Stadia not so good after all?

Wow, a lot of arguing...

I think you all got a few things wrong, and overlook where this could wind up being better.

"double latency because you gotta send input to the server then it has to send it back" - Um, this is how online gaming already works. You click your mouse, its transmitted to the game server, processed, then results transmitted back. Whether it is to a Dice server or a Stadia server, it's the same back and forth. Where stadia might add lag, if it then transmits all of that outside of google to external server. If this is how it works, then completely agree it's going to add lag. Google isn't stupid tho.. without having read up on how it works, I'm going to guess that google themselves have servers to play on for the offered games. If so, that possible extra latency is eliminated.

So now you are left with the ping time to the stadia server vs the ping time to the games' other servers. probably be + or - 5 or 10ms, but that is just online gaming in general. And sometimes you get put on different servers, not necessarily the closest. So this metric can have variability as it is. If google has their servers on really fat fast pipes (what I would suspect) then your ping could actually go down on average, and even moreso if, like netflix, they can put some local servers in big cities. Your ping to a server in your city would be 1 maybe 2ms. Likely those sets of servers would then be linked on the fat backbone, so the overall feel would likely be the same as online games feel now (possibly better).

In the lag/latency aspects, I wouldn't count them out without more experience/data.

Price on the other hand... it's $60 a month? So in 5 to 8 months, I've basically paid for a console? This doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Also, I've never been a huge console gamer, but being able to resell your games is likely a factor for many, especially teen gamers. Going to guess that you can't resell your stadia games...

So with all the above in mind, who is the target audience for this thing anyway?

If it was say $10 a month, I think this would be a different conclusion. It would take off and in 5 years, own the (majority of the) console market.
***
Edit: some additional thoughts.

Game devs will love this, google/stadia doing some of the hosting for their games.
I would bet that at some point, games' will pay to be placed on the platform.
Also good for game devs as the games are in the cloud and uncopyable, so DRM would not even be needed.

And will be good for gamers (pc primarily) if it cuts down on the rampant cheating that pervades pretty much every online game. Not sure, can people cheat on consoles? Cause if so, then it would reduce/eliminate that for them as well.

Google, get the price down already.
 
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Wow, a lot of arguing...

I think you all got a few things wrong, and overlook where this could wind up being better.

"double latency because you gotta send input to the server then it has to send it back" - Um, this is how online gaming already works. You click your mouse, its transmitted to the game server, processed, then results transmitted back. Whether it is to a Dice server or a Stadia server, it's the same back and forth. Where stadia might add lag, if it then transmits all of that outside of google to external server. If this is how it works, then completely agree it's going to add lag. Google isn't stupid tho.. without having read up on how it works, I'm going to guess that google themselves have servers to play on for the offered games. If so, that possible extra latency is eliminated.

So now you are left with the ping time to the stadia server vs the ping time to the games' other servers. probably be + or - 5 or 10ms, but that is just online gaming in general. And sometimes you get put on different servers, not necessarily the closest. So this metric can have variability as it is. If google has their servers on really fat fast pipes (what I would suspect) then your ping could actually go down on average, and even moreso if, like netflix, they can put some local servers in big cities. Your ping to a server in your city would be 1 maybe 2ms. Likely those sets of servers would then be linked on the fat backbone, so the overall feel would likely be the same as online games feel now (possibly better).

In the lag/latency aspects, I wouldn't count them out without more experience/data.

Price on the other hand... it's $60 a month? So in 5 to 8 months, I've basically paid for a console? This doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Also, I've never been a huge console gamer, but being able to resell your games is likely a factor for many, especially teen gamers. Going to guess that you can't resell your stadia games...

So with all the above in mind, who is the target audience for this thing anyway?

If it was say $10 a month, I think this would be a different conclusion. It would take off and in 5 years, own the (majority of the) console market.
***
Edit: some additional thoughts.

Game devs will love this, google/stadia doing some of the hosting for their games.
I would bet that at some point, games' will pay to be placed on the platform.
Also good for game devs as the games are in the cloud and uncopyable, so DRM would not even be needed.

And will be good for gamers (pc primarily) if it cuts down on the rampant cheating that pervades pretty much every online game. Not sure, can people cheat on consoles? Cause if so, then it would reduce/eliminate that for them as well.

Google, get the price down already.


What you see is processed locally though. Try playing a FPS on any streaming platform right now and you'll see. It'll be like using a wireless mouse that's on the edge of its range.

All this streaming stuff in theory would be fine for latency insensitive games like racing, non-fps MMOs, turn based strategy games, etc.
Anything that's a FPS or competitive will not work at all and will fail miserably.
 
Wow, a lot of arguing...

I think you all got a few things wrong, and overlook where this could wind up being better.

