A cloud verison of EQ.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Candystore, Mar 20, 2019.

  1. Candystore Augur

    Interesting, thanks. Seems like a lot of the internet relies on Amazon's data centers, lots of sites seems to be running on Amazon.
  2. Novalok New Member

    Forcing this on users wouldn't go over well. But it is already possible with services like Shadow for instance :) Just in case you want to do something like this on your own accord.
  3. Ceffener Augur

    Another thing to remember is many people still have data caps.

    “We don’t know the exact bitrates of Stadia just yet, but watching a regular HD Netflix stream uses around 3GB per hour, and this more than doubles for 4K streams.”

    I know why they want to do streaming (it’s not because of cheating...Google doesn’t really care about that).

    But Blu-ray’s/Ultra-HD Blu-ray’s are way better looking/sounding (about 30GB of data in stead of the 6GB compressed “HD” version you stream). Personally I hope we don’t see all companies switch to streaming only. There is a joy to actually owning things and having better quality.

    Also I would rather not be at the mercy of Comcast on if I can game or not. (Single player games)
  4. Machentoo Augur


    Not only just hosted by Amazon, but Amazon was integral in helping Netflix develop their streaming technology. I worked for Amazon for a while shortly after Amazon started doing streaming video, and it was pretty frustrating how much worse Amazon's version was (early on) compared to Netflix's version, despite Amazon working on both. Thankfully they've come a long ways since the early days.
  5. EQ_Scotty Journeyman

    I love the idea of this; however, people are again forgetting the state Daybreak Games is in. Very few people work on this title and while the TLP is good money, it only last them a few months before everyone leaves.

    Daybreak has spent the last few months laying people off. This is a large request for a studio that is struggling to stay afloat.
  6. EQ_Scotty Journeyman

  7. Candystore Augur

    I've never tried Shadow but it's a very interesting company. This idea of renting performance is super interesting.

    I have this old iPad mini from 2012, every site lags, sites take 20 to 30 seconds to load, some minutes to load. Loading Twitch was impossible. Tried different browsers, nothing worked, basically the thing was unusable. My WiFi is very fast, so that wasn't it, it was clearly the device that couldn't handle today's bloated javascript intensive sites.

    Then I tried the Puffin browser app, and suddenly it loads every site instantly. My iPad from 2012 was loading sites faster than my sis he brand new iPhone from 2019. I didn't understand it, what just happened. Apparently Puffin browser is a type of cloud browser that does all the Javascript and site rendering on their own servers, and then just sends the minimum that is needed to your device. I've been using PC and computers since I was a litte kid, but I've never been so amazed at something.

    If you have an old smartphone or ipad or whatever, give it a shot. The difference is staggering. I wouldn't use it for like logging into your bank, the company is safe and they value privacy, but it's still in the cloud, but for regular browsing it's fantastic.
  8. Captain Video Augur

    Don't let Google fool you, true cloud gaming is still years away. The bottleneck is the bandwidth it takes to stream HD or higher video, and the typical customer with a data cap is already burning most of it streaming Netflix/Hulu/etc, with little if anything left over for cloud gaming. A proof of concept demo using a 64-player FPS on a closed private network with no data cap isn't the same thing as a demo of a true MMO on a public network with caps and throttling. I predict Stadia will be an epic fail at launch, and Google (and others) will be forced to retreat and re-tool.
  9. Candystore Augur

    In a way cloud gaming is already here. I mean I have PSNow sitting on my PC right now, it allows me to play Playstation titles on my PC, from the cloud.

    As far as bandwidth. I mean....EQ is a large download too....downloading 50GB for every game you play is a lot of bandwidth too, so do patches cost abnormal amounts of data. Cloud gaming requires no upfront download, it's just the stream. If you can play games on Steam that often require gigantic 50-80GB downloads, you have the data cap to use Netflix too (at least in 720p or 1080p), and therefore the data cap to use cloud gaming without too many issues.

