OnLive Builds Console-Quality Gaming Into LG Google TVs, No Console Required

[Binge]

sigh in virtualization you don't stream the content.

steaming = downloading incrments and only storing the few seconds of video around what's played.

that is not how virtualization works and until all of you start researching how it does I'm not going to waste my time.

I will say that we employ 1600 people and their home net speeds average 1.5mbps. (tthis varies widely as they pay for their own connection) there is no lag. videos vary from introduction videos at 720p to "ask for help" videos at 640x480 that are designed to be run next to content.


edit:

http://blogs.citrix.com/2010/05/20/how-much-bandwidth-do-i-need-for-my-virtual-desktop/

that's 2 years old, current ones can use more or less depending on server configuration.

hmm link seems to be not working, try this one
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...1IGgBg&usg=AFQjCNFy0uTsufj0sZkKi-snZFRa-T9lFg

I've been actually running and running on these servers in my day-to-day job. Guess what? I currently work for a large government body. Do you know how hard we stress the BIG servers with our bandwidth? Packet-size will become enormous vs current multi-player game use, and the challenge of how to handle players with increased latency further exasperates the complications of online play.

I don't understand how you can honestly say that your 720p video is actually 720p. Please provide your magical low bandwidth 720p video that ACTUALLY REPRESENTS all 720p rendered pixels in the game. I would loves to see as I can not believes!

This enormous impact to our already lacking infrastructure will cause more issues with the ISPs and down-times forcing the infrastructure to expand to compensate or this company to fold under the pressure of losing subscribers to XBox.

 

[Deadlyraver]

Man, I hope consoles fade away, they have held us PC gamers back for too long.

 

[EpicShweetness]

I know bandwidth is always an issue with VM's but that is the limitation more of the TCP/IP protocol (IPV4) then anything. I'm not gonna get into it to much but the way is handles packets, and the way that packets pile with streaming high definition content (Oh boy there are alot! Our VM's at work just doing a 2D desktop will generate 2 million packets a min.) you need bandwidth to over come it, I wonder if the extra bits of IPV6 can help . . .. hmmmm.

 

[Xzibit]

I know bandwidth is always an issue with VM's but that is the limitation more of the TCP/IP protocol (IPV4) then anything. I'm not gonna get into it to much but the way is handles packets, and the way that packets pile with streaming high definition content (Oh boy there are alot! Our VM's at work just doing a 2D desktop will generate 2 million packets a min.) you need bandwidth to over come it, I wonder if the extra bits of IPV6 can help . . .. hmmmm.

Hope this helps


Comparative Study of Ipv4 vs. Ipv6 Network performance in Windows 7
Aaron Thomas is a MS candidate in computer science at California State University Chico, CA

V. Conclusion As expected, throughput for IPv6 was slightly lower than that of IPv4, due to the increased header size. When considering small packet sizes this difference could be significant, but when considering average packet sizes and rates the difference was relatively insignificant. When considering most circumstances that might maximize the throughput of a link, packet payloads will generally tend to be larger minimizing the effect of the header size increase over the total amount of transferred data. Regardless, special consideration should be taken when calculating maximum potential network capacities, especially with regards to smaller packet, sizes when using Ipv6. All other test results showed no significant statistical difference between IPv4 and IPv6 on the Windows 7 platform. Delay and Jitter remained within statistically indistinguishable values over all tested payload sizes. Neither IPv4 nor IPv6 were favored at any payload range. These results conclude that there is little difference between IPv4 and IPv6 performance when considering Windows 7 in a common switched environment. IPv6 appears to be quite capable of performing at the same levels as IPv4 and these tests show that in a simplified environment IPv6 is unlikely to cause any performance issues or significant differences in network traffic.

 

[remixedcat]

controller latency will be mushy compared to a hard wired desktop... the bet is that they will not be so mushy as to be unplayable. It all depends on your connection - the bandwith needed is not much, but if someone starts uploading some massive file in the other room to skybox, you better believe that your game experience will change very quickly LOL.

Also, I have used onlive, and all I have to say is that the graphics quality is really crap. Played some assassins creed on it and it was no good .

use QoS or other shaping features of your router and that will solve that.

 

[yogurt_21]

I've been actually running and running on these servers in my day-to-day job. Guess what? I currently work for a large government body. Do you know how hard we stress the BIG servers with our bandwidth? Packet-size will become enormous vs current multi-player game use, and the challenge of how to handle players with increased latency further exasperates the complications of online play.

I don't understand how you can honestly say that your 720p video is actually 720p. Please provide your magical low bandwidth 720p video that ACTUALLY REPRESENTS all 720p rendered pixels in the game. I would loves to see as I can not believes!

This enormous impact to our already lacking infrastructure will cause more issues with the ISPs and down-times forcing the infrastructure to expand to compensate or this company to fold under the pressure of losing subscribers to XBox.

way to try to use big boy words and then fail to actually back it up.

how is it going to increase the latency in-game? the server is virtual, the desktop is virtual, all exist on a local network. the only bandwidth you have to worry about is to the end user from the virtual desktop. You comepletly ignored the xendesktop bandwidth utilization link, those numbers aren't made up.
The high def wmv files typically range in the 5-50GB range so sure playback on that uses quite a bit, but otherwise its nowhere near enough to tax a 1.5Mbps connection. You're sending pixels, not files. Yes moving picture trumps static, but the bandwidth per user is still low.