"double latency because you gotta send input to the server then it has to send it back" - Um, this is how online gaming already works. You click your mouse, its transmitted to the game server, processed, then results transmitted back. Whether it is to a Dice server or a Stadia server, it's the same back and forth. Where stadia might add lag, if it then transmits all of that outside of google to external server. If this is how it works, then completely agree it's going to add lag. Google isn't stupid tho.. without having read up on how it works, I'm going to guess that google themselves have servers to play on for the offered games. If so, that possible extra latency is eliminated.

So now you are left with the ping time to the stadia server vs the ping time to the games' other servers. probably be + or - 5 or 10ms, but that is just online gaming in general. And sometimes you get put on different servers, not necessarily the closest. So this metric can have variability as it is. If google has their servers on really fat fast pipes (what I would suspect) then your ping could actually go down on average, and even moreso if, like netflix, they can put some local servers in big cities. Your ping to a server in your city would be 1 maybe 2ms. Likely those sets of servers would then be linked on the fat backbone, so the overall feel would likely be the same as online games feel now (possibly better).

In the lag/latency aspects, I wouldn't count them out without more experience/data.

Price on the other hand... it's $60 a month? So in 5 to 8 months, I've basically paid for a console? This doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Also, I've never been a huge console gamer, but being able to resell your games is likely a factor for many, especially teen gamers. Going to guess that you can't resell your stadia games...

So with all the above in mind, who is the target audience for this thing anyway?

If it was say $10 a month, I think this would be a different conclusion. It would take off and in 5 years, own the (majority of the) console market.
***
Edit: some additional thoughts.

Game devs will love this, google/stadia doing some of the hosting for their games.
I would bet that at some point, games' will pay to be placed on the platform.
Also good for game devs as the games are in the cloud and uncopyable, so DRM would not even be needed.

And will be good for gamers (pc primarily) if it cuts down on the rampant cheating that pervades pretty much every online game. Not sure, can people cheat on consoles? Cause if so, then it would reduce/eliminate that for them as well.

Google, get the price down already.
It has already been mentioned in the thread, but that is not what is happening in standard online multiplayer games. All movement, input, and physics calculation are done on the client side. The results are just sent to the server and the server resolves it from all users to come up with the best resolution and then sends those back to the client. At that point the client inserts those results into its calculations and interpolates the modified results so as there is as little interruption as possible.

With game streaming you're sending inputs to the server which the server then takes to calculated all the things that are typically done client side and then send those results back to the client. This is where the double lag comes from because the movement the player is experiencing is not perceptibly instantaneous.

It's also already been mentioned, but the subscription service is only $10 a month, and that is for 4K/60 streaming. 720 and 1080 streaming are free. The contention is that games need to still be bought separately for full price in addition to the subscription price. Google will include one rotating game for no additional cost with the 4K/60 tier, but that is it.
 
It's also already been mentioned, but the subscription service is only $10 a month, and that is for 4K/60 streaming. 720 and 1080 streaming are free. The contention is that games need to still be bought separately for full price in addition to the subscription price. Google will include one rotating game for no additional cost with the 4K/60 tier, but that is it.
Apparently the free games that come with the $10/mo Pro tier will not rotate, but accrue - meaning you keep them.
 
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That's why I said most people are terrible with math, because they don't realize that Stadia is an awful deal. Besides the data cap issues, besides the limited bandwidth you have to share with your family assuming they also use Stadia or Netflix. Also when Stadia launches you must pay $129.99 up front and $9.99 a month after the first 3 months. The only game you get from all this is Destiny 2. I can buy a used RX 470 off Ebay for $100 and just play a bunch of games for free on PC like League of Legends, CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, HearthStone, and etc. That should keep little Johnny busy.
This is a bit apples v. oranges - you can't plug a used RX470 straight into a TV and start playing games. As well, only early access Stadia costs money. FWIW they just announced the Founders Edition is sold out worldwide (of course we don't know #'s).

I'm noticing a renewed interest in 4K60 Red Dead Redemption 2 since that PC trailer is everywhere right now, and people are seeing Stadia as a way to play or replay with PC quality graphics without needing to drop $1000+ on hardware (or download 250GB of game files) just to play that one game with gfx as good as the trailer.

Who knows, this isn't for everyone but I can see the low buy-in cost of the service filling a niche and creating value for some usage scenarios - primarily console/living room.
There's also something attractive about buying a game once and never needing to switch or upgrade consoles or upgrade PC hardware to re-play it with better graphics later. Google says 8K/120FPS is on the roadmap.
 
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PC games running on systems powered by an unnamed 2.7Ghz CPU and a Vega GPU (Vega 56 based on the specs Google showed off).

So...This brings up an interesting question that I haven't thought of. Can a system with a 2.7Ghz CPU (with an unnamed amount of hyperthreaded cores) and a V56 even run games like Destiny 2 at 4K/60?
That's a trick question, because Google's 4k probably isn't real 4k. Or at the very least Google has a lot of confidence that 35 Mbps is enough for proper 4k. From 25 Mbps for 1080p to 35 Mbps 4K, isn't exactly a large enough bump in bandwidth to properly capture 4k 60fps.

