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>> YouTube videos is sucking down hundreds of megabytes if not gigabytes per hour > This is completely incorrect. [...] YouTube video, and indeed most streamin

>> YouTube videos is sucking down hundreds of megabytes if not gigabytes per hour > This is completely incorrect. [...] YouTube video, and indeed most streaming video, is well under 10MB/s. 10 MB/s is the same as 36 GB/hour. So we are in agreement. But what game uses more than 36 GB of assets for 1 hour of play? I can’t imagine that is at all common. What kind of assets are they shipping that use that much data?

kllrnohj 5y ago
You don't understand what the phrase "well under" means, do you? It means less than. Videos use less than 10MB/s. Netflix estimates 1-7GB per hour. Games need to load that much data in under a minute. Games don't stream data over an hour, they need to load a world instantly and can then stream in things you don't see. It's those bursts that matter, as that's what players are stuck waiting on to complete before they can get back to playing. Think of it as if video keyframes were 1GB. Video streaming wouldn't exist in such a world as nobody is going to watch a loading spinner for 20 minutes. No, it'd all be a world of pre-fetched, downloaded content. Which unsurprisingly is exactly how game stores & consoles work. Here's some coverage of the storage architecture of new consoles and why it's such a big upgrade: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps5-new-era-of-gaming https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps... Trying to shove lazy asset loading over the internet into that picture just doesn't work.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  > Netflix estimates 1-7GB per hour. Yes, and my estimate was “hundreds of megabytes if not gigabytes per hour”. So apparently Netflix also agrees with me. > Games need to load that much data in under a minute. This is based on design decisions from the programmers, not some kind of iron law of nature. Obviously you can’t just drop a game designed for one set of constraints into an entirely different context without change and expect it to work precisely the same way.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    > This is based on design decisions from the programmers, not some kind of iron law of nature. No, it's based on that's what textures and model quality expectations are. Reducing that size is directly reducing image quality. You can make a web based game that looks straight out of 2002, sure. But you can't make one that looks contemporary, and WASM+WebGPU aren't changing that. And of course no game developer is going to bend over backwards and make their game look like shit so it can run in a web browser for no reason other than to satisfy the ridiculous beliefs of web evangelists.

kllrnohj 5y ago

You don't understand what the phrase "well under" means, do you? It means less than. Videos use less than 10MB/s. Netflix estimates 1-7GB per hour. Games need to load that much data in under a minute. Games don't stream data over an hour, they need to load a world instantly and can then stream in things you don't see. It's those bursts that matter, as that's what players are stuck waiting on to complete before they can get back to playing. Think of it as if video keyframes were 1GB. Video streaming wouldn't exist in such a world as nobody is going to watch a loading spinner for 20 minutes. No, it'd all be a world of pre-fetched, downloaded content. Which unsurprisingly is exactly how game stores & consoles work. Here's some coverage of the storage architecture of new consoles and why it's such a big upgrade: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps5-new-era-of-gaming https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps... Trying to shove lazy asset loading over the internet into that picture just doesn't work.

jacobolus 5y ago
> Netflix estimates 1-7GB per hour. Yes, and my estimate was “hundreds of megabytes if not gigabytes per hour”. So apparently Netflix also agrees with me. > Games need to load that much data in under a minute. This is based on design decisions from the programmers, not some kind of iron law of nature. Obviously you can’t just drop a game designed for one set of constraints into an entirely different context without change and expect it to work precisely the same way.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  > This is based on design decisions from the programmers, not some kind of iron law of nature. No, it's based on that's what textures and model quality expectations are. Reducing that size is directly reducing image quality. You can make a web based game that looks straight out of 2002, sure. But you can't make one that looks contemporary, and WASM+WebGPU aren't changing that. And of course no game developer is going to bend over backwards and make their game look like shit so it can run in a web browser for no reason other than to satisfy the ridiculous beliefs of web evangelists.