http://render.otoy.com/newsblog/?p=417
I am thinking can we create a new API like this one and integrate it with UE4 and then deploy games games on PS4, Xbox One , PC etc.? Is this thing possible (hoping GPU vendors and SONY and Microsoft won’t have any problem) ?
No, it’s a cloud rendering system, the hard work of rendering is done on a server, it’s not something that would be used in all games.
Cloud rendering system looks really great, but I think companies and gpu vendors won’t allow this until they have their own cloud server farm. But it looks so realistic!!
I asked in the forums and the guys from Otoy said their demo of brigade was running on 80 amazon cloud GPUs…that’s not viable for us, gamers. lol
The biggest issue is that you would have to have a constant and good internet connection for it to work.
Yea right, where does this trust for ‘cloud’-based techniques come from?
If you are consumer you are forced to pay whatever they choose to charge for you to play. Lets assume graphics cards eventually get dumb again and are merely able to display the stream coming from cloud rendering. The provider of those renderings then is able to just do whatever he likes. Any dispute with the provider will end your ability to play.
Even as producer, you can assume they want to share what you might earn. And same rule, once you are dependend on the tech, they can do as they like, and any dispute doesn’t end well for the smaller partner.
Computing capabilities and graphics power should stay available on our site, in our computers, under our discrete control. Using cloud based techs can help greatly, but should never become mandatory or unavailable on site, for whatever purpose.
This looks to me like very elaborate DRM. Just sayin.
Other things, how much delay there will be between inptut and render ?
I don’t see it working. Not really.
Cloud streaming can work, but it requires a vast network of servers, you have to be close enough to the server or the lag is too much. But it’s probably going to eventually go that direction for games, there’s too many advantages. Though I would be sad when that day comes. One thing I like about games is knowing all the assets are on the machine and being rendered in real time, I’d rather not just watch a video even if I’m controlling it.
That and I do not like always online single player games. I remember when Diablo3 came out, at first I couldn’t login due to not enough login servers, and then I was dropped constantly from my single player game due to bad pings, Brigade sounds worse, instead of being dropped from my game, my screen goes black and I get killed, just because my connection timed out. No thanks.
Cloud streaming will likely never be viable for something like a game. In stuff like MMOs you already have the problems of lag and timing out/logging out and that’s just for Internet. Some render farm taking over hardware rendering for the system will just not work as it will just eat up bandwidth and data like crazy.
While most are still hyped by the VR headsets thingy, I personally believe that cloud rendering is where the future market is because based on that technology route, consoles/devices could be sold on a price range of 20$~100$ (when fiber internet becomes world standard).
Also cloud rendering eliminates the network synchronization requirement of multiplayer games which is going to be a huge factor for future massive multiplayer games. And that leads to truly huge open and persistent world online games;
Not worlds splitted by servers or login regions, real open worlds where everyone is really connected to the same server at the same time.
Some of these games are around the corner to appear, give some 4~8 years and there will be already titles based on that.
Edit: You ppl are misresding this as another Gaikai/OnLive; This is not exactly what it is.
Sending just keyboard/mouse inputs to the cloud server is way cheaper bandwidth than sending sync data across server and than back and forth between clients. The only problem is high ping connections messing with the ‘video’ response, but fiber internet will be a default service in no time.
+1
Default service where exactly?
You bring up a good point about network synchronization, but I feel like it’ll be a good few years before connections are fast enough across the world to eliminate separate server regions.
A pretty nasty example is Vietnam <–> Australia, 600ms in League of legends currently, I get 8ms to the Vietnamese server (but it’s probably a few blocks from where I’m staying).
Less brutal example might be to the US WoW servers, 200ms on a great day from either Aus or Vietnam but I imagine it would be un playable at anywhere near that delay if you were waiting on the visuals.
Even from my old place in Aus to the Oceanic LoL servers is like 50ms, relatively close to the servers (south of Brisbane to either Melbourne or Sydney).
MAYBE it can work in the US (Maybe also Korea/Japan?) in the next few years, but globally I think it’s a while away.
Yes, new technology will ALWAYS focus first on countries where the big money is; I guess this is no news to anyone.
Countries with not enough consumer base will never get to see these services. That doesn’t mean that the product they want to sell have no audience, they have a big very big market to reach; Square-Enix is doing something similar, but they are not trying to replace DirectX, they already have a super-computer and studios are already builting games for it. (Yet another game distribution platform)
Absolutely no surprise.
But it means that this is not possible, or will just be a really bad experience.
And depending on the speeds even inside the US maybe you’d need West Coast/East Coast etc.
There are things about the idea that I like and things I don’t.
Dude, it will be possible. Because clients are not aware of each other. All Clients do is send user input and receive video output.
They are not syncing data like each character’s position on screen, chat, player stats and so on.
No authoritative physics simulation, no client side physics or graphics, no client side code running, etc.
Just keyboard input from Client to Server then Server sends a ‘Snapshot’ from the world back as video frame. 1 player needs to care only about his own internet connection with the server and there will be no lag, other players won’t affect any other player’s connection to the game:
You know that send keyboard input and receive video takes time, no? Just because you receive video and not character position it doesn’t mean there isn’t lag. With the future 4k standard, rendering and sending 4k video to all players will kill any server.
The receiving video part is what I’m worried about.
There’s absolutely some cool possibilities and I’m sure at some point there’s a good chance things might go this way.
The game simulation hardware is separate from the video processing hardware from what I understood from Square-Enix’s presentation.
It’s very different from what we are used to see as MMO servers. It seems that rendering the video is not executed by the server hardware which simulates the game and handles connections.
But yeah, I also think they are not taking into account 4k video for now.
limited 3G internet, laggy cable internet, server blockades, no offline play… not very useful for lot of people, only for those have fiber optics or very hi quality copper wire ADSL connection close to DSLAM center.
You still get delay from sending huge amount of data over internet. No matter how fast internet will be, you can’t beat physics.
And more over speed of transferring data is not really important at this point. What is really important is speed of routing.
Dunno about you but in single player game at best 100ms lag is not acceptable for me.
I only accept it in multiplayer games, because here developers do miracles to compensate for this lag, to make it look smooth on your end.
I don’t see those streaming services have any real future. Not for hardcore gamers anyway.