It's also possible that Stadia just upscales 1080p to 4K but who's to say? Once Stadia is out I'm sure a lot of still image captures will show exactly what is exactly going on here.


I love this part the most.
Edge said:
But latency is the thing that gets the most attention. And while it's already proven to be more than playable
No it isn't. If it was more than playable then why is Google looking into 'negative latency'? But it sounds like the same idea as run-ahead. As byuu explains, it uses a lot of CPU power and acts as a form of frame skipping. It works but you'd be running that game a head of time, multiple times. For a SNES emulator which can run on a potato that's no problem, but a game like Witcher 3 is a different story.

 
It has already been mentioned in the thread, but that is not what is happening in standard online multiplayer games. All movement, input, and physics calculation are done on the client side. The results are just sent to the server and the server resolves it from all users to come up with the best resolution and then sends those back to the client. At that point the client inserts those results into its calculations and interpolates the modified results so as there is as little interruption as possible.

With game streaming you're sending inputs to the server which the server then takes to calculated all the things that are typically done client side and then send those results back to the client. This is where the double lag comes from because the movement the player is experiencing is not perceptibly instantaneous.

Hmm, so the theory is that current pc/console games do some amount of processing locally on what, positioning or something from the player inputs, maybe placement onscreen, then send that on to the server. And that local processing gets eliminated (with stadia) and will cause extra latency...

Well, I am not 100% sure how that all works.. there might be a little something to your theory.
At the same time, if that is how the hit/miss is determined for my targets, I can see this is probably what the aimbots can jack into to ensure the hit accuracy...

Probably some bit of latency that either actually eliminated or appears to be eliminated... but I suspect that that process is also what helps enable the hacking.

I would have to try it to know for sure. I am not going to switch away from pc gaming anytime soon, but I think there can be benefits to having the game be cloud based. Time will tell how well it handles FPS's.

It's also already been mentioned, but the subscription service is only $10 a month, and that is for 4K/60 streaming. 720 and 1080 streaming are free. The contention is that games need to still be bought separately for full price in addition to the subscription price. Google will include one rotating game for no additional cost with the 4K/60 tier, but that is it.

Well, I see nothing wrong with games needing to be purchased. I can see an argument for lower prices for the games though compared to the full retail price. And if they can lower those software costs, it will accelerate adoption. Be like steam store sales, getting nice games for $20, or as low as $5 sometimes. The fact that the 'used' games cannot be resold like current consoles would be negated more than enough if you are getting games for great prices.

Free streaming is great, so then it becomes just the console buy-in cost plus your software. I mean depending on how cheap it is, can't hurt to try can it?

Shouldn't be long before some reviews come in too.
 
I've been playing games via Geforce Now for a few months. (I run Geforce Now on a dual core Haswell laptop at work.) It's pretty amazing tech and one of the cool features is I can crank the resolution up to 1440p or 4K while playing on my 1366 x 768 screen. It looks better than native 720p of course because of the detail. (My screen is 12.5" and computer is a thnkpad X230.) The technology works well if you have a nice internet connection.

Would I pick Geforce Now over my gaming desktop at home? No way, but if I didn't own that gaming computer or any of the consoles I might go for it or something like Stadia, because It's better than playing 30 fps on a console.
 
I've used Steam In-Home Streaming on my LAN (wireless network) and it's playable at 1080P60. Sure there might be some latency, but it doesn't ruin the game at all.

I also tried Street Fighter IV on the Shield (I believe this was Geforce Now). I was surprised it was pretty good. I mean, not good enough for a professional online match, but for casual single player it would be fine.
 
Hmm, so the theory is that current pc/console games do some amount of processing locally on what, positioning or something from the player inputs, maybe placement onscreen, then send that on to the server. And that local processing gets eliminated (with stadia) and will cause extra latency...

Well, I am not 100% sure how that all works.. there might be a little something to your theory.
At the same time, if that is how the hit/miss is determined for my targets, I can see this is probably what the aimbots can jack into to ensure the hit accuracy...

Probably some bit of latency that either actually eliminated or appears to be eliminated... but I suspect that that process is also what helps enable the hacking.

I would have to try it to know for sure. I am not going to switch away from pc gaming anytime soon, but I think there can be benefits to having the game be cloud based. Time will tell how well it handles FPS's.
It's not a theory it is how multiplayer games work and how they handle the time-lag between clients.

When you're streaming a game, the client asks the server "hey this dude pressed the left button, what shall I do?" Then the server sends back the answer and then you see your character move left.
As opposed to regular multiplayer where when you press the left button the console / pc locally decides what to do and the only lag comes from your display input lag.
The only thing the client asks the server is "hey I know there was another player here in the map, I think he should be at this location based on his last known trajectory, is that correct?
 
What I want to know is...

