Quote :

" March 23, 2009 - Before I dive into what OnLive is and how it works, let me start by saying that you should read every word of this article as this service has the potential to completely change the way games are played. If it works and gets proper support from both publishers and gamers, you may never need a high-end PC to play the latest games, or perhaps even ever buy a console again. That is not an exaggeration. Just announced at this year's GDC, OnLive is an on-demand gaming service. It's essentially the gaming version of cloud computing - everything is computed, rendered and housed online. In its simplest description, your controller inputs are uploaded, a high-end server takes your inputs and plays the game, and then a video stream of the output is sent back to your computer. Think of it as something like Youtube or Hulu for games. The service works with pretty much any Windows or Mac machine as a small browser plug-in. Optionally, you will also be able to purchase a small device, called the OnLive MicroConsole, that you can hook directly into your TV via HDMI, though if your computer supports video output to your TV, you can just do it that way instead. Of course, you can also just play on your computer's display if you don't want to pipe it out to your living room set. When you load up the service and choose a game to play (I'll come back to the service's out-of-games features in a bit), it starts immediately. The game is housed and played on one of OnLive's servers, so there's never anything to download. Using an appropriate input device, be it a controller or mouse and keyboard, you'll then play the game as you would if it were installed on your local machine. Your inputs are read by the plugin (or the standalone device if you choose to go that route) and uploaded to the server. The server then plays the game just like it would if you were sitting at the machine, except that instead of outputting the video to a display, it gets compressed and streamed to your computer where you can see the action. Rinse and repeat 60 times per second. To make this happen, OnLive has worked diligently to overcome lag issues. The first step in this was creating a video compression algorithm that was as quick as possible. The current solution only introduces one millisecond of lag to encode the video, which alone is completely unnoticeable to you. Obviously, a fast internet connection is required on your end to stream the gameplay video. A 1.5 mbps connection (which is usually what base-level DSL is rated at) is required for standard-definition video (480p), while a 5.0 mbps connection is required for HD (720p). The actual necessary speed is a tad less than advertised, so as long as your provider says you have these speeds, you should be OK. Your user page will show the last games you've played and more. The cool thing here is that your only requirement is a capable internet connection and some sort of computer. In theory, you should be able to play Crysis on a netbook. A handful of us have played the game, at its highest settings, on a MacBook Air with the service. Not only is the game not normally available on the Mac (outside of running Boot Camp), but the MacBook Air is hardly a gaming device, and yet we were able to hop in and play it as smoothly as a nicely-specced machine. We also played Burnout Paradise on a similarly-equipped PC laptop, and despite how quick that game is, it ran and played fine as well. Do the games run at 60fps? Technically, yes, but the video stream makes it feel less so. They're still smooth, but Burnout wasn't as brisk as it is on a PS3, for instance. But make no mistake - everything we tried was completely playable (and most importantly, quite responsive), and being that you're able to play these games without any dedicated hardware, that's a huge, huge thing. As for the MicroConsole itself (which, again, is optional), the device is give or take about the size of a PSP game box and maybe twice the height. In other words, it's pretty tiny for a gaming "console". It features two USB inputs (you can use a hub if you need more), a mini-USB port for power, optical audio output and HDMI video output. There's also Bluetooth support for voice or wireless joysticks, keyboards and mice. Obviously, if you want to use this thing with an older TV, you'll need to pony up for some conversion hardware, but OnLive stresses that the MicroConsole itself will be fairly cheap. We'd expect it to be no more than $100, and a $50 price tag is certainly not out of the question. With regards to the service itself, OnLive will work as a paid subscription service, similar to Xbox Live. OnLive isn't talking about pricing yet, which probably isn't even finalized internally yet, so we'll have to wait and see how that pans out. Once you're online, you'll have access to a Friends list, an online profile where other people can see what you're up to, your tied account stuff (which houses your save games and things like that), and Brag Clips. Brag Clips are 10-second videos of your favorite gaming moments, and the system works sort of like an instant replay on a DVR. Regardless of what game you're playing, you can hit the Brag Clip shortcut and OnLive will then save the last 10 seconds of your action for viewing and sharing later. Other folks can view your clips, and you can send them out to your friends to, well, brag. The games chooser will show you live video of other people playing. As for the games themselves, while it will vary by title and publisher, you'll have a number of ways in which to purchase them. You can outright pay for a game and own it indefinitely, or you could opt to rent a title for a specified amount of time. This last bit is especially cool for PC titles as that sort of market simply doesn't exist as piracy would run rampant. But since everything is housed online, OnLive won't be subject to piracy, so game rentals can easily take place. Again, that'll be up to publishers on a per-title basic, but the possibility is certainly cool. And of course, most games will have a demo available for play, which like everything else, launches instantly with zero downloading. OnLive is hoping that even if hardcore gamers stick with buying games as per usual and playing content locally on their own high-end rigs that its service will be a great place for trying out demos as you won't have to take time to download anything. The MicroConsole is small, but thanks to the servers, ultimately powerful. A number of publishers have already signed on to have their games launch on the service, including EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic, Atari, Codemasters, Warner Bros. and Eidos. While we were able to play Crysis and Burnout Paradise and noted games like Grand Theft Auto IV on the intro screen, these titles may only be demo software for the time being as OnLive plans to launch with newly-released software when it goes live. We're hoping Crysis sticks around as some of us will finally be able to play it. As for the launch timeframe, OnLive is going to have an open (though invitational) beta sometime during the summer, and plans to fully launch the system late this year (technically winter 2009). "

