cybereality
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2008
- Messages
- 8,789
Went in with low expectations (due to bad reviews) but the experience is actually pretty good.
GRID looks and plays awesome!
First I tried GRID and honestly I was blown away. I'm using a 4K HDR TV and the graphics looked great. From a seated distance, it looks like true 4K. Looking close up I would guess the UI is rendered at 4K and the game is around 1800P, which still looks nice. Framerate was fast, 60 fps, and latency seemed reasonable. Not PC native, but maybe 2 or 3 frames of added lag (which at 60Hz is not much). Game was very playable. Only issue I found was that on one level with 10 cars on screen and rain, there was some slowdown (looks like maybe a drop to 30fps) and audio stutter. Still was playable but of course not ideal.
Tomb Raider, also very nice.
Next I tried Tomb Raider. Still looks like 60fps but not quite as smooth as GRID. I noticed the render looks like around 1600P (just eye-balling it) and the graphics settings were lower than you would find on a PC maxed out. But it still looked good enough and was entirely playable. One glitch I found was during the opening cut-scene the audio was off by maybe a quarter second, which made the lip-sync look bad. But once in the game I did not see any issues.
Metro was almost there but not quite.
Finally I tested Metro Exodus. First off, the graphics in this game looked the best out of anything. Still not the sharpest 4K image I've seen, but possibly 1800P or around there. Definitely it looks way better than 1080p and did not look compressed or anything. However, the latency was a problem. The first level was near unplayable because of the lag. I did stick with it, and the later stages seemed to be improvement, not sure why. Even so, it was hard to aim and sometimes you would miss a button press (when opening doors or climbing) because of the split second of lag. It is about 90% there, I have hope maybe it can be fixed seeing as the other 2 games I tried were fine. But maybe there are higher requirements for a shooter game.
Overall I would say that Stadia is good and shows promise and it's very possible for Google to fix the few glitches in an update. Granted I understand latency will not be 100% overcome, but they are so close I think it is possible. Graphics looked good. Well not PC maxed out, but certainly as good or maybe better than console systems. The controller felt nice and was responsive. Rumble worked. Load times were generally fast. Decent selection of games for a launch. I'll say I'm impressed it works as good as it does, and was much much better than I expected after lackluster reviews. It still needs a little work to be perfect, but I think Google can totally keep at it and fix the issues in the future.
All things considered, I couldn't really recommend the service for the $130 entry fee, when you can get a PS4 bundle for like $200 on Black Friday. Google will need to ease the requirements, allow people to use their own browser or phone or any controller and still connect. I think that's where we are heading, so maybe think of this as a soft launch. But I wouldn't write them off yet. I think it's totally possible for Stadia to deliver here provided Google doesn't give up. Just my 2 cents.
GRID looks and plays awesome!
First I tried GRID and honestly I was blown away. I'm using a 4K HDR TV and the graphics looked great. From a seated distance, it looks like true 4K. Looking close up I would guess the UI is rendered at 4K and the game is around 1800P, which still looks nice. Framerate was fast, 60 fps, and latency seemed reasonable. Not PC native, but maybe 2 or 3 frames of added lag (which at 60Hz is not much). Game was very playable. Only issue I found was that on one level with 10 cars on screen and rain, there was some slowdown (looks like maybe a drop to 30fps) and audio stutter. Still was playable but of course not ideal.
Tomb Raider, also very nice.
Next I tried Tomb Raider. Still looks like 60fps but not quite as smooth as GRID. I noticed the render looks like around 1600P (just eye-balling it) and the graphics settings were lower than you would find on a PC maxed out. But it still looked good enough and was entirely playable. One glitch I found was during the opening cut-scene the audio was off by maybe a quarter second, which made the lip-sync look bad. But once in the game I did not see any issues.
Metro was almost there but not quite.
Finally I tested Metro Exodus. First off, the graphics in this game looked the best out of anything. Still not the sharpest 4K image I've seen, but possibly 1800P or around there. Definitely it looks way better than 1080p and did not look compressed or anything. However, the latency was a problem. The first level was near unplayable because of the lag. I did stick with it, and the later stages seemed to be improvement, not sure why. Even so, it was hard to aim and sometimes you would miss a button press (when opening doors or climbing) because of the split second of lag. It is about 90% there, I have hope maybe it can be fixed seeing as the other 2 games I tried were fine. But maybe there are higher requirements for a shooter game.
Overall I would say that Stadia is good and shows promise and it's very possible for Google to fix the few glitches in an update. Granted I understand latency will not be 100% overcome, but they are so close I think it is possible. Graphics looked good. Well not PC maxed out, but certainly as good or maybe better than console systems. The controller felt nice and was responsive. Rumble worked. Load times were generally fast. Decent selection of games for a launch. I'll say I'm impressed it works as good as it does, and was much much better than I expected after lackluster reviews. It still needs a little work to be perfect, but I think Google can totally keep at it and fix the issues in the future.
All things considered, I couldn't really recommend the service for the $130 entry fee, when you can get a PS4 bundle for like $200 on Black Friday. Google will need to ease the requirements, allow people to use their own browser or phone or any controller and still connect. I think that's where we are heading, so maybe think of this as a soft launch. But I wouldn't write them off yet. I think it's totally possible for Stadia to deliver here provided Google doesn't give up. Just my 2 cents.