On a server with tons of vm's? sure the hosting site needs the proper backbone, other than that the users are fine. Also 720p = 720p not sure where your hangup on that is. An instructional video with the resolution of 1280x720 at 30 fps on a web based educational LMS that is surrounded by graphics, tranparencies, and transitions. All qc'd over virtual desktops because the virtual is local to the content and it uses less bandwidth than qc'ing it directly from the website where the files have to be streamed/downloaded onto a local desktop.

we ship media appliances that host the content locally to the schools that use our product to avoid the bandwidth issue.

seriously think about it, what uses more bandwidth, downloading the content directly or accessing it over a vm? If the answer was the former, why would we use vm's? it's not like desktops/laptops, etc can't be imaged.

 

[nt300]

I see this taking off in about 5 years time once all issues are resolved.

 

[kid41212003]

Google optic internet service + OnLive = big win.

 

[RejZoR]

Some have a very weak understanding of video streaming here. Streaming for video (which OnLive essentially is just that) requires to stream full data at the realtime point in the game. There is no "send just unchanged parts". Thats the job of the video encoder, but you still need to get the full image to the end client. If it's 720p or 1080p, you need nearly lossless quality in order to get nice sharp image, otherwise you'd get a blurry mess. Imagine like comparing regular XviD DVDrip with a 1080p from a BluRay. Or a very low bitrate 1080p video. It won't look good despite the resolution.

BluRay can have up to 54Mbit datarate. Not exactly something every household can take just for games. Maybe in major cities with FTTH but in general, large populations are still on copper wires...

And not to mention nasty input reply lag. You need to use a very low delay video encoder in order to compensate commands response time. When you press "Left" button, your command has to go to the OnLive server, their it is received and moves you left in the game. Video capture of that action is then encoded and streamed back to you. If latency between you and the server is up to 100ms, that means you get automatic 200ms delay in both directions without even encoding any video. Add video encoding latency and things start to look pretty bad. And even if latencies are dumbed down, they may still be annoying to those who are used to instant response on local machines.

 

[vawrvawerawe]

Some have a very weak understanding of video streaming here. Streaming for video (which OnLive essentially is just that) requires to stream full data at the realtime point in the game. There is no "send just unchanged parts". Thats the job of the video encoder, but you still need to get the full image to the end client. If it's 720p or 1080p, you need nearly lossless quality in order to get nice sharp image, otherwise you'd get a blurry mess. Imagine like comparing regular XviD DVDrip with a 1080p from a BluRay. Or a very low bitrate 1080p video. It won't look good despite the resolution.

BluRay can have up to 54Mbit datarate. Not exactly something every household can take just for games. Maybe in major cities with FTTH but in general, large populations are still on copper wires...

And not to mention nasty input reply lag. You need to use a very low delay video encoder in order to compensate commands response time. When you press "Left" button, your command has to go to the OnLive server, their it is received and moves you left in the game. Video capture of that action is then encoded and streamed back to you. If latency between you and the server is up to 100ms, that means you get automatic 200ms delay in both directions without even encoding any video. Add video encoding latency and things start to look pretty bad. And even if latencies are dumbed down, they may still be annoying to those who are used to instant response on local machines.

Depends on who's doing the compressing. I've downloaded 1080p movies in under 300mb and look just about as good as 25GB blueray. However, rates that good are extremely rare because it takes serious skill. But more common is 1080p at 700mb that looks as good as 25gb bluray. However, most uploaders do 700mb and it looks half as good quality as a 25gb bluray disc, but still that's pretty good considering the size decrease.

So in essence, it really just depends on who (or what software) is doing the compressing.

 

[Xzibit]

Depends on who's doing the compressing. I've downloaded 1080p movies in under 300mb and look just about as good as 25GB blueray. However, rates that good are extremely rare because it takes serious skill. But more common is 1080p at 700mb that looks as good as 25gb bluray. However, most uploaders do 700mb and it looks half as good quality as a 25gb bluray disc, but still that's pretty good considering the size decrease.

So in essence, it really just depends on who (or what software) is doing the compressing.

Not a good comparison because they do lots of things to cut data/quality of it by lowering original FPS of the movie and decrease original frame size and also sound from 7.1 or 5.1 to a stereo MP3/AAC along with quality.

Just the image quality the video bitrate quality goes from ten thousand to a few hundred.

Similar issue when your watching SD signal tv on a 1080p/720p screen once you stretch it to fill the screen the missing information or lack there of visualy is very noticable.

 

[vawrvawerawe]

Not a good comparison because they do lots of things to cut data/quality of it by lowering original FPS of the movie and decrease original frame size and also sound from 7.1 or 5.1 to a stereo MP3/AAC along with quality.

Just the image quality the video bitrate quality goes from ten thousand to a few hundred.

Similar issue when your watching SD signal tv on a 1080p/720p screen once you stretch it to fill the screen the missing information or lack there of visualy is very noticable.

Yea I guess you're right