11 ms·

GeForce Now: A Review

133 points by rcarmo 4y ago

rektide 4y ago
Follow-up to: "(Not) getting a new computer"[1]. [1] https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/08/22/not-getting-a-new-computer/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/08/22/not-getting-a-new-com... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553017 (58pts, 2d ago, 90comments)
wyldfire 4y ago
Is this Scalzi the author?
- Arubis 4y ago
  Byline is “by John Scalzi”.
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    Sorry - I meant is this the same John Scalzi who wrote novels like "Redshirts"? And it sounds like the answer is "yes".
- loeg 4y ago
  Yes.
WithinReason 4y ago
GeForce Now has a free tier so you can try it without spending money: The session is limited to 1 hour and there is a queue when many people want to play, but otherwise it's the same you get with 1 tier up. Worth giving it a shot, I was surprised how well I could play Witcher 3 on a FireTV Stick plugged into a TV.
macNchz 4y ago
I tested out GeForce Now and Stadia two years ago and decided fairly quickly to build a desktop machine instead. Turns out that lots of PC games work really well on desktop Linux these days! The author discusses his internet connection, but for me even with a 500mbit connection and ~10ms ping to NYC area data centers I felt the video compression artifacts and periodic stutters were too noticeable. I also had some input glitches that were basically impossible to diagnose and made certain games hard to play.
- nullwarp 4y ago
  I came to the same conclusion really, it's a neat service but even using something like Parsec locally induces enough latency that I just can't use it. I still run windows in a VFIO setup but Linux is really good for gaming these days. Was even playing Cyberpunk on the release day!
- vlunkr 4y ago
  Even using Steam in-home streaming on the same network games look much worse because of compression.
  - wingworks 4y ago
    Yeah, don't use Steams streaming system, it's buggy and so low quality. Personally I've had allot more success with Parsec. Even when playing with others across the internet.
- broast 4y ago
  It's unclear in this comment if you are lumping them together, but GeForce Now's performance and stream quality is leagues ahead of Stadia's. As someone who exclusively games on the cloud. My main driver, though, is ShadowPC, which gives me dual monitors, 4k, and full desktop access (for modding etc) on a stream
  - macNchz 4y ago
    I did find Geforce Now to be better than Stadia, however I remember being super distracted by the compression artifacts on both. Dark scenes with motion and lots of detail/particles just didn’t look good to me.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      This is exactly how I feel streaming 4k. One stupid little black square and it breaks my immersion. I stick with UHD discs and 4k files on a usb drive.
- 4y ago
ralusek 4y ago
My experience with GeForce Now is that despite having fiber internet and WiFi 6, games are still unplayably laggy. I also wasn't able to play Cities Skylines, because none of my Steam Workshop mods would install.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  It's better if you have Ethernet, that way I get no stutter and the lag is almost unnoticeable (I get 9ms ping which is lower than the duration between 2 monitor refreshes at 60Hz)
  - djbeadle 4y ago
    More anacedata: GeForce now over Ethernet is significantly better than Wi-Fi 6 in my apartment building.
    - Shorel 4y ago
      My only question is how this is even surprising. Wi-Fi is an arms race between you and your neighbours about who has the most powerful Wi-Fi transmitter, while Ethernet works wonderfully and collision free, in terms of network packets. We all have at least three Wi-Fi devices, including the smartphone, using some frequency bandwidth. Yes, people dislike cables, but if you ever play and transmit the game via OBS to Twitch, for example, Wi-Fi is simply not going to cut it any more.
      - WithinReason 4y ago
        In principle Wi-Fi devices should be able to find a free frequency channel to communicate in (especially Wi-Fi 6 that parent refers to), so yes, this is surprising. Maybe there is a reason GeForce Now has a page about recommended Wi-Fi routers: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/recommended/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/recommended/
        Shorel 4y ago
burlesona 4y ago
FWIW I’ve had a blast with GFN, but I have fiber internet and use a wired Ethernet connection to the router. It’s not very good over wifi IMO. I would recommend it but only for those with great bandwidth and a wired connection.