Will the free version eventually contain advertising? That would really annoy people, it's shocking under YouTube without some form of adblocker.
 
I think you all got a few things wrong, and overlook where this could wind up being better.

"double latency because you gotta send input to the server then it has to send it back" - Um, this is how online gaming already works.
No it doesn't. What you see in your game is always instant because the action is done regardless of what is going on in the server. As long as both the client and server agree with the actions, then nothing is wrong. When there's a discrepancy then something needs correcting, which is why sometimes in a game you might find yourself teleported to a previous point in your actions. In cloud gaming there's no client to pretend everything is instant, so your actions are literally past tense.

You click your mouse, its transmitted to the game server, processed, then results transmitted back. Whether it is to a Dice server or a Stadia server, it's the same back and forth. Where stadia might add lag, if it then transmits all of that outside of google to external server. If this is how it works, then completely agree it's going to add lag. Google isn't stupid tho.. without having read up on how it works, I'm going to guess that google themselves have servers to play on for the offered games. If so, that possible extra latency is eliminated.
The difference between Stadia and running a game client on your PC is that on a client on PC the actions are instant but the results of those actions are sent to the server. The server compares those actions with other actions from other players and makes a judgement if you or they were first to kill. You will never see a delay unless there's the infamous "lag". With Stadia, every action is going to depend on your latency. Go fire up a first person shooter with Stadia using a mouse and look around. You'll immediately notice that delay. No need to jump, or fire a weapon, just look around with the mouse.


So with all the above in mind, who is the target audience for this thing anyway?
For sloths.

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No it doesn't. What you see in your game is always instant because the action is done regardless of what is going on in the server. As long as both the client and server agree with the actions, then nothing is wrong. When there's a discrepancy then something needs correcting, which is why sometimes in a game you might find yourself teleported to a previous point in your actions. In cloud gaming there's no client to pretend everything is instant, so your actions are literally past tense.

I'm struggling with this concept.

We all know latency has a huge impact in relation to online game play, in fact the greater the latency, the more your actions are literally past tense. Therefore the logical conclusion is the fact that nothing you see in the game is instant, there is measurable and noticeable latency regarding current multiplayer solutions as packets of data are transferred back and forth between client and server and your comment is incorrect?

However, I do agree that streaming game play services will add to this latency issue and I cannot see how Google are going to overcome this issue with so called 'negative latency' unless they can manipulate time.
 
Pretty sure what he is referring to is called client side prediction.

Thing is, the server itself is what decides whose action was first. I know I've ran around a corner then fell dead from a shot. And I'm always thinking "bullshit, I was around a corner" but whats really going on is the shots all got fired and landed before I went around the corner. There is still lag, latency, whatever you want to call it. We just don't see it as much, as the client side prediction hides it behind what appears to be smooth flowing graphics.

So I think he is right that it will probably feel more laggy on stadia. However the net result in kill accuracy is probably a wash. But if the experience "feels" sluggish, we aren't going to like it, not for an FPS anyway. So in that I am inclined to agree (without having actually tried it).

At the same time, if you got a 10ms ping to stadia, it is short enough that it will not matter. So, I am still not going to just outright dismiss it either (just yet).

As I said, time will tell for sure.
 
I'm struggling with this concept.

We all know latency has a huge impact in relation to online game play, in fact the greater the latency, the more your actions are literally past tense. Therefore the logical conclusion is the fact that nothing you see in the game is instant, there is measurable and noticeable latency regarding current multiplayer solutions as packets of data are transferred back and forth between client and server and your comment is incorrect?
Basically the client works as if there's no lag as long as everything flags as on time. When latency creeps up then the client can no longer pretend that everything is instant and lag happens, because if it didn't then you'd get frequent jumps going back to a second or two of your games progress. World of Warcraft does this so well that the game would delay packets being sent to reduce their bandwidth, and gamers figured out they can over ride this by adjusting TcpAckFrequency.

Also keep in mind that you're not just sending a few packets of data with cloud gaming but also encoding a video output and then sending that as a stream to be decoded by your client. That isn't instant and will add some latency as well. Your bluetooth gamepad adds latency, your TV adds latency, your ISP adds latency, your client decoding the video adds latency, and Google's video encoders are adding latency. I guarantee you that Google is using whatever encoder hardware AMD has included with their GPU's. Wendell from Level1techs shows how Google is probably going about this since they're using Linux as a host for their virtual machines that run the games. AMD's SR-IOV isn't exactly working great last I heard but I'm sure Google fixed that with money.


However, I do agree that streaming game play services will add to this latency issue and I cannot see how Google are going to overcome this issue with so called 'negative latency' unless they can manipulate time.
Google's "negative latency" is just marketing for run-ahead, which means the game will process your actions ahead of time in order to reduce lag. What that means is that the game itself has some latency, so in order to reduce that, Google will try to anticipate your input actions by processing a number of possibilities ahead of time so when the server does get your input it knows you jumped instead of ran left and already has that action cached ready to send out.

