$180 Rig That Will Play Crysis at Maximum Settings, 60FPS **Possible 56k**

What resolution can i play Crysis on through Onlive if i don't have internet?

I'll stick to my computer for all my gaming needs instead of it getting farmed out and not being able to play games at max settings.

It's from July 9th, Riku. I doubt three months has changed much significantly, besides pricing, so it means quite a bit.

As it stands I highly doubt it could run Crysis at anywhere near max settings with a steady 60 fps framerate.

shinrabanshou

Read that a long time ago... Doesn't mean anything when the infrastructure and hardware continuously improves.Rikusaki

Absolute BS.

Most of the problems that Digital Foundry describes have nothing to do with hardware, and have everything to do with what happens when you send tons of data through a pipe for hundreds of miles. It can't help but compromise image quality and framerate.

Just to pick some select quotes...

Whatever OnLive might say about how revolutionary its approach to video compression is, the bottom line is that its HD service streams at about 5mbps. As the intended aim is to give you 60FPS video, the mathematics are incontestable. That's about 10K per frame as an average, including audio. For those with capped bandwidth allowances, OnLive consumes around 2.5GB per hour.

Conversely, an uncompressed 720p60 stream of data from the HDMI port of your console is around 2.6MB per frame, not including audio. So how does OnLive manage to compress so much into so little?

First off, the precision of the framebuffer is reduced. The 24-bit RGB format is gone in exchange for the same YUV 4:2:0 pixel format used by Blu-ray. Colour resolution is effectively halved in the transition. Even if bandwidth was increased tenfold, that wouldn't change without a fundamental change to the video codec. As a result of all that, OnLive at its best still looks rather washed out compared to the native experience.

Next up, every single frame produced by your console or PC graphics card is a keyframe, a distinct entity in of itself. OnLive uses shared information from previous frames in order to save the duplication of data, the same as any conventional video codec. While the company claims to have moved beyond this so-called "group of pictures" (GOP) format (and perhaps it has), the end result looks much the same. In scenes where there is not much movement, more information from previous frames can be re-used, resulting in a higher-quality image. In scenes with fast motion, less information is shared, meaning a collapse in picture integrity. The faster the picture changes, the more detail that 10K per frame needs to magic up from nowhere.

Digital Foundry

The weird thing is that OnLive is talking about upgrading to 1080p in 2011. This will inevitably require more bandwidth, and if that's the case, it really should be thinking about offering the option to use that throughput for improving 720p image quality, and in effect brute force through higher IQ. In many cases it clearly needs it.Digital Foundry

Overall conclusions on the performance side of things are mixed. On the one hand, OnLive clearly offers higher average frame-rates than console on many of its titles. However, this is not the entirely good thing that it should be for two reasons: firstly, there is very little consistency in the overall performance. Video can be silky smooth one moment, horribly jerky the next. Performance will change enormously split-second. One frame could be rendered at 16ms, the next could be rendered at 66ms or with an even higher latency.

This ties in closely with the second major factor. With local gaming, higher frame-rates are typically accompanied with a much crisper, more precise degree of control, and it's exactly for this reason that games like Burnout Paradise and Call of Duty target 60FPS on console. There is no such precision with OnLive. A 150ms-200ms variable response is worse than most PS3 or Xbox 360 titles running at 30 frames per second, so there is something of a jarring disconnect between the higher-than-console frame-rate and the inconsistent response from the controls.

Digital Foundry

The ideal world you envision just isn't viable. Onlive is trying to push through more data than is available, and the image quality is at the mercy of compression algorithms and lag, factors which are never going to go away in any sort of real-world setting. This leads to performance that is not only subpar, but uneven, which is even more distracting.

The problems just increase from there. How is Digital Foundry going to stream 1080p video when they can barely manage the quality of 720p video at this point? How are they going to deal with tearing present when low-spec machines try to unpack all this video footage (a phenomenon noted in the article)? If the service ever starts to actually gather momentum, how are they going to manage the exponentially rising bandwidth and hardware costs without charging a monthly fee?

It's a marvel that the service functions at all, but it's not scalable and it's not practical. The Digital Foundry article demonstrates pretty clearly that you're not getting anything close to PC-equivalent performance (and you never will), and you have to sign away your consumer rights to do it. While things like the Arena are neat, it's subpar as a gaming platform.

Am i going to need to do this every time there is an onlive thread?

ferret-gamer

onlive isnt a platform.

Phaze-Two

[QUOTE="painguy1"]

Riku u need to stop. seriously. its getting anoying.Rikusaki

You're becoming the ProjectNatalFan of OnLive though.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"]

Am i going to need to do this every time there is an onlive thread?

Rikusaki

Explain.

Absolute BS.

sonicmj1

No, it's not. The internet won't be suck in its current state forever.

A new fiber optic infrastructure is currently underway.

Nothing can stop the progress of technology. OnLive is the future of gaming. In it's current state, it will only perform well for a select few, but in the future, data at the speed of light will become standard.