rdtwo 4y ago
I found that it worked really well on the free tier. There are hiccups and i can’t tell why my isp gives me 1-5% packet loss but I really like that it kicks me out after an hour so I have to have reasonable play sessions. Wait times are rare the service is too good for a free tier
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  It's true, I agree, the 1 hour limit is a feature not a pain point lol.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    It’s one of the reasons I didn’t upgrade I like that it cuts me off and at least makes me decide if I want to continue.
urthor 4y ago
If I was 9 years old, again... I, urgently, must play the latest AAA extravaganza, again... ...I've only $30 to my name, again. I'm collecting my family's supply of $2 coins, again. I'd be all over it. --------------------------------------------------------- Tons of software works REALLY well on Geforce now. Asynchronous, turn based games. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is one. Server side rendering latency w/ monitor is a fascinating problem. I found the idea incredibly technically interesting. NOT so much for me, an engineer who one click buys electronics. I'm not the audience.
simplicio 4y ago
I've found it to be a pretty good product, at least for my use case. I only have an hour or two/wk to play games these days, so it doesn't make a ton of sense to spend the time and $ to buy and install a new video card. So I got whatever the bottom paid tier is for GeForce Now and, while there are occasional lag-spikes and jitters, they're generally rare enough to only rise to the level of minor annoyance. If I wanted to spend a lot of time playing games, especially multi-player ones, I don't think it would be a good substitute for using my own machine, but for being able to occasionally dip a toe into a game when I get the itch, its a pretty good deal.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I've used it for about 14 months extensively - I wasn't able to upgrade my rig when cyberpunk 2077 came out. It was brilliant - I played the game at max settings, looked beautiful, not a care in The world. Then I used it too for some turn based / strategy / rpg games as I could play them on laptop, desktop etc, and it was easy to try games without bothering with downloading and local storage. It was sufficiently excellent experience that even once I got an upgraded gaming computer, I still kept the basic foundation paid package due to sheer convenience. It's just great to try and play games with low frequency without installation / configuration / troubleshooting hassle. I have also found it consistently less glitchy over last year to stream a game from cloud to my media computers via geforce now, than from my next room gaming rig via steam link... Which speaks more bad things of steam link itself, but also I think at least some good things of geforce now. Note that I have Ethernet for my laptop and desktop. I can not speak to latency via wireless - my assumption would be "frustrating" so I didn't even test.
- exodust 4y ago
  How is latency avoided? I've not paid attention to streaming games or looked how it works. If your mouse input needs to go via the internet to control the 3d character on screen, how is there not a noticeable lag compared to a local rendering of the game?
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    I think networks are simply that good now.
    - dbttdft 4y ago
      They aren't. The people who advocate stream gaming are precisely like this guy in the article who bought 400 games and never played any of them.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Partially it's modern speedy networks; but partially it's also the player. There are people who need (and people who believe they need) 165HZ or heck 240HZ screen, 8000Hz Mouse, and notice every millisecond of lag. And there are people like me and apparently Scalzi :-). My experience with GeforceNow was perfect. I'm sure somebody with better reflexes and more into competitive multiplayer would find it complete unacceptable.
KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
GFN is tested to be faster than native consoles in terms of input latency. https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs People are talking about turn based games but my experience is that it's flawless and indistinguishable from native in twitch games like fortnite and counterstrike. But then again I live on the East Coast pretty close to a datacenter and I'm on fiber, so obviously this won't be the case for people in rural areas. But for people who are in situations like mine, it's great.
- jb_s 4y ago
  I've unfortunately played way too many twitch shooters on PC and latency is really noticeable to me. To the point where I can't stand using my work-supplied laptop because of slight mouse lag (I think the mouse travels maybe 30-40ms behind my hand) and 60hz screens. This is somewhat annoying coming from 165Hz, gaming peripherals. Then I have to connect to a VM to do development. Absolute hell.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
    Yeah, it won't match the requirements for very high end competitive gamers. I was just talking empirical results found by Digital Foundry matching consoles. > mouse travels maybe 30-40ms behind my hand That sounds awful. But it reminds me that the chart I posted is tested using a very exacting tool and even the 3090 has a 30ms latency on 120hz and that's about as good as it gets. So you shouldn't take these numbers in a vacuum but more comparatively. GFN on 120hz is better than a 3060 on native in 60hz. I know it's not compelling for anyone who hates 60hz heh but for people who are okay with 60hz then GFN latency won't feel any different to you.