This isn't exactly consequence free as this requires at least 5x more CPU processing power to accomplish this, as well as introducing some frame skipping. The more you process ahead of time the more frame skipping you introduce. Google knows they can't fix your connection speed issue, but they can try to reduce the latency you already get from other sources. Hence why Google made their wifi gamepad because they know Bluetooth adds a ton of latency. So they figure they can reduce the latency from your gamepad and even the game itself, so the service doesn't seem so bad.

As a PC gamer you have much better latency than a PS4 or Xbox One owner. A mouse and keyboard has virtually no latency, and most monitors have much lower latency than HDTV's. Plus our games run at 60fps or higher, and the more frames the game runs then the lower the input lag you'll receive. Especially if you use an Ethernet cable and not a wifi connection, the reaction time in multiplayer games on PC is worlds better than on a PS4 or XB1. You want a quick trick to lower latency then get an Intel network adapter as the latency on those are better than the Realtek crap you get on your motherboard. Atheros adapters are also really good, but I prefer Intel.

Google is trying but realistically Stadia's latency will be noticeable regardless of what they do. Especially when the PS5 is released and games run 60fps and the DualShock 5 will likely reduce the latency you would see from Bluetooth. There are too many factors outside of Google's control, like ISPs, wifi interference in peoples homes, and congestion. There's no way Google can guarantee that Stadia will be low latency.
 
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/22...dition-sold-out-premiere-edition-release-date

In short: People "should" get the Founders and Premier editions they ordered within two weeks of launch, but no one who bought either at any time is guaranteed to get it on release.
Honestly, if you have to get a cloud gaming service then go with Nvidia's Geforce Now. Because at the very least when the service inevitably fails, you still own your games as Nvidia now gives you Steam keys for every game you buy. The Geforce Now service exists right now and works. Also keep in mind that Stadia, Geforce Now, and Shadow are just streaming services that offer access to PC games. You're not exactly getting anything special that a Ryzen 2400G couldn't do. Also you still need to pay $130 for what was suppose to be a free service, and you get Destiny 2 which is now Free to Play on PC. Also their Founder’s Edition was sold out, which is bull. That's why it comes with a gift a three-month pass to a friend. I'd like to know what your friend gets to play for 3 months? Destiny 2?
 
Honestly, if you have to get a cloud gaming service then go with Nvidia's Geforce Now. Because at the very least when the service inevitably fails, you still own your games as Nvidia now gives you Steam keys for every game you buy. The Geforce Now service exists right now and works. Also keep in mind that Stadia, Geforce Now, and Shadow are just streaming services that offer access to PC games. You're not exactly getting anything special that a Ryzen 2400G couldn't do. Also you still need to pay $130 for what was suppose to be a free service, and you get Destiny 2 which is now Free to Play on PC. Also their Founder’s Edition was sold out, which is bull. That's why it comes with a gift a three-month pass to a friend. I'd like to know what your friend gets to play for 3 months? Destiny 2?

XCloud sounds promising as well, though that probably won't be out of beta for a while.
 
Basically the client works as if there's no lag as long as everything flags as on time. When latency creeps up then the client can no longer pretend that everything is instant and lag happens, because if it didn't then you'd get frequent jumps going back to a second or two of your games progress. World of Warcraft does this so well that the game would delay packets being sent to reduce their bandwidth, and gamers figured out they can over ride this by adjusting TcpAckFrequency.

What you're talking about is interpolation, latency still exists between any client>server connection, it's just that considering the server tick rate quite often it's not as noticeable as one would imagine. However move that server further away from the client and I can assure you latency becomes a very real issue that most definitely affects the synchronization of clients and servers with a massive effect on game play.

What if Google had dedicated multiplayer servers hosted alongside Stadia servers? That would most definitely reduce any added latency to a minimum assuming datacenters were placed close to every locale. In fact latency could be somewhat reduced if the dedicated server was placed closer to the client.
 
World's largest cloud, data centers up the ass with more on the way, compute power that would make the hairs on your balls stand up. Might not be perfect but if you can't see this becoming popular with casuals and the rest then you need to look deeper

Ffs cable providers had solitaire on the first STBs and everyone had it. Imagine this

Stadia might not make 2080tis obsolete (who really knows) but to say it's fail is shortsighted
 
Clearly the future of computing is not going to be huge desktop towers. Sure, they will still exist for servers and for enthusiasts to build, but the majority of people will be phones, tablets, TVs, etc.

If there was a cheap device you could plug into your TV (or more likely, come included on your Smart TV) that could stream video from various services, play AAA games, maybe even do some light Chromebook style computing, that is what is convenient for most people.

I mean, how many people have bought a UHD Blu-Ray player? Seems like a small market, everything is streaming now. Same way, PC gaming will probably be a niche on the level of 4K Blu-Ray. Sure it's better quality, but most people don't care. I think it will be the same.