I don't know about this. I'm not sure how convinced I am that there will be no lag. Going from my controller to the box to the server then back just doesn't seem like it would be nearly as fast as a traditional console. I don't like it that you have to be connected to the internet for it to work either. If implemented correctly though, it could make gaming a hell of a lot cheaper.


http://pc.ign.com/articles/965/965535p1.html

3/24/2009 10:59:42 AM

Quote :

"I'm not sure how convinced I am that there will be no lag."

first thing i thought too

i'll believe it when i see it, but lagwise, it seems like it'd be playing a rhythm game on an older uncalibrated HDTV

3/24/2009 11:07:25 AM

I dont see how this would work, or at least any different than steam works now. Mass lag, for a game like crysis. Ok so you arnt doing any of the physics on the computer, but you still have to render graphics locally, and still would need some local space. Short of a pure gigabit connection, i dont see how this would work yet.

3/24/2009 9:51:09 PM

this is just outputting a video stream, if your pc/connection can stream HD video (or even SD) you could use this. no graphics rendering on the client PC, just video rendering

definitely not sure how this works with the lag on the controller end either

[Edited on March 24, 2009 at 9:53 PM. Reason : .]

3/24/2009 9:53:16 PM

If they can handle the lag issue, this could be the coolest thing ever.

3/25/2009 1:39:40 AM

sounds like a move to

1) get money for subscription fees in order to provide revenue streams when people aren't buying new games

and

2) cut down on money lost through resellers like GameStop

3/25/2009 1:43:39 AM

Cool idea and will happen eventually, almost certainly for non-gaming software as well, but to be able to implement this without bad lag seems a bit beyond our current technology/the average gamer's net connection.

3/25/2009 1:45:22 AM

surprised this didnt happen sooner considering with the exception of nintendo companies lose crazy $$ on consoles.

3/25/2009 1:48:52 AM

This is just the gaming version of centralized computing. Across the board it is being moved to and touted as this great new thing (e.g. Google Docs, etc).

However, this is nothing more than a recast of the old "mainframe / workstation" model where there is a centralized computer doing all of the work and workstations get "timeshares" of work from it.

I guess it makes sense that it is coming back - network seek time will soon be less than residential hard drive seek time (obviously the server being seeked will need a really fast drive for this to work).

3/25/2009 6:06:23 AM

there are local versions of software like this that allow you to remotely play computer games on your PS3/360

or hell, i guess playing Lair on the PS3 from a PSP could be the same thing too

3/25/2009 8:02:47 AM

http://www.steampowered.com

3/25/2009 8:10:04 AM

Theres no possible way to handle the input lag. This is vaporware like the phantom.