[QUOTE="sonicmj1"]

Absolute BS.

Rikusaki

No, it's not. The internet won't be suck in its current state forever.

A new fiber optic infrastructure is currently underway.

Nothing can stop the progress of technology. OnLive is the future of gaming. In it's current state it will only perform well for a select few, but in the future, data at the speed of light will become standard.

Are you in league with PNF to hype things no one else cares about?? :?

Explain.

ferret-gamer

[QUOTE="Rikusaki"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] Go to SpeedTest.net and post your results here. [QUOTE="Hakkai007"]

Look at the guys image above.

Also Onlive will probably never get image quality comparable to a game actually being played on your PC.

You can quote me if you want.

Maybe in 50 years you can laugh at me when you get 10gb per sec connections with a 500tb a month bandwidth.

I probably won't care by then Because 1080P will be long surpassed.

I might be dead too.

ferret-gamer

Am i going to need to do this every time there is an onlive thread?

Feels bad man.

Also Fios is like 90 a month.

[QUOTE="sonicmj1"]

Absolute BS.

Rikusaki

No, it's not. The internet won't be suck in its current state forever.

A new fiber optic infrastructure is currently underway.

Nothing can stop the progress of technology. OnLive is the future of gaming. In it's current state, it will only perform well for a select few, but in the future, data at the speed of light will become standard.

As a pc gamer it annoys me that all anyone ever talks about is CRYSIS! Almost every game I have on PC looks better then the console games. Using CRYSIS for 4 years is stale and I am getting sick of it. As i am sure so is everyone else.

As a pc gamer it annoys me that all anyone ever talks about is CRYSIS! Almost every game I have on PC looks better then the console games. Using CRYSIS for 4 years is stale and I am getting sick of it. As i am sure so is everyone else.

Advid-Gamer

lol. I saw AC2 with my own eyes and the settings were worse than the 360 equivalent. So it was bad even before you factored in the lag and terrible compression. There's no way the same servers are running Crysis at max, especially when you consider the fact that the game isn't even available for OnLive.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"]

Explain.

Rikusaki

[QUOTE="Advid-Gamer"]

As a pc gamer it annoys me that all anyone ever talks about is CRYSIS! Almost every game I have on PC looks better then the console games. Using CRYSIS for 4 years is stale and I am getting sick of it. As i am sure so is everyone else.

siLVURcross

lol. I saw AC2 with my own eyes and the settings were worse than the 360 equivalent. So it was bad even before you factored in the lag and terrible compression. There's no way the same servers are running Crysis at max, especially when you consider the fact that the game isn't even available for OnLive.

Teufelhuhn

[QUOTE="Rikusaki"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"]

Explain.

ferret-gamer

Let me break it down:

• You live in Washington.
• OnLive's west coast Data Center is in San Francisco, CA.
• Comcast doesn't have a fiber optic infrastructure.
• You need a fiber optic connection all the way down there to get the performance you desire.

Wrong title.

You forgot to mention the $500 you will have to pay monthly for a monster internet connection.

You don't even need to buy that. The fact that people are already using a computer to post on here means they already have everything they need to use it. The only thing they may be missing is a fast internet connection. And Crysis isn't on onlive right now. I just checked, so you can't play it on onlive.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"][QUOTE="Rikusaki"] You are simply too far from the nearest data center. Comcast's infrastructure isn't ready for OnLive (yet). Only a fiber optic connection will give you an experience similar to my own.

Rikusaki

Let me break it down:

• You live in Washington.
• OnLive's west coast Data Center is in San Francisco, CA.
• Comcast doesn't have a fiber optic infrastructure.
• You need a fiber optic connection all the way down there to get the performance you desire.

I wonder how much they are paying you to try so hard to convince people about onLive. If they really ARE NOT paying you then I can only be sad at the fact you're promoting it on your own free time.

Here's the bottom line in this day and age. NOT everyone has this MAGICAL internet speed you are talking about. "OnLive is the future of gaming" Well the future is a bit delayed and seems to be far off if the majority of gamers would rather play consoles or on their personal computer.

OnLive will NOT be the future of gaming. It brings forth an interesting idea and concept style of gaming. That's it. Perhaps someone will build upon the idea and make it better but it will NOT be OnLive. Where are my sources for such thing? Well myself :]. AND there's no way you'll convince me the otherwise when it comes to OnLive.

It. Will.Fail. Fail as it already is failing. :] If I sound arrogant ;) it should only remind you of a certain someone else :).

A picture is not an argument.

What speeds are you getting through SpeedTest.net, anyways? As far as I can tell, Verison's FIOS service, the most widely available fiber optic internet service in the United States, advertises 20 Mbps speeds for gaming for its most expensive personal service. That doesn't match the uninterrupted 156 Mbps you'd need for perfect 720p video, by Digitial Foundry's calculations. And I doubt you're achieving that maximum constantly.