Not saying Stadia will be the service that takes over, maybe, maybe not, but Google has a shot at least and they are in a good position to pull it off.
 
World's largest cloud, data centers up the ass with more on the way, compute power that would make the hairs on your balls stand up. Might not be perfect but if you can't see this becoming popular with casuals and the rest then you need to look deeper

Ffs cable providers had solitaire on the first STBs and everyone had it. Imagine this

Stadia might not make 2080tis obsolete (who really knows) but to say it's fail is shortsighted

The amount of compute power the servers have is irrelevant. The games are running on systems with a 2.7 GHz CPU and a Vega 56 GPU. The computers are also not capable of breaking the laws of physics. Last I checked Solitaire isn’t a twitch shooter that requires fast reflexes.
 
The amount of compute power the servers have is irrelevant. The games are running on systems with a 2.7 GHz CPU and a Vega 56 GPU. The computers are also not capable of breaking the laws of physics. Last I checked Solitaire isn’t a twitch shooter that requires fast reflexes.

They already use more than one GPU in some instances. Everything cloud is scalable at a moment's notice including these GPUs. They can't deliver 4K 60 across all titles with a vega 56 and I think you know this

And mom and dad don't play twitch shooters, hence why I named casuals as the target audience.
 
What if Google had dedicated multiplayer servers hosted alongside Stadia servers? That would most definitely reduce any added latency to a minimum assuming datacenters were placed close to every locale. In fact latency could be somewhat reduced if the dedicated server was placed closer to the client.
In that regard it would help with latency in a multiplayer game, but that was never an issue for video games before. This just solves a problem introduced by cloud gaming. The latency I'm talking about will effect even single player games. Of course, if the server was next to Google's servers then who's paying for this? Does Google start charging a monthly fee to play multiplayer games like consoles? Are Stadia gamers isolated from PC gamers as well as console gamers? Because if a PC gamer did play against a Stadia gamer, they would get rofl stomped due to the input lag. Unless Google injects latency into PC games to even the playing field, and if they did that I wish them a small spot in hell.

World's largest cloud, data centers up the ass with more on the way, compute power that would make the hairs on your balls stand up.
The compute power in data centers are not ideal for gaming. A 9900K would run circles around whatever Stadia is using because games are still all about clock speed and IPC. As John Carmack put it, a gaming PC has the best CPU for serial work. A 16 core 2.7Ghz CPU is not better for gaming than a 8 core 5Ghz CPU.



Stadia might not make 2080tis obsolete (who really knows) but to say it's fail is shortsighted
I would say it doesn't even come close. Besides RTX, the service is built around the idea that modern PC games don't need much to generate 1080p 60fps. As for 4k, I don't believe Google is offering true 4k. I imagine they're up-scaling to 4k and hope that nobody will notice, just like they hope nobody will care about the latency issue.

Clearly the future of computing is not going to be huge desktop towers. Sure, they will still exist for servers and for enthusiasts to build, but the majority of people will be phones, tablets, TVs, etc.
I heard this before with tablets taking over the PC industry and now they struggle to push products. The desktop computer isn't going anywhere because they aren't limited to power and heat issues like tablets and smart phones are. Realistically those devices have peaked and any new performance increase is marginal at best. You are thermal and power limited with those devices, and that won't change with 7nm or even 5nm.

I mean, how many people have bought a UHD Blu-Ray player? Seems like a small market, everything is streaming now. Same way, PC gaming will probably be a niche on the level of 4K Blu-Ray. Sure it's better quality, but most people don't care. I think it will be the same.
Blu-Ray failed because they originally charged $1k for the players and $60 per movie. For what was mostly DVD movies that was upscale and barely looked any different. Today Blu-Ray is far better and cheaper but not cheaper than Netflix. Though with Disney+ and other services looking to become essential to home entertainment I can see people going back to piracy.
Not saying Stadia will be the service that takes over, maybe, maybe not, but Google has a shot at least and they are in a good position to pull it off.
Not really. Sony had the best shot because Sony has exclusives that nobody else has, and PSNow is still failing. Stadia just offers PC games with connivance. It's not even cheap as they're asking for $130 and maybe the service is ready to be used. You only get 3 months for the $130 as well. You want a game then pay another $60. You want RTX? Too bad because this isn't a high end gaming PC. I imagine Ray-Tracing will be a feature Stadia won't get for a long time because turning on that feature takes full demand from your GPU. There's no way Google is renting out a $1k GPU to be used entirely by a single person for one month.
 
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They already use more than one GPU in some instances. Everything cloud is scalable at a moment's notice including these GPUs. They can't deliver 4K 60 across all titles with a vega 56 and I think you know this
As great as that sounds in your head, the reality is nobody is going to alter their game code for this. The Vega 56's they use for Stadia are meant to run multiple virutal machines, but not to add multiple GPU's to accommodate a 4k game. I also believe that Stadia will upscale 1080p or 1440p to 4k and pretend everything is fine.
And mom and dad don't play twitch shooters, hence why I named casuals as the target audience.
You can't hide behind the "casual" and think it'll work. Nintendo did this and it didn't work out for them. World of Warcraft did this and now you have Classic destroying retail WoW. The reality is there is no hardcore or casual gamer, just regular gamers. Some gamers have more free time than others and that's about it.
 