3/25/2009 9:30:50 AM

anything that anyone declares to be "the future of ____" is destined to never become the future of anything

3/25/2009 9:37:11 AM

I mean, something like this will eventually be the future of gaming, but not anytime soon. Besides the technical limitations, the resistance from retailers, hardware makers, and the industry in general will be immense.

3/25/2009 9:45:47 AM

Everyone claiming that it is just like Steam, did you even read the article?

3/25/2009 9:56:01 AM

Yeah, this is nothing like Steam. The whole problem with this thing is that's it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist right now.

Gaming hardware is relatively inexpensive. Especially if you're a console gamer, you spend $200-$400 once every 6 years or so and you're set. Hell, the TVs/monitors and sound systems required to get the most out of current gen games is way more expensive than the actual computing hardware, and that won't change one bit with this. Yeah, there are some exceptions (Crysis fully maxed out), but those are few and far between.

Again, until the entire industry moves to a "clustered computing" system and starts pumping out games that require computing power way out of the range of the average consumers wallet size, there is just no need for something like this. It introduces way more problems than it solves.

3/25/2009 10:09:44 AM

I'LL DO IT LIVE.

FUCKIN' THING SUCKS.

3/25/2009 1:11:34 PM

I like the idea of this. Looks great in fact. Fantastic really. But the console has two advantages that can't be reckoned with by this technology, in terms of you playing your game, which are a) no threat to game servers being down to keep you from playing your game at all b) no threat to game internet being down to keep you from playing your game at all. Basically no servers or internet there is nothing that you could get out of this box from OnLive, as with the 360 you still could play something. In addition to this, you can't get physical media with this box, that means you buy it or rent,and that's it, no trade-in value, so resale value, no anything.

However the biggest plus of OnLive is that its very mobile - you are not confined to a TV or a computer.

If there was no subscription service involved and you could buy games at a reasonable cost I'd love to try it out. I can't see it killing anything with physical media. In fact this could be a huge failure in the making.

See this video to get a better idea of what it is http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324&tag=topslot;thumb;4

Basically you are playing the game on their servers, and they are streaming you a video of you playing the game at about a 1 millisecond delay with very sophisticated dynamic compression technology.

[Edited on March 25, 2009 at 10:51 PM. Reason : /]

3/25/2009 10:48:33 PM

Quote :

"Gaming hardware is relatively inexpensive. Especially if you're a console PC gamer, you spend $200-$400 $1000 once every 62 years or so and you're set."

3/26/2009 5:54:00 AM

3/27/2009 4:57:28 PM

I'm sure it's been said already in this thread, but OnLive has to be COMPLETE BULLSHIT. There is no way that they could possibly encode the video in real time and stream it to the user at 720p unless they have invented a codec that is a thousand times better than anything in the universe. Srsly.

3/27/2009 6:08:19 PM

The future of gaming... in about 20 years.

3/27/2009 6:53:17 PM

yea i agree with everyone else, prob will get there in some way but right now the network technology isnt reliable enough

3/30/2009 2:26:13 PM

[Edited on March 30, 2009 at 2:39 PM. Reason : Phantoms like a mofo]

3/30/2009 2:38:28 PM

Quote :

"I'm sure it's been said already in this thread, but OnLive has to be COMPLETE BULLSHIT. There is no way that they could possibly encode the video in real time and stream it to the user at 720p unless they have invented a codec that is a thousand times better than anything in the universe. Srsly."

When was the last time you encoded video? My meager 2.66ghz core 2 quad can encode to DVD quality video at about 300FPS using ffmpeg.

With a moderately optimized encoder, handling a game at standard settings AND encoding to 720p60 for streaming isn't a stretch really.

3/30/2009 2:44:31 PM

vidyas:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kHtRmluYC7s/RlZg15gbAsI/AAAAAAAAAD0/QlcjNah3VTY/s400/towelie.gif
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/25/video-onlive-streaming-game-demonstrated/

3/30/2009 5:49:56 PM