bfbc2 demo works pretty well on my laptop via wifi until I sat through all that storyline bs just to come up to the first enemy and die because they made the knife the middle mouse button, which doesn't exist on my touchpad. yay.
A bit of an exclusive! The same game - Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - running on the same connection but on two Cloud services. Click on the images for lossless comparison images from OnLive and Gaikai. In addition to higher image quality, the Gaikai game is obviously running with higher quality settings engaged (note the implementation of anti-aliasing).
Improvements in compression technology can help of course. While both OnLive and Gaikai use h.264 compression, the encoders behind them at the datacentres are very, very different. The recent addition of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on Gaikai gives us an excellent opportunity to compare the two Cloud services in terms of picture quality. Gaikai's use of the widely acclaimed x264 encoder, used by YouTube and Facebook amongst a multitude of others demonstrates that at the same approximate levels of bandwidth, image quality gains can be seen.
Regardless, in these tests, the difference between PC and OnLive is in the region of 83 to 116ms, but the gap closes when compared to the console versions. In our experience, it's usually playable but it's noticeably laggy - to varying degrees. We've also noticed on a number of tests that there's something of a latency threshold around the 150ms level - if you're below that, typically control isn't flagged as an issue but if you're above it, people do complain. Bulletstorm on console comes in at around 133ms and there are few complaints about its response level. Compare and contrast with Killzone 2 at 150ms, which turned into something of a major issue (though perhaps because frame-rate drops did have a further impact on response).
At its best, OnLive dances around the threshold - noticeable but not an enormous issue. At its worst, it's well over it and unsatisfactory. Improving this is the key challenge. For a start, lowering latency as much as possible within the game itself will claw back precious milliseconds - something we've discussed already in our Optimising for the Cloud article we ran a while back. Perhaps if Cloud gaming gains traction, this will become more of a focus during development.
Similarly, ensuring a solid 60FPS will help, meaning that Cloud providers will actually have to deliver in that regard: OnLive proves to be rather variable in that regard and the more drops from 60FPS there are, the higher the latency. In essence then, developers need to be more mindful of the target platform, or else the platform itself needs more powerful hardware.
Secondly, the deployment of more datacentres closer to the client is an obvious move. David Perry has been talking a lot recently about ultra-low latencies between his various locations and Gaikai datacentres - specifically 8ms between his home and what we'll assume is the Californian server, and even as low as 5ms between his London hotel and the local Gaikai facility. Right now, OnLive UK is actually serviced by a facility in Luxembourg. Typically the further afield the datacentre, the higher the latency and the more opportunity there is for packet loss, so being more local has obvious advantages. Player-side, as infrastructure is upgraded more towards fibre, latency should also decrease there too.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Gaikai Partner to Launch World's First Cloud-Based Streaming MMO Game Experience
hehe. never seen this before. works ok, apart from the lag. lag isn't that big of a deal since it's just a demo site. I would never play games like this, but for demos, eh whatever. pretty good not having to really download anything or really put any work into demoing games on this. like watching movie trailers more like. just click and go. like this idea. it's too bad it only really links to one buying option per game (from what I can see). it's really just the demo provider's links. would have been better with a complete list of options, like get it new on amazon get it used on amazon search for it on ebay, steam, gamersgate, gog, whatever. but I guess then it would be the site's responsibility to keep stuff working, and not the demo owner/provider whatever. eh. definitely the right way to use streaming compared to onlive. but I guess gaikai will do proper full games as well soon? pointless
does my ability to run these demos indicate my ability to run the actual game?
does my ability to run these demos indicate my ability to run the actual game?
NFS The Run; finally I have the opportunity to play it. I ain't going to change my XP for two-three games just because of Frostbite2.
Full game. You mean, I could play for example Crysis 2 and not 30 minutes ?
Okay, but let me understand something, you can full play without paying any money, not like OnLive that require money in order to continue playing because you know, suddenly this would be SO or too free :-?
Okay, but let me understand something, you can full play without paying any money, not like OnLive that require money in order to continue playing because you know, suddenly this would be SO or too free :-?
Do you sell games on Gaikai.com?
No that's up to our publisher and retailer partners. We are a technology these companies use to let you try their products instantly for free.
Please do support our partners and buy from them!
Can you stream full games as well as demos?
Yes, Gaikai can stream full games however this is not a part of our “game demo” service. To stream full games, you simply buy Gaikai cloud capacity based on the number of instances you wish to have permanently available for your gamers. To your customers, you now you have your own Cloud Gaming service, we just take care of all of the heavy lifting.
How do you charge?
We have a couple of methods of payment. You can either pay for the time the gamers play or if you wish to keep it simple we just charge a set amount per demo.