just don't fully understand how 2 - 3MB/s of extra processing power makes such a HUGE difference when the on board hardware transfers data in the GB/s range. Otherwise I find this all very exciting and can't wait to see it realized.
Trogdor1123
Member
No, not really sure what you mean by this but I didnt mean for it to be console war stuff. Im fine with xbox. I think you are looking for something when its not there.
I was referring to the physics, that they didnt look right.
Uhhh ok... I was referring to how a game that it simply didnt look "right" to me.
You guys are really desperate to defend this wow...
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
I wonder where Xbox would be today if they hadn't backpeddled on that always on thing.
I think not much would have changed. We would've gotten the same box, the same games etc. Just that without internet we wouldn't be able to play them.
I think the main thing that changed when Mattrick left and Spencer took over was the marketing.
Afterall I think thing wouldn't have been so bad if everything stayed as it was planned, and with cloud gaming the always on stuff would actually be benefitial.
LiquidGotti
Banned
After watching the video....
The funny part is that at the end he says "This is a demonstration on the technology that we are building, This is not fully representing of the gameplay"
The funny part is that at the end he says "This is a demonstration on the technology that we are building, This is not fully representing of the gameplay"
Industrialist
Member
Isn't really though, is there?
There's a handful of people talking about how cool something might be, getting shot to shit by a crowd of people who absolutely refuse to believe that anything from the company that makes Windows might actually be good.
As usual.
So, during that video demo, they showed a skyscraper toppling over onto another & it only used 3 times the Xbox One's spare compute power (for physics).
What I'm curious about is how much power is that and when are PC game makers going to implement that level of physics in a PC game.
Even if 25% of the X1 is devoted to physics in Crackdown 3, that would suggest a PC would have no problem doing 4, 8, 16+ the physcis processing.
What I'm curious about is how much power is that and when are PC game makers going to implement that level of physics in a PC game.
Even if 25% of the X1 is devoted to physics in Crackdown 3, that would suggest a PC would have no problem doing 4, 8, 16+ the physcis processing.
Well, I did say or the end of year 3 in my original post. I hadn't seen anything relating to this being aimed at summer 2016 though, where did you hear/read that?
Mushroomer25
Member
IIRC, it's running off the same servers they use for all their cloud computing services. So buying more servers benefits them long after Crackdown's player base drops.
Where are you getting that from? If we're talking about CPU processing power, you're off by orders of magnitude. The way this works is the cloud servers crunch the numbers on these highly detailed physics simulations, then send out to each client the resulting location data of each piece of geometry.
Sure, MS is certainly taking some of, if not all, of this burden onto themselves. But I believe the argument was that other developers would not use this due to costs. I was just giving a concrete example of one game's cost. This cost of course will be different than Crackdown's due to the different workloads that the servers are doing. How different that is, I don't know.
dancrane212
Member
That's the thing though - MS doesn't have to dedicate specific servers to Crackdown for a specific amount of time. When the game needs more servers more will come to life for it. It's supposed to be an automatic process so as the audience gets smaller more resources will be freed up and if the game has a big resurgence down the road the servers will work to accommodate it.
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
Lol, yes, that actuall game will feature much more activities then just shooting building till they collapse.
Why are people acting like that MS is the only company that owns (or can buy) servers?
digita1alchemy
Member
I want to believe, but not until I can try it for myself. MS has pulled smoke and mirrors too many times before.
NinjaBoiX
Member
I'm pretty sure the 2-3mb is referring to the Internet connection required to effectively communicate all this information with the cloud, not an extra 2mb of RAM or whatever.
Unless I'm mistaken.
Industrialist
Member
Taking the required internet connection specs and converting it to "processing power" and then considering that to be fact, I'd imagine.
llAuburnll
Banned
You sound desperate to find something wrong with it...
Mister Megative
Banned
metareferential
Member
That's not how it works, at all.
The connection is used to share calculation results. Server steps in letting the console run the game (the rest of it minus heavy physics stuff).
gamechanger87
Member
You do realize that people are playing that demo themselves. How would this be faked? You are just trolling at this point
http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/05/crackdown-3-hands-on-preview-the-xbox-one-killer-app-5329378/
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Looking forward to Crackdown 3 being the best looking console game ever made, then.
Colbert
Banned
There is no streaming! The compute heavy physics calculations are outsourced to servers in the cloud which will give back the geometry/physics data for the destruction. The content has still to be rendered by the Xbox One GPU. Streaming means that a (partial) scene was rendered on a server and the rendered data was sent to a streaming client (application/process/thread on the console). Totally different!
Chobel
Member
Never heard of the game, Is the game F2P or subscription based? Because that's very different than your normal one single time $60 purchase games.
Also judging by the "x20 more processing power than XBO", Crackdown will cost a lot, lot more than Age of Ascent.
MS won't charge anything, it's their game after all, but it still will cost them.
link1201
Member
Then on top of that you'll have economies of scale taking place as more servers come online making it less cost prohibitive.
2-4mbps is the data rate required. The processing power could be anything.
Mushroomer25
Member
The demo is at Gamescom. People are playing, and experiencing this cloud-based destruction. It's not hype-reel trickery.
I'd bank money on the Xbox Two (hah) in six years having a remaster of Crackdown 3 without internet connection required.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I can believe it.
MS has Azure, the biggest and most powerful cloud powered network currently in existence. If they tap even a fraction of that power, it's a wrap. No other console can conceivably come close to offering a similar experience.
I get that people are sceptical, but you really shouldn't be. We're living in a cloud powered world and MS is that the forefront. They have the infrastructure and now it's up to developers to show they have the abilities to tap into it.
Exciting times ahead.
MS has Azure, the biggest and most powerful cloud powered network currently in existence. If they tap even a fraction of that power, it's a wrap. No other console can conceivably come close to offering a similar experience.
I get that people are sceptical, but you really shouldn't be. We're living in a cloud powered world and MS is that the forefront. They have the infrastructure and now it's up to developers to show they have the abilities to tap into it.
Exciting times ahead.
Nothing is being streamed, data is being off-loaded for server side calculations then sent back to the console.
No idea wasn't thinking too much.
Thanks. Looks like the author just says it, maybe the devs are saying it at gamescom?
Journey
Banned
Not a language barrier at all, simply you not understanding context.
"Hey, this technology will last about 2 years"... well it's 2013 so we're already in year one so we're half way through... why bother?... huh? but sir! we just launched! nope, sorry 2013 means year one aka we're a year into 2 years, so only a year left.... ughh
Saying the technology won't get used enough because we're already half way through the gen at 1.5 years into the birth of the new consoles is disingenuous, unless you have a different point that I'm not getting.