5 ms·

That's the thing with these services. It's not a 'normal' scale of quality like having different levels of PC hardware. It either works perfectly, or is compl

That's the thing with these services. It's not a 'normal' scale of quality like having different levels of PC hardware. It either works perfectly, or is completely unplayable. There's a low cap on the maximum market size based on peoples internet quality.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vvanders 6y ago
Pretty much. Anyone who's written game netcode(either as a hobby or professionally) knows that you build the game design and game engine from the ground up to tolerate latency. For action games most of the time it's all about building a game design where you're predicting(either via physical location or other player's actions), except in the few rare cases that do time-rewinding(most fighting games, some FPSes that combine both, most notably Counter-Strike). This is usually handled by dead-reckoning[1] For large scale, low bandwidth games(AKA RTSes and the like where gamestate is deterministic) that's handled via lock-step[2]. The gamestate is 100% deterministic and all clients move together with a shared set of inputs in "lock step". Both of these approaches can be tolerant to latencies up to ~600ms(back in the ole 28.8/56k days of '97 SubSpace[3] was doing ~300 players in one zone with a high skill curve and a robust netcode). They usually mask it with client side reactions that are then reconciled with the server in a robust way. If you're just dropping video frames over a network stack none of that is available to you no matter how fancy your FEC or other tricks are. Somehow I've now got the urge to go dust off the Continuum client again and boot up SubSpace. [1] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131638/dead_reckoning_latency_hiding_for_.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131638/dead_reckoning... [2] https://meseta.medium.com/netcode-concepts-part-3-lockstep-and-rollback-f70e9297271 https://meseta.medium.com/netcode-concepts-part-3-lockstep-a... [3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Latency is the most important thing. There's a reason high refresh monitors are loved by serious gamers. I can deal with 1080p playing old ps2/3 games through an online service, or modern with the same resolution but high settings with snappy controls. I cannot play a game with noticeable input lag whatsoever, even if it was at 4k HDR 144hz.
  - vvanders 6y ago
    We're not talking about input or rendering latency here, networked games are designed to work such that even when you have 100-300ms of round-trip latency the objective of the game is setup in such a way that your success is based on "predicting" events or the server keeps all disparate time domains in memory and can time-rewind to resolve authoritative game state.
    - breakfastduck 6y ago
      I know that technically it's a different problem. But the prediction is exactly what makes it feel unresponsive. So the human perception is input lag, regardless of what causes that feeling.
      - chupasaurus 6y ago
        The input lag causes both unresponsiveness and prediction. The former is obvious, a simple example for the latter: in RTS/MOBA (both rollback or lockstep netcode) the whole region around the opponent where he could be in the next tick becomes your target, the size of it depends on the latency and if RTT is big enough possible reactions become an additional factor.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    by serious gamers You'd think that "serious gamers" would obsess over the merits of games (mechanics, plot, level design, gameplay, etc), not the technical minutiae of framerates and input lag. That term always seemed odd to me.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  While you are absolutely correct, I believe the target market for Stadia is more people like my parents, who used to play casual games 10 years ago and then got too busy. They cannot justify owning a console and purchasing $60 games. But they'd be easy to sell on a $5 monthly games on demand subscription. They will be playing with bluetooth gamepads (5ms latency) on their TV (10-20ms latency) using Wifi (5-10ms latency), so the internet streaming delay of <10ms from an edge server will be barely noticeable. For example, Stadia is featuring "Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris" which is a perfect game for high-latency unskilled casual play.
  - vvanders 6y ago
    Oh yeah, I don't doubt there's a market for this but I don't think you see it take over the same way that say Netflix did for VoD. (FWIW I heavily use Steam's streaming client so I'm pretty familiar with most of the failure modes, it doesn't work great for everything but is convenient when the game style and network performance overlap)
  - harikb 6y ago
    I thought one has to still buy/rent games on top of the $5/month. $5 is only the fee for renting “cloud hardware” - May be some games are included, but definitely not comparable to a Netflix for games. I guess it more like a Disney- ?
    - scotth 6y ago
      Stadia is free if you're happy with 1080p, and you purchase games on top. The pro subscription is around $10/month, but adds 4k res and a few new games every month.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    But what benefit is there compared to playing a game on a phone or PC? Look at how people use javascript for client side coding but go or rust for the back end -- the service provider pays for back end resources and they are always going to be niggardly when it comes to cpu, gpu, etc.
- toast0 6y ago
  OT: thanks for the link to Subspace; played that a bunch in the old times; gonna try it again soon.
stemuk 6y ago
As a nearly daily user of Google Stadia I have to disagree. I use Stadia in two different households, one with a 50 Mbps connection (where Stadia works perfectly) an one with a connection capped at 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. The 10 Mbps connection only allows for 720p gameplay and I get frequent stuttering every 5 minutes or so but this doesn't really ruin the experience with most story driven games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or AC Odyssey. At first I was surprised by the playability of Stadia at such a slow connection myself but even though I cannot play shooter games I wouldn't go as far to call the experience I get with the 10 Mbps connection 'unplayable'.
tareqak 6y ago
I honestly want to have a map of that overlays homes and apartments with Internet connection speed and main Internet nodes/routers/datacenters. If remote work is a big part of the future, then prioritizing optimal Internet connection parameters as a part of a moving decision seems rational.
- toast0 6y ago
  I suspect such a map doesn't exist, but if you want optimal Internet connection, what you're looking for is: a) in a metro area that has a major internet exchange. Hurricane Electric's list of pops is a decent start: http://he.net/ip_transit.html http://he.net/ip_transit.html Some of those locations are more well connected than others though. In the US, prime exchanges are really LA, SF/SJ, Seattle, Reston, New York, Miami, Dallas, Chicago. If you settle near a lesser exchange like say Denver, you'll probably have good connectivity to many networks, but many services don't have a datacenter in Denver. Also, some companies are trying to put their big datacenters farther north to save on cooling and energy costs, so bias north if possible; however, if you want excellent connectivity to South America, much of that goes through Miami. If you're in Canada, Vancouver or Toronto are your best bets. In South America, Sao Paulo or Bogota (but note, connectivity is sparse between countries, it historically all went through Miami, but that's changed a bit). In Europe, Amsterdam, London or Frankfurt? In Asia, Singapore or Taipei. In Africa, Johanesburg. In AU/NZ, reportedly it kind of all sucks, but Melbourne/Syndey/Auckland are okish. b) not on DSL; usually it's run with settings that guarantee you 20 ms ping to the first hop. Be careful because some of the DSL providers imply fiber to the home, but really mean fiber to the DSLAM (or whatever it's called today). c) fiber is better than cable, but cable is ok as long as the company isn't incompetent. Comcast is much maligned, but their network is actually pretty good; local areas could be mismanaged though. d) you need to actually put potential addresses into the sign up for service pages. Put the one you're looking at, as well as the neighbors; if you get prompts like 'you've already got service, would you like to manage it', that's a good sign that they probably actually service the address. Listed available speeds to addresses that are current customers are more likely to be accurate as well. If there's a public utility fiber, check their fiber map, but don't expect to hear back from them with firm availability or not in time to make a decision on your prospective living arrangement.
benhurmarcel 6y ago
If streaming takes a large chunk of the market that has good internet quality, that's a significant revenue gone for consoles and gaming PC hardware (even if it's not 100% of the market).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vvanders 6y ago

