Google Stadia

Bambooza · Sep 23, 2019

Blind Owl said:
What's the actual deal with this system? If I PC game, this is redundant, right? At least until all gaming has gone to cloud based, correct. This system is for those who don't have a PS4/5, XBOX ONE/SCARLETT, or a high end gaming rig? Or is it literally the future?

Thoughts?

Its googles attempt to cash in on the large entertainment marketplace by leveraging their huge data centers along with Amazon AWS (notably Lumberyard), Microsoft xCloud, and PlayStation Now.

The main advantage is that you no longer have to buy expensive hardware like a PC, Xbox or Playstation to play games and instead can purchase a small device like Amazons FireTV or Apples Apple TV at sub 100 dollars. The other advantage is that games can become a subscription service and so you don't have to buy the games instead you pay for an account to play.

OnLive attempted the rent/demo/buy model with cloud gaming and like all cloud base gaming, latency will always be its downfall. Where we complain about being shot behind cover it becomes even worse when there is a 100ms input lag on top of the world update lag.
But Google like the others are gambling that the input lag will not be such a downside when compared to a small 50(est) dollar hardware purchase plus a 10(est) dollars a month subscription to play games from their tier catalog.

Hybus · Sep 23, 2019

Tried it SanFran last week during a conference, input lag is still a huge problem, even on one of the demo games which was a fairly simple platformer, input lag caused me to drop into a pit several times.

Mich Angel · Sep 23, 2019

What they fail to see is if I need to sub for a bout a 100$ a month to get that, I might as well save that 20 month and I have money to buy a kick ass gaming rig.

But sure if you are on the move a lot and change where you live cause of work related stuff a system like that get you your entertainment where ever you are.

Take it that the network you can access is fast enough to handle it cause that is the only real bottle neck with it..

CHEERS!

Sraika · Sep 23, 2019

it might be great for singleplayer stuff, but i just dont see online games being viable without really good internet
like, really good internet

Bambooza · Sep 23, 2019

Sraika said:
it might be great for singleplayer stuff, but i just dont see online games being viable without really good internet
like, really good internet

Even with really good internet the speed of light, network cable conductance, router processing and server loads will always incur an input latency penalty. And while it is true that some games this will not be noticeable anything that requires fast reflexes and timing will be negatively impacted by it. I can't imagine attempting to play a game like Rock Band or Guitar Hero where the screen from the server is lagging upwards of 50 to 100 ms over the game state and game input is 50 to 100 ms past the screen update. Add on the 200 ms standard reaction speed and we are talking about a 400 ms delay on your actions over the standard 210 ms play on your own system.

maynard · Sep 23, 2019

the rollout of 5g with insane speeds and bandwidth will change the equation

the economics of cloud compute power as a service is obsoleting corporate data centers with current speeds and bandwidth

the tipping point for gaming is approaching

Hybus · Sep 23, 2019

Not necessarily, at the conference I was at, there was a great deal of cloud options, but just as many that specialized in pulling portions of company out of the cloud. People rushed the cloud, and it's great for a lot of stuff, but not everything.

Bambooza · Sep 23, 2019

maynard said:
the rollout of 5g with insane speeds and bandwidth will change the equation

the economics of cloud compute power as a service is obsoleting corporate data centers with current speeds and bandwidth

the tipping point for gaming is approaching

Indeed the economics of cloud computing as economies of scale makes it inticing for a lot of companies to move public system to the cloud. But insane speeds or even slow speeds does not change latency once you've reached upload/download requirements as the word speed used here is a bit of a misnomer as its the amount, not the speed at which the packet information is delivered. All things being equal the 1 Mb DSL and the 1Gb fiber link would send you the 1Kb file at the same speed. The only difference is when you download that 10Gb movie the 1Gb has the potential of transmitting 1Gb packets every second vs 1 Mb packets on the DSL so you end up with the file faster. In regards to cloud gaming, the biggest impact will be the location of the cloud geographically compared to you and how many different network hops the packets take between you and the server.

I was just thinking about the joys of security data on the cloud with hardware-level bypasses like Meltdown and Spectre.

Thugari · Sep 24, 2019

i feel that this will be like the xbox/pc sub from microsoft. i looked at it and realized that i have these games already on steam.

PC Game Pass | Xbox

Play over 100 games with friends on Windows PC with PC Game Pass.

www.xbox.com

Lorddarthvik · Sep 24, 2019

The main concerne, apart from the usual lag as discussed above, is that googles deal, as far as I undestand, is terrible. You pay for a device, you pay for a sub, get some really shitty small games to play for that fee, and you still have to buy the proper games you actually wanna play...*
*this might have changed a bit as I wasn't following along after hearing about this nonsense.