    - blibble 4y ago
      given GFN is running the same software as you'd run locally (the game), and using the same local hardware (keyboard, mouse, etc) to send the inputs, and then the same local hardware to display the server rendered output (your monitor/TV)... how can be true that GFN doesn't add at least the same input latency as running it locally? unless there's some trick I'm missing it's going to be at least the same (plus the network latency)
cpleppert 4y ago
>> My rural internet connection is 40mbps/sec down in theory — in practice it’s between 25 and 40 depending which second you poll it, and the speed is affected by whether someone is downstairs watching Netflix while I’m upstairs playing a graphics-intensive game. I'm surprised he even bothered trying the service let alone he found it playable. A rural area with 25-40mbps with someone using the internet at the same time ( let alone netflix!) is basically worst case scenario. If you are playing near a datacenter with reasonable internet your experience will be significantly better. Geforce now is technically very good when configured properly; it is similar to parsec (which is probably state of the art). Worth pointing out: the Geforce now library is not great and and I wouldn't hold my breath on it improving too much. Most interested publishers have already signed up and the rest are either commited to other platforms or aren't willing to choose nvidia over other monetization options.
- sp332 4y ago
  25 Mbps is plenty for 1080p60 even for real-time video. Latency is more important. GFN says they can even cram 2560x1600 at 120 FPS into 35 Mbps.
  - some-guy 4y ago
    Ultra-low latency is important, but zero packet loss and low jitter is even more important. I have "on paper" great internet in the SF Bay Area (Monkeybrains), and while I can get 600mpbs symmetrical throughput, the jitter and 0.5% average packet loss (it's a microwave mesh network), game streaming is completely unplayable.
- kcexn 4y ago
  For the most part, I have found that GeForce Now is not bandwidth limited. NVIDIA has spent a lot of time and money tuning the service to do clever dynamic upscaling locally on your machine to minimise the sort of block compression artifacts and frame skipping that you would normally see from say YouTube or Netflix. It's not even particularly latency bound, since round trip times less than 40ms are for most people (unless you're a very competitive player), completely unnoticeable. I've played with latencies at around 60ms and I still find it tolerable (although occasionally a bit annoying). Instead it's very sensitive to network jitter. Even 1 or 2 ms of random jitter can dramatically reduce the quality of the service. And given the distance between your local machine, and the number of hops required between your device and the server, there's a lot of room for random jitter. Part of the problem can be mitigated, by carefully ensuring that everything in your home network is dimensioned properly. But the rest of the pipe is owned by your ISP, and they could apply all sorts of dodgy QoS parameters that increase your likelihood of experiencing jitter.
abridgett 4y ago
GeForce Now was/is great. Bethesda though (amongst others) have lost a formerly loyal fan due to pulling their games. Why? I own the games, I paid for them. If I had my old PC still I could play them just the same. Presumably so that in several years they can run their own cloud service. The greed of companies will be their own downfall.
- mupuff1234 4y ago
  Sadly Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft who are running their own cloud gaming service.
- Haegin 4y ago
  All (or at least most, though I didn't notice any missing that aren't super old - it has Morrowind on there) of the Bethesda games are available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. It's more expensive but comes with the games so might be worth a look if you particularly like Bethesda's products.
stavros 4y ago
Rather offtopic, but would anyone recommend one of Scalzi's books if I enjoyed Old Man's War?
- sushisource 4y ago
  Lock In and the sequel Head On are both fun reads with his same humorous style that you'll probably read in two or three sittings
  - stavros 4y ago
    Excellent, thank you!
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Rest of the series is pretty decent up to last book which is a collection of stories. My favourite though is the independent novella God Engines.
  - stavros 4y ago
    I'll try them, thanks!
