Onlive - Games on demand

Discussion in 'Gaming Hangout' started by a240, Mar 25, 2009.

  1. a240

    a240 Member

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    I thought I'd post it here for everyone that hasn't heard about it.

    I don't really feel like explaining the whole thing so here's the basic idea: Onlive is a service that allows you to play games on low end pcs and macs and tv by using bandwidth to stream the video of you playing your game miles away. On pcs and macs you will use a small plug for your browser and for tvs there's a micro consel that does the samething.

    It sounds pretty amazing to me if it works. But I'll be upset if other people can play crysis on their crapy laptops after I've spent a few thousand dollars on mine.

    Here's some good info on them:
    GameSpot Event Series :: On the Spot
    Here's their site:
    OnLive: The Future of Video Games

    Sorry about not posting for a while.

    Staff edit - merged from Cardo's post

    Imagine playing a computer game without any hassles. Drivers, troubleshooting, installations, compatibility, performance--all thrown out the window. Upgrading? A thing of the past. All you have to do is click on the game, and seconds later, you're playing. That's what OnLive will deliver. Should it work half as well as advertised, expect to see the gaming world thrown into upheaval by a box no bigger than a deck of playing cards. The story gets even more unbelievable when you factor in price. According to company reps, OnLive intends to significantly undercut every existing console on the market.
    At its core, OnLive is a subscription service similar to cable TV or Netflix. In other respects, OnLive is what you get when you pump something like YouTube full of steroids. Instead of just watching a pile of videos, you're streaming gameplay at HDTV resolutions and controlling your character in real time. You get Crysis on your HDTV at the highest-quality settings--run by a computer that's hundreds of miles from your doorstep. It's really no wonder Rearden Labs spent the better part of a decade perfecting and designing OnLive.


    [​IMG]
    Hardware


    Whenever a console comes out, we tend to dig in to all the gritty details--pixels pushed, mips mopped, and so forth. Sony has volumes written about its Cell processor, just like Microsoft and its tri-core CPU, not to mention their associated GPUs. By contrast, the humble little OnLive MicroConsole comes with practically nothing--just two USB connectors, a network jack, some AV outs, and some random bits and bobs stuffed in there. To make things even stranger, OnLive will run on just about any PC or Mac through a Web browser plug-in without the MicroConsole. Install the OnLive program and you're done. Even the lowly netbooks will run the newest games with high-quality details and excellent frame rates.
    [​IMG]
    All the magic happens elsewhere, and the hardware sitting in those rooms is considerably more powerful than anything the current consoles offer. Gaming PCs in far-off server rooms sit filled to the brim with SLI setups, quad-core CPUs, gobs of RAM, and ridiculous RAID arrays to make load times a thing of the past.
     
  2. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    Well of course because you spent a few thousand dollars on the laptop or PC just to play Crysis. jkjk, don't worry I still wouldn't be able to play it. My graphics card is HORRIBLE.:'(

    The Laptop is great except for that minor detail.
     
  3. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    Merged yours and Cardo’s post as you both posted the same thing, just different information on it.

    Very interesting, ive signed up for the beta :)

    It reminds me of Steam My Game so it’s quite possible it should work well:
    Stream any PC game to your PS3 with no lag

    Nice post!
     
  4. Safinn

    Safinn Addict

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    Interesting. I also signed up for the BETA. Great find.

    So it lies when it says no need to upgrade because if you graphics card is not good you still cant play?
     
  5. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    I could only assume so. Its almost like their saying that its possible to play PS2 games with an Atari, seeing how everyone knows that not possible i'd say the same principle goes here.
     
  6. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    Nope, ever the rubbish Intel integrated graphics cards can playback 720p video. Think of it as like a remote desktop connection but for playing games, all the rendering is done on the powerful server then the end result is displayed on the client pc which doesn’t require much graphical / processing power at all. The client pc is not rendering anything, it’s basically just streaming an interactive video.
     
  7. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    That would be pretty sweet. I wouldn't need to get a graphics chip (if its even possible for a laptop) It would save me some space on my small 250GB Hard drive. Although, I wonder what the cost would be?
     
