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I wouldn't be surprised if the Android app is a thin webview wrapper either. Stadia is streaming content, it's not like it needs much beyond what the web browse

I wouldn't be surprised if the Android app is a thin webview wrapper either. Stadia is streaming content, it's not like it needs much beyond what the web browser can do.

chmod775 6y ago
I remember trying to figure out why video playback was so horribly slow in Chrome on an ARM device. Streaming the video with mplayer would take around 60% CPU time (out of 400%), but playing it in Chrome it would max out at 400% and start dropping frames. In the end the answer was that each video frame had to be copied between buffers about three times with Chrome, among other things, whereas mplayer was able to draw directly to the framebuffer. Now I'm not saying it isn't theoretically possible to make this fast (and Chrome has various optimizations nowadays for a select number of platforms), but abstractions can be expensive - especially for video. It's best to go as native as possible if you're on underpowered hardware or want to go easy on your user's battery life.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Google has the ability to just change chrome to make it work.
stefan_ 6y ago
Ehhh, there is a big difference between streaming some Netflix show that has no input and can buffer minutes or more and a game where even 500ms of buffering are unplayable. Plenty of streaming protocols aren't designed to do that in the first place (hello, HLS) and I could very well imagine players just falling over if they are not in their happy place of usual buffer sizes.
- kevmo314 6y ago
  I haven't seen such issues with webrtc. It's been very low latency for my use cases.
IshKebab 6y ago
Unlikely - web video isn't designed for extremely low latency. Much easier to do if you control the whole stack.
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/+/refs/heads/master/docs/native-code/rtp-hdrext/playout-delay https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/+/refs/heads/master/docs...
devadvance 6y ago
The native app uses Flutter [0]. Disclosure: I work on Stadia, and am speaking only for myself. [0] https://9to5google.com/2019/11/08/google-stadia-app-play-store-download/ https://9to5google.com/2019/11/08/google-stadia-app-play-sto...
- threeseed 6y ago
  Are you still using a web view ? Because obviously then it would be irrelevant whether it's Safari, Flutter or Visual Basic.
  - devadvance 6y ago
    The native mobile app does not use a web view.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    The Flutter webview is fairly basic, I believe.
  - megablast 6y ago
    No one uses web view anymore. It’s banned.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Android app is a thin webview wrapper either. Stadia is streaming content, it's not like it needs much beyond what the web browser can do.

chmod775 6y ago

I remember trying to figure out why video playback was so horribly slow in Chrome on an ARM device. Streaming the video with mplayer would take around 60% CPU time (out of 400%), but playing it in Chrome it would max out at 400% and start dropping frames. In the end the answer was that each video frame had to be copied between buffers about three times with Chrome, among other things, whereas mplayer was able to draw directly to the framebuffer. Now I'm not saying it isn't theoretically possible to make this fast (and Chrome has various optimizations nowadays for a select number of platforms), but abstractions can be expensive - especially for video. It's best to go as native as possible if you're on underpowered hardware or want to go easy on your user's battery life.

PurpleFoxy 6y ago
Google has the ability to just change chrome to make it work.

stefan_ 6y ago

Ehhh, there is a big difference between streaming some Netflix show that has no input and can buffer minutes or more and a game where even 500ms of buffering are unplayable. Plenty of streaming protocols aren't designed to do that in the first place (hello, HLS) and I could very well imagine players just falling over if they are not in their happy place of usual buffer sizes.

kevmo314 6y ago
I haven't seen such issues with webrtc. It's been very low latency for my use cases.

IshKebab 6y ago

Unlikely - web video isn't designed for extremely low latency. Much easier to do if you control the whole stack.

jtsiskin 6y ago
https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/+/refs/heads/master/docs/native-code/rtp-hdrext/playout-delay https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/+/refs/heads/master/docs...

devadvance 6y ago

The native app uses Flutter [0]. Disclosure: I work on Stadia, and am speaking only for myself. [0] https://9to5google.com/2019/11/08/google-stadia-app-play-store-download/ https://9to5google.com/2019/11/08/google-stadia-app-play-sto...

threeseed 6y ago
Are you still using a web view ? Because obviously then it would be irrelevant whether it's Safari, Flutter or Visual Basic.
- devadvance 6y ago
  The native mobile app does not use a web view.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  The Flutter webview is fairly basic, I believe.
- megablast 6y ago
  No one uses web view anymore. It’s banned.