- sarlalian 4y ago
  The whole Collapsing Empire series is also quite excellent.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- drosan 4y ago
  I've enjoyed Interdependency trilogy immensely and now reading "Kaiju Preservation Society" and it is awesome too.
chatmasta 4y ago
GeForce Now is great for simulation games like Factorio or Civilization. Unfortunately 2K Games decided to arbitrarily restrict users of GeForce Now from playing Civilization VI, even with a licensed copy from the Steam store. In the beginning, it worked great. I could play on a giant map with 13 AI civilizations who completed their turns in a few seconds. And my laptop didn’t sound like an airplane. I’m still bitter at 2K about this. If they offered an alternative cloud gaming subscription then I would purchase it to play Civ on a cloud machine. But they just decided to interfere in my choice of which hardware I use to run their software, while offering no alternative. Super disappointing. I do still pay for GeForce Now though, because it’s a low price and because I have anxiety about what would happen to my save files if I stopped paying.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  I agree 100%. However note your save games should be safe on steam cloud. Nothing gets stored on geforce now - your virtual instance gets destroyed once you log off. Should be easy to verify via your laptop even if you don't load up the save.
  - Cristan 4y ago
    You can also check the status of your cloud saves directly in your Steam profile through a browser: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage. You can even download the files too.
- akkartik 4y ago
  Sounds like they don't need to care what you think :) The only way to influence these companies is to vote with your dollars.
  - izacus 4y ago
    With publisher/content owner IP monopolies, there's no such thing as "voting with your dollars".
  - 4y ago
gherkinnn 4y ago
I played a couple of slowish action games like the Metro series on GeForce Now and couldn’t be happier. Tons of games from my old Steam library, all on my MBP. No more separate gaming rig required. A CoD campaign should work just as well, but I don’t trust it to be fast enough for competitive MP or Doom 2016. Stadia does not exist and Shadow PC had an eternal waiting list.
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  Shadow is now available the same day, probably because they almost doubled the price.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Not exactly GeForce Now, but you'd be surprised with streaming games that require timing. I stream Elden Ring from my place in LA to my family's place in ATL using Steam and I manage to do well. Just beat a tough boss tonight.
taftster 4y ago
I tried it over the end-of-year holiday break with my 3 boys to play Guild Wars 2 from our Macs. It sucked down over our 1.2 TB of Xfinity bandwidth within maybe just a day's worth of playing. If we would have continued, I would have easily hit the $100 additional bandwidth fee and decided we had better stop before I broke the bank. I couldn't figure out how to reduce the video stream bandwidth with any of the settings. It worked really well technically, but without some improvements in this regard, I don't know how I can use it. I guess folks with unlimited bandwidth can make it work, but that's about it. I paid for the full service and then promptly had to cancel all of our accounts, since it wasn't going to be viable for us.
- boppo1 4y ago
  Who is your ISP?
  - metadat 4y ago
    Xfinity == Comcast cable
smoldesu 4y ago
> It gives me access to 88 out of my over 400 purchased games, with the emphasis being on more recent and/or more popular games. Jesus Christ, how can it be that bad? Their servers are running Windows, right? I don't see how Nvidia's coverage can be that bad unless they're encumbered by licensing quirks. Even Valve's Proton manages to cover ~75-77% of the Steam store's titles...
- Gigachad 4y ago
  There are apparently a lot of licensing issues.
- bfgoodrich 4y ago
  Because game vendors think they can double dip. As mentioned in another post, all of the Firaxis games worked brilliantly on GFN, but despite the fact that it's my own copy that I'm playing, in my own Steam account, Firaxis decided that they would remove all of their games from GFN unless they get a payoff. It's notable that legally Firaxis (and the other sleazy scumbags) largely have no legal basis, but nvidia decided not to make enemies and let them do this. As a result, I have bought no additional Civ expansions, and will never buy another Firaxis game.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    >largely have no legal basis Presumably that is covered by this part of the EULA: >You agree not to, and not to provide guidance or instruction to any other individual or entity on how to: >except as otherwise specifically provided by the Software or this Agreement, use or install the Software (or permit others to do same) on a network, for on-line use, or on more than one computer or gaming unit at the same time;
snarfy 4y ago
I might be a bit too hardcore for this product. I play FPS like Quake casually but somewhat competitively. Ever millisecond matters to me. It's probably quite compelling for games where latency is not as important.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  I guess the experience would be comparable to playing Quake back in the olden days. Quake 3 prior to late CPMA netcode was quite bad even at 50ms.
  - FrostKiwi 4y ago
    Not really. Input latency is what matters here. Even with great netcode, streaming games just doesn't fit certain genres. With how many technologies get caked unto the rendering pipeline