    The best counterargument I have seen against cloud gaming is that you no longer own the game. But do you really own PC games to begin with? I mean they are full of DRM, they only last as long as the company keeps the servers alive, etc.

    It's not like a Sega or Nintendo console from the 90s that you can still run today, you can't play most online games from even 10 years ago anymore, simply because the servers have been shut down, even if you try to install the game, there is no server to accept the game's activation code, or the OS is no longer supported, driver issues, DRM, etc.
  10. Finnster Elder

    this.

    And from the initial post, I also believe you do not know what "cloud" is. I sounds like you think "cloud" is the same as "video streaming".
  11. Candystore Augur

    Cloud gaming is quite similar to video streaming services like Netflix. Cloud gaming is often called the gaming version of what Neflix is for movies, since that is really what it is.

    As an example, Google's stadia will simply use a controller that talks directly to your wifi router (bypassing your PC alltogether to minimize input lag) and Google's server sends the same data to the client as Netflix does, a video feed in h.265 (or their new codec, I forgot the name).

    And it works on very weak devices, because it requires much less processing power to decode a video stream than it does to run a whole game.

    Like I mentioned, I managed to use Gaika on some very old PC, and managed to do the same with PSNow. All the GPU does is decode the video coded and send it to the frame buffer, my CPU and GPU are barely active when I play PSNow titles.
  12. Machentoo Augur


    It's not, though.

    Video streaming services have the ability to buffer. It knows where you are in the video and exactly what it is going to show you five seconds from now.

    Cloud gaming has to respond instantly to commands that you send and then queue up video that could not be predicted ahead of time. It is much more akin to skyping or google hangouts, or live streaming. And, if you've used those much at all, you're well aware that the quality, number of interruptions, delay are all considerably worse than the video you'd watch on netflix.
  13. Candystore Augur

    So do games. Your GPU has a framebuffer and it is several frame ahead of what you see on your screen.
  14. Machentoo Augur


    But your video card doesn't have to wait for internet latency to cue up the next frame.
  15. Machentoo Augur


    Which, by the way, is doubled on a cloud based client in a client/server architecture. Your computer has to communicate commands to the cloud client. The cloud client has to communicate with the game server. The game server has to respond to the client. And the client then needs to send video to you. Instead of making the jump across the internet twice, you now have to make it four times.
  16. Candystore Augur

    Well, neither does a game engine loop, it uses client-side prediction, it predicts if you have been running forward for a few seconds, that the next millisecond you will be running forward too. That's why games sometimes seem to kick your character back for a millisecond, the client-side prediction failed to predict what you did and does a retroactive correction.
  17. Machentoo Augur


    Yeah, and that works even worse when it has to predict ahead through four internet communications instead of only two.
  18. Ceffener Augur

    Exactly! This is why HD Netflix looks much better than Skype calls. Being able to buffer large amounts of the data helps for a smoother/better process. With a video game you can only buffer so much. PSNow, Remote Play, Nvidia whatever they call theirs, all are heavily compressed and noticeably worse than playing on your own system.

    Candy -
    For the downloading a lot of games at 50GB comment. People do still buy disc. And my PS2, PS3, Wii, etc. all do play single player games exactly like my NES and SNES do. Sure a lot of PC gamers have locked themselves into everything they own being at the mercy of Steam. But that’s on the list of reasons why I DONT buy my games digitally, or want to play them from a cloud service.
    Fallfyres likes this.
  19. Candystore Augur

    Well, Google said that for online games, lag will be less or imperceivable on their cloud gaming platform.

    They will have 7,500+ database centers running the games.

    The reason for this is that there are way more Google and Microsoft data centers around the world, than ....to use EQ as an example....DBG servers.


    I am much much more likely to be in close proximity of a Google server than I would be to a DBG server.

    [IMG]
  20. Ceffener Augur

    To be fair Google is only going to say that everything about their new platform that doesn’t have a release date is going to be better than everyone else’s. Have to actually see what hits the market and test their claims.

    NVidia and Sony have not delivered a system that lag is better or not noticeable.