You also haven't addressed the difficulties OnLive might face if it ever achieves success. How many servers can they afford to buy if millions start using the service? How much more expensive will hardware upgrades become as the number of servers required increases? How are they going to afford the bandwidth to provide 5 Mbps video to hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously without significant advertisements or monthly fees?

Something resembling OnLive might be tenable as a mass service 30 years from now, when compression techniques and fiber optic data transmission improve even more, but by then, we'll probably be streaming video directly into our skulls and living our video game experiences, and I'm not sure I want a choppy framerate inside my head. At this point, it just seems like a way to steal money from saps for a few years until it gets bought out and/or files for bankruptcy.

sonicmj1

My connection is almost identical to Ferret-Gamer's. The difference is I live in Eugene, Oregon.

[QUOTE="Rikusaki"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] Again, explain how you came to this conclusion.ferret-gamer

Let me break it down:

• You live in Washington.
• OnLive's west coast Data Center is in San Francisco, CA.
• Comcast doesn't have a fiber optic infrastructure.
• You need a fiber optic connection all the way down there to get the performance you desire.

Highlighted it in red for ya. ;)

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"][QUOTE="Rikusaki"]

Let me break it down:

• You live in Washington.
• OnLive's west coast Data Center is in San Francisco, CA.
• Comcast doesn't have a fiber optic infrastructure.
• You need a fiber optic connection all the way down there to get the performance you desire.

Rikusaki

Highlighted it in red for ya. ;)

Is there a game that looks decent on onlive ? I tried UT3, and Dirt 2, and both looked way downgraded from the console versions. And my connection is not that bad either.

My connection from where I live (well Houston actually picked wrong server)

My connection to LA

It is a simple question. Why?ferret-gamer

My connection is almost identical to Ferret-Gamer's. The difference is I live in Eugene, Oregon.

Rikusaki

So... wait a minute.

What does this:

Nice, but Comcast won't cut it. You need fiber optic to get the performance and clarity that I have.

Rikusaki

and this:

• You live in Washington.
• OnLive's west coast Data Center is in San Francisco, CA.

Rikusaki

mean?

If you have the same download speeds, and you're not that far from each other, you really expect us to believe that fiber-optic cable is the magic elixir that turns poor image quality and stuttery gameplay into perfect 720p?

Forgive my skepticism.

If you have the same download speeds, and you're not that far from each other, you really expect us to believe that fiber-optic cable is the magic elixir that turns poor image quality and stuttery gameplay into perfect 720p?

Forgive my skepticism.

sonicmj1

Yes and no. It depends on everything, not just your ISP. You're gonna need a fast, solid-performing router like mine. The only way right now is to buy a high-end router costing hundreds, or overclock a low-end one like I did.

I'm not liking the new Rikusaki :(

I'm not liking the new Rikusaki :(

SwagSurf

Riku, bandwith is bandwith. Verizon Fios's 50mb is no different than Comcast's 50mb in terms of badwith size.

Telcos use fiber because they don't have the same interference and impedence problems that copper does when carrying high-bandwidth (and by that I mean bandwidth in analog signal terms, not bytes-per-second) signals over long distances. It makes it cheaper and more efficient for them set up their infrastructure. The simple fact of having a fiber connection to your house doesn't magically make your bandwidth skyrocket and your latency disappear. It's perectly possible to have lower bandwidth and higher latency than what you can get over copper...which should be obvious if you look at the lower tiers offered for FiOS (Verizon's fiber-to-your-house service). If you have fiber that just means it's the most ideal way for the telco to deliver their service to your location.

Latency is primarily a factor of how many hops you have to make when going from your computer to the server. More distance = more hops = more latency.

yep it can...with lots of control latency AKA lag and look completely horrible at compressed less then 720p even on a 25mbps down and 5 mbps up cable net connection.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] It is a simple question. Why?Rikusaki

Umm... buddy there is this thing called index of refraction, light travels through fiber optic cables at2.05 * 10^8 m/s, light travels through a coaxial cable at1.97x10^8 m/s. In terms of speed of light Fiber optic cables are only about 4% faster, that means if it takes 10ms for fiber to reach something, it would take 10.4ms for coaxial to reach it.

Now in real world applications, from washington to Cali my actual ping from speedtest.net is only 33ms. Still registering as Onlives fault for not delivering.

Max settings, 60 FPS?

What resolution we talking about here? 480p? :lol: I'll stick with building my own computer, actually owning the game, and having no input lag what-so-ever and not having to rely on being online to play a game.

Oh, and playing at max settings at 2048x1152 resolution. 60FPS? Hell no. Still better than a streaming service though.

I can also find a cure for cancer while I game. Folding@home can now run at full blast.

yep it can...with lots of control latency AKA lag and look completely horrible at compressed less then 720p even on a 25mbps down and 5 mbps up cable net connection.

WilliamRLBaker

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"]

yep it can...with lots of control latency AKA lag and look completely horrible at compressed less then 720p even on a 25mbps down and 5 mbps up cable net connection.

Hahadouken

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] It is a simple question. Why?Rikusaki