  8. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    I would hope it’s quite cheap as you don’t really own the game your playing but the costs of their servers and bandwidth must be a lot, guess we will find out later this year as it should be out then! :)
     
  9. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    I hope they'll have a bit of a variety of different Consoles. Maybe able to play some Gamecube games. I'd love to play Resident Evil 4 again (I let my cousin borrow RE4 and he "lost it".:-@) I'd rather play Resident Evil 4 over again then play Resident Evil 5. I doubt that they'd do this but it would be cool.

    Something I just remembered, this may not work for some people. That is if your internet plan has a download limiter. I know someone that has a 60GB download limit a month. Wouldn't streaming technically be constant downloading?
     
  10. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    Streaming would count towards downloading, anything you do on the internet will count towards your monthly limit unless otherwise specified by your isp.

    Some ISP’s here slow your connection down if you transfer so much data during peak times, another possible downside of this is your connection could be slowd down so its too slow to use a service like this in peak times.
     
  11. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    I don't have a download limit thankfully, but My internet is around 2.7MB/s. I think that should be fast enough...or hope.
     
  12. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    If that’s not fast enough I don’t know what will be!

    I watched some of the video posted about it in the first post and you will need around a 5mbit connection to steam 720p games I believe.
     
  13. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    *Sigh* It doesn't help that my ISP are jackasses. When I ordered it they said it would be around 3.0MB/s which is around what I was getting for a bit. Then a couple months later when I tried to host TF2 on my 360 I could only host 8 people instead of 10 to 12. I was only getting about 870KB/s. So I called them up and they said that my 360 was the problem and to do some tech support things it would cost $50USD. So I said f**k you to him because I knew he was lying about it. Then I called the next day and the person I talked to asked some questions and did some things and he said check your internet now, then I was getting 2.7MB/s again. So crisis averted and I saved $50...I just hope it doesn't happen again.
     
  14. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    If your isp is anything like mine your upload speed will be nothing compared to your download speed.

    I can download at 2MB/s (Around 20,000kb) and upload at 90KB, as you can tell there’s a massive difference between the download and upload speed. When hosting games it’s the upload speed that matters.
     
  15. Dark Scyth

    Dark Scyth Moderator

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    Yeah I know but when my DL speed is only 840KB/s instead of around 3MB/s there's definitely a problem.
     
  16. Trebor

    Trebor Dolphin Fan

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    There would be if you were going to use this OnLive service. I'm not sold on the idea of this yet. Maybe when it's out of Beta and people review the service and they have a proper price plan in place etc.
     
  17. Titcher

    Titcher Addict

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    My opinion is that this onlive service is not technically feasible. First of all these servers are going to need some beefy graphics cards to be rendering several games at 30FPS. And second of all they're going to need HUGE amounts of bandwidth to get a customer base. A system like this would have to charge a high premium on a per hour basis, with some rough calculations, it woudl use up over 2GB per hour of gaming based on the 5 megabit figure. That 2GB per hour is based on one customer, lets say they have 100 customers an hour at peak times, that's 200GB per HOUR, that's more than some hosting companies will give you a month. With this sort of bandwidth costs would just be too extreme, the customer would having to be paying loads, and if they're paying loads, they may as well buy a new computer.
     
  18. Icharus_Falling

    Icharus_Falling Resident

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    i imagine something like this would (in the US) be around $50 per month for maximum graphics capability. they will more than likely offer $30 and $40 plans as well that offer less (and use significantly less) bandwidth. they will probably also charge you a one-time fee per game you play, on top of the monthly fee. thats just my opinion of how the service plans will play out.

    if theyre smart, theyll probably team up with some of the big broadband internet companies, and offer it as an add-on to your existing internet account, and then they use the ISP's bandwidth, and dont even have to buy servers or worry about bandwidth production, they simply watch their bank account grow.

    if any scouts from this OnLive thing are searching forums to see what people are saying about your product, and they read this, i want royalties on my idea. =P
     
  19. xzKinGzxBuRnzx

    xzKinGzxBuRnzx The Feature Man

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  20. Titcher

    Titcher Addict

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    This is where they find out they can't feasibly afford to provide the service.
     

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