Pretty much. Anyone who's written game netcode(either as a hobby or professionally) knows that you build the game design and game engine from the ground up to tolerate latency. For action games most of the time it's all about building a game design where you're predicting(either via physical location or other player's actions), except in the few rare cases that do time-rewinding(most fighting games, some FPSes that combine both, most notably Counter-Strike). This is usually handled by dead-reckoning[1] For large scale, low bandwidth games(AKA RTSes and the like where gamestate is deterministic) that's handled via lock-step[2]. The gamestate is 100% deterministic and all clients move together with a shared set of inputs in "lock step". Both of these approaches can be tolerant to latencies up to ~600ms(back in the ole 28.8/56k days of '97 SubSpace[3] was doing ~300 players in one zone with a high skill curve and a robust netcode). They usually mask it with client side reactions that are then reconciled with the server in a robust way. If you're just dropping video frames over a network stack none of that is available to you no matter how fancy your FEC or other tricks are. Somehow I've now got the urge to go dust off the Continuum client again and boot up SubSpace. [1] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131638/dead_reckoning_latency_hiding_for_.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131638/dead_reckoning... [2] https://meseta.medium.com/netcode-concepts-part-3-lockstep-and-rollback-f70e9297271 https://meseta.medium.com/netcode-concepts-part-3-lockstep-a... [3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...