Something that doesn't often come up, but is concerning to me. For those in the US it might not be a problem, but with many online services, like PS Now, being anywhere else than the US can be a problem.
PS Now was available in my country for like a year or 3 even, then they thought they shouldn't bother as not enough ppl wanted to spend the money, and they just pulled the plug here, and blocked us for good. You bought a game through ps now to play on PC? too bad, you are going to spend another 400+ bucks on a PS4, or you lost access...
They are still selling and supporting PS hardware, so it's not like you lost access forever, so you can't sue them for it... you just gotta pay up!

Another issue with these online things is picture quality. It's just shit. You got a fancy 60+ inch 4K 144hz screen to play on? If you play an offline video in 720p that you captured on any old iphone, I bet you a beer it will still look way better then the 4K stream that they can, or rather are willing, to push through.
This is especially problematic in dark themes. As in lots of blacks on the screen, not the other kind. It will look blocky and banding will be obvious. It's just subpar to playing the same thing on a PC you could have saved up for in a couple of months.

tldr.: This may be the future, but not right now. I'd avoid Stadia like the plague.

Jangmo · Sep 24, 2019

How many of you guys have Unlimited Data?

Most ISP's I have used have a 1 TB limit, before they start charging you extra. ( i pay an extra 30$ a month for unlimited, and that sucks)

The amount of time you can play(much less at 4k resolution for a living room tv), and actually use any other item with an internet connection is what instantly killed it for me.

NaffNaffBobFace · Sep 27, 2019

I hope this takes off so the bullshit price of PC components can get a kick in the dick and i can finally afford to build a mean-ass game pc.

Wolfy · Sep 27, 2019

Shadow is better.

Lorddarthvik · Sep 28, 2019

Jangmo said:
How many of you guys have Unlimited Data?

Most ISP's I have used have a 1 TB limit, before they start charging you extra. ( i pay an extra 30$ a month for unlimited, and that sucks)

The amount of time you can play(much less at 4k resolution for a living room tv), and actually use any other item with an internet connection is what instantly killed it for me.

Very good point about the data limits! I always forget that those still exist outside of mobile data, and it always surprises me that more "advanced" countries have data limits with exorbitant prices.
I had unlimited data at home since like 2002 I think? 15+ years, thats for sure. I've been paying about 10bucks/month for 150/20mbit cable net for the last couple of years, and could switch to 1Gbit for the same price, but I have no need for it and I don't trust that providers reliability.
Anyways, data limits are a huge issue for sure, streaming high enough framerate and resolution will eat up your plan pretty damn quick.

Jangmo · Sep 28, 2019

Lorddarthvik said:
Very good point about the data limits! I always forget that those still exist outside of mobile data, and it always surprises me that more "advanced" countries have data limits with exorbitant prices.
I had unlimited data at home since like 2002 I think? 15+ years, thats for sure. I've been paying about 10bucks/month for 150/20mbit cable net for the last couple of years, and could switch to 1Gbit for the same price, but I have no need for it and I don't trust that providers reliability.
Anyways, data limits are a huge issue for sure, streaming high enough framerate and resolution will eat up your plan pretty damn quick.

Wow those are some really good prices/speeds! Im apple jelly right now

atpbx · Sep 28, 2019

Its D.O.A i wouldn't give it a second thought.

wmk · Oct 9, 2019

Sorry for late reply, Owl, I wanted to tell you about this, then I forgot to do that... ---- I've been testing GeForce NOW /Nvidia's cloud gaming service/ for more than a year now. My wife completed The Witcher III GOTY and Ghost Recon Wildlands on it, we have been both playing The Division 1 and 2 on it as well. As a matter of fact, GeForce NOW virtual PC was the primary gaming rig used by my wife.

We have a stable, unlimited 300Mbps cable connection at home, we have been using rather powerful laptops wired to the router, however while the virtual PC with the experimental Nvidia Tesla GPU /an equivalent to GTX 1080/ was performing very well, giving as 60 fps in all above games, the stability of the server connection wasn't the best. Recently it began degrading even further -- stuttering or resolution drops occurring when our local network wasn't overloaded. Other testers confirmed that, besides I know what's going on in my local network, so I'm pretty sure the problem is on the Nvidia Data Center side, or somewhere between my location and the nearest Data Center.

As a result of this, instead of waiting for Nvidia to go live with the service by the end of the Year, as announced recently, we have just bought... a new gaming rig ; ) RTX 2070S and 9th-gen i7, fast memory and SSD drives; relatively cheap, cool, quiet and fast machine, allowing us to run any modern game at >60 fps at ultra settings /SC at 45-120 fps at 2560x1440p, highest settings.../

I think cloud gaming has potential, but it looks that it's too early for it at this moment; broadband access and powerful virtualized GPU is not enough.

@Blind Owl

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