Blu-Ray failed because they originally charged $1k for the players and $60 per movie. For what was mostly DVD movies that was upscale and barely looked any different. Today Blu-Ray is far better and cheaper but not cheaper than Netflix. Thought with Disney+ and other services looking to become essential to home entertainment I can see people going back to piracy.

On release players were expensive, now they're cheap as chips assuming you can do without the top of the line Oppo or Cambridge. Even an entry level player will offer superior audio/video quality to streaming services.
 
They already use more than one GPU in some instances. Everything cloud is scalable at a moment's notice including these GPUs. They can't deliver 4K 60 across all titles with a vega 56 and I think you know this

And mom and dad don't play twitch shooters, hence why I named casuals as the target audience.

Of course I know that card can’t run games like that but those are the specs Google have for Stadia servers.

You do realize that Google isn’t looking at the super casual market, right? I don’t think “mom and dad” casual play Destiny 2 either but that is the game they’re using to sell the service.
 
On release players were expensive, now they're cheap as chips assuming you can do without the top of the line Oppo or Cambridge. Even an entry level player will offer superior audio/video quality to streaming services.
Yes but you pay $10 per month and get access to all the movies. DVD, Blu-Ray, and VHS could never compete with that. Stadia is not comparable to Netflix because $10 per month gets you access to hardware and nothing else. No games, not even free games like LoL and CS:GO. It won't be 1080p free until sometime in 2020.

Keep in mind that Stadia is taking advantage that currently right now PC games don't require the latest in hardware to run games. You can get 1080p 60fps on a potato of a PC. But they have no Ray-Tracing and when the PS5 and Xbox "Nexter" is released then Ray-Tracing will become standard in PC games as well. Suddenly a PC game doesn't require an i5 2500k with a Radeon HD 7770, but a Ryzen 8 core with RTX 2060 levels of performance, at least. Google's servers are going to be ill equipped to deal with this sudden and drastic change in games.

To say that Blu-Ray isn't comparable to gaming is an understatement.
 
Yes but you pay $10 per month and get access to all the movies. DVD, Blu-Ray, and VHS could never compete with that. Stadia is not comparable to Netflix because $10 per month gets you access to hardware and nothing else. No games, not even free games like LoL and CS:GO. It won't be 1080p free until sometime in 2020.

Keep in mind that Stadia is taking advantage that currently right now PC games don't require the latest in hardware to run games. You can get 1080p 60fps on a potato of a PC. But they have no Ray-Tracing and when the PS5 and Xbox "Nexter" is released then Ray-Tracing will become standard in PC games as well. Suddenly a PC game doesn't require an i5 2500k with a Radeon HD 7770, but a Ryzen 8 core with RTX 2060 levels of performance, at least. Google's servers are going to be ill equipped to deal with this sudden and drastic change in games.

To say that Blu-Ray isn't comparable to gaming is an understatement.

Perhaps in the US you get access to all movies, that's not the case all over the globe. Furthermore, there's still the point about quality that you keep missing - People happily substitute a quality experience for convenience as we've all become very lazy and subdued.
 
Perhaps in the US you get access to all movies, that's not the case all over the globe. Furthermore, there's still the point about quality that you keep missing - People happily substitute a quality experience for convenience as we've all become very lazy and subdued.

There is a world of difference between “good enough” video quality and playing a fast paced online game with a lot of lag. You can’t compare video streaming and game streaming.
 
Perhaps in the US you get access to all movies, that's not the case all over the globe. Furthermore, there's still the point about quality that you keep missing - People happily substitute a quality experience for convenience as we've all become very lazy and subdued.
Gaming is the experience. You can substitute image quality and nobody would care but latency effects game play. You can't just take DVD quality Netflix and compare that to input lag. Also nobody gets access to all the movies, since companies have been pulling out of Netflix and making their own service. That's why I think piracy is going to get a lot more popular.
 
Streaming can work. For example, Steam In-Home Streaming has very little lag and it is 100% playable.

Granted that is on a LAN, but with a good internet speed I think it's possible. I tried many games streaming like DiRT Rally, Batman Arkham, GTA5, etc. It was good and the image quality was good 1080P60.

Also, Netflix is not "DVD quality". If you pay for the plus package you can get UHD 4K with HDR, it looks great and as good or better than most UHD Blu-Rays. Seriously, watch Altered Carbon on a decent TV, it blows everything away.
 
Streaming can work. For example, Steam In-Home Streaming has very little lag and it is 100% playable.

Granted that is on a LAN, but with a good internet speed I think it's possible. I tried many games streaming like DiRT Rally, Batman Arkham, GTA5, etc. It was good and the image quality was good 1080P60.

Also, Netflix is not "DVD quality". If you pay for the plus package you can get UHD 4K with HDR, it looks great and as good or better than most UHD Blu-Rays. Seriously, watch Altered Carbon on a decent TV, it blows everything away.

You're comparing streaming via a single hop vs going through who knows how many servers. Every single hop data makes increases latency. Even if both your gaming computer and the target device are running wireless you will have a heck of a lot less latency than going across the internet.

No, no it isn't. I don't even have a high-end TV and I can easily tell the difference between Netflix HDR and UHD blu-ray.
 
You can't hide behind the "casual" and think it'll work. Nintendo did this and it didn't work out for them. World of Warcraft did this and now you have Classic destroying retail WoW. The reality is there is no hardcore or casual gamer, just regular gamers. Some gamers have more free time than others and that's about it.

I've played WoW since close to its inception (played max level content in the first three expansions of the game on multiple toons which meant raiding six days a week). It's not the game itself that burned me out. It was the people in the raid group that never took responsibility for knowing 1) their class, and 2) situational awareness. I had people tell me that they were too busy healing or DPSing to know what to do next and had to be told via voice to do what they needed to do next. This was despite me, as raid lead, being the primary healer as well (who managed to outheal everyone whilst leading and telling each player what they needed to do and when). That WoW now caters to a more casual playstyle doesn't change the fact that you can play at a far higher difficulty than Vanilla ever was.

I have three toons placeholding names on a Vanilla server. I just can't seem to want to do over what I spent most of two years of my life doing...

In regard to this thread about game streaming, I don't see how you can gamestream 4K quality video render of your gameplay without a significant amount of AI trying to pre-determine what people are going to do to reduce apparent lag. Which begs the question: Who is really playing the game at that point? You or the AI?
 
Pretty sure what he is referring to is called client side prediction.

Thing is, the server itself is what decides whose action was first. I know I've ran around a corner then fell dead from a shot. And I'm always thinking "bullshit, I was around a corner" but whats really going on is the shots all got fired and landed before I went around the corner. There is still lag, latency, whatever you want to call it. We just don't see it as much, as the client side prediction hides it behind what appears to be smooth flowing graphics.

So I think he is right that it will probably feel more laggy on stadia. However the net result in kill accuracy is probably a wash. But if the experience "feels" sluggish, we aren't going to like it, not for an FPS anyway. So in that I am inclined to agree (without having actually tried it).

At the same time, if you got a 10ms ping to stadia, it is short enough that it will not matter. So, I am still not going to just outright dismiss it either (just yet).

As I said, time will tell for sure.

It's generally known as lag compensation which involves things like client side prediction. Have a look at how the Source engine handles it: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Lag_compensation

This is specifically for multiplayer games and involves a number of settings - most notably server "tick" rate, referring to how often the server updates each client. The higher the tick rate, the more updates the server sends and receives from the clients, resulting in a much more accurate game. Low server tick rates are exactly why you would experience a lot of "that's BS I was behind cover" types of moments.

What this service is doing has nothing to do with any of that. In this case, you are clicking your mouse and sending that input to the server, having the server render the game for you, and then receiving the result of the click on your screen.
 
There is a world of difference between “good enough” video quality and playing a fast paced online game with a lot of lag. You can’t compare video streaming and game streaming.

No, You can't compare video streaming and game streaming as a competent gamer, no different to an audio/videophile. There are many that don't notice or care about any perceived lag and would happily hand over money for such a service if the entry fee is low enough without the constant need for hardware upgrades.

Gaming is the experience. You can substitute image quality and nobody would care but latency effects game play. You can't just take DVD quality Netflix and compare that to input lag. Also nobody gets access to all the movies, since companies have been pulling out of Netflix and making their own service. That's why I think piracy is going to get a lot more popular.

Of coarse the two are comparable. As an experience, we all know Google's offering isn't as good as gaming on an actual gaming PC as fairly hardcore gamers, just like the audio/videophile in relation to streaming services - Yet services like Netflix still rake in the cash, as there's a vast majority of people out there that simply don't know or care.
 
It's generally known as lag compensation which involves things like client side prediction. Have a look at how the Source engine handles it: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Lag_compensation

This is specifically for multiplayer games and involves a number of settings - most notably server "tick" rate, referring to how often the server updates each client. The higher the tick rate, the more updates the server sends and receives from the clients, resulting in a much more accurate game. Low server tick rates are exactly why you would experience a lot of "that's BS I was behind cover" types of moments.

What this service is doing has nothing to do with any of that. In this case, you are clicking your mouse and sending that input to the server, having the server render the game for you, and then receiving the result of the click on your screen.

However, latency still exists, is measurable and most definitely noticeable in the case of any client > server configuration.
 
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