breakfastduck 6y ago
Latency is the most important thing. There's a reason high refresh monitors are loved by serious gamers. I can deal with 1080p playing old ps2/3 games through an online service, or modern with the same resolution but high settings with snappy controls. I cannot play a game with noticeable input lag whatsoever, even if it was at 4k HDR 144hz.
- vvanders 6y ago
  We're not talking about input or rendering latency here, networked games are designed to work such that even when you have 100-300ms of round-trip latency the objective of the game is setup in such a way that your success is based on "predicting" events or the server keeps all disparate time domains in memory and can time-rewind to resolve authoritative game state.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    I know that technically it's a different problem. But the prediction is exactly what makes it feel unresponsive. So the human perception is input lag, regardless of what causes that feeling.
    - chupasaurus 6y ago
      The input lag causes both unresponsiveness and prediction. The former is obvious, a simple example for the latter: in RTS/MOBA (both rollback or lockstep netcode) the whole region around the opponent where he could be in the next tick becomes your target, the size of it depends on the latency and if RTT is big enough possible reactions become an additional factor.
- onion2k 6y ago
  by serious gamers You'd think that "serious gamers" would obsess over the merits of games (mechanics, plot, level design, gameplay, etc), not the technical minutiae of framerates and input lag. That term always seemed odd to me.
fxtentacle 6y ago
While you are absolutely correct, I believe the target market for Stadia is more people like my parents, who used to play casual games 10 years ago and then got too busy. They cannot justify owning a console and purchasing $60 games. But they'd be easy to sell on a $5 monthly games on demand subscription. They will be playing with bluetooth gamepads (5ms latency) on their TV (10-20ms latency) using Wifi (5-10ms latency), so the internet streaming delay of <10ms from an edge server will be barely noticeable. For example, Stadia is featuring "Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris" which is a perfect game for high-latency unskilled casual play.
- vvanders 6y ago
  Oh yeah, I don't doubt there's a market for this but I don't think you see it take over the same way that say Netflix did for VoD. (FWIW I heavily use Steam's streaming client so I'm pretty familiar with most of the failure modes, it doesn't work great for everything but is convenient when the game style and network performance overlap)
- harikb 6y ago
  I thought one has to still buy/rent games on top of the $5/month. $5 is only the fee for renting “cloud hardware” - May be some games are included, but definitely not comparable to a Netflix for games. I guess it more like a Disney- ?
  - scotth 6y ago
    Stadia is free if you're happy with 1080p, and you purchase games on top. The pro subscription is around $10/month, but adds 4k res and a few new games every month.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  But what benefit is there compared to playing a game on a phone or PC? Look at how people use javascript for client side coding but go or rust for the back end -- the service provider pays for back end resources and they are always going to be niggardly when it comes to cpu, gpu, etc.
toast0 6y ago
OT: thanks for the link to Subspace; played that a bunch in the old times; gonna try it again soon.

stemuk 6y ago

As a nearly daily user of Google Stadia I have to disagree. I use Stadia in two different households, one with a 50 Mbps connection (where Stadia works perfectly) an one with a connection capped at 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. The 10 Mbps connection only allows for 720p gameplay and I get frequent stuttering every 5 minutes or so but this doesn't really ruin the experience with most story driven games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or AC Odyssey. At first I was surprised by the playability of Stadia at such a slow connection myself but even though I cannot play shooter games I wouldn't go as far to call the experience I get with the 10 Mbps connection 'unplayable'.

tareqak 6y ago

I honestly want to have a map of that overlays homes and apartments with Internet connection speed and main Internet nodes/routers/datacenters. If remote work is a big part of the future, then prioritizing optimal Internet connection parameters as a part of a moving decision seems rational.

toast0 6y ago
I suspect such a map doesn't exist, but if you want optimal Internet connection, what you're looking for is: a) in a metro area that has a major internet exchange. Hurricane Electric's list of pops is a decent start: http://he.net/ip_transit.html http://he.net/ip_transit.html Some of those locations are more well connected than others though. In the US, prime exchanges are really LA, SF/SJ, Seattle, Reston, New York, Miami, Dallas, Chicago. If you settle near a lesser exchange like say Denver, you'll probably have good connectivity to many networks, but many services don't have a datacenter in Denver. Also, some companies are trying to put their big datacenters farther north to save on cooling and energy costs, so bias north if possible; however, if you want excellent connectivity to South America, much of that goes through Miami. If you're in Canada, Vancouver or Toronto are your best bets. In South America, Sao Paulo or Bogota (but note, connectivity is sparse between countries, it historically all went through Miami, but that's changed a bit). In Europe, Amsterdam, London or Frankfurt? In Asia, Singapore or Taipei. In Africa, Johanesburg. In AU/NZ, reportedly it kind of all sucks, but Melbourne/Syndey/Auckland are okish. b) not on DSL; usually it's run with settings that guarantee you 20 ms ping to the first hop. Be careful because some of the DSL providers imply fiber to the home, but really mean fiber to the DSLAM (or whatever it's called today). c) fiber is better than cable, but cable is ok as long as the company isn't incompetent. Comcast is much maligned, but their network is actually pretty good; local areas could be mismanaged though. d) you need to actually put potential addresses into the sign up for service pages. Put the one you're looking at, as well as the neighbors; if you get prompts like 'you've already got service, would you like to manage it', that's a good sign that they probably actually service the address. Listed available speeds to addresses that are current customers are more likely to be accurate as well. If there's a public utility fiber, check their fiber map, but don't expect to hear back from them with firm availability or not in time to make a decision on your prospective living arrangement.

benhurmarcel 6y ago

If streaming takes a large chunk of the market that has good internet quality, that's a significant revenue gone for consoles and gaming PC hardware (even if it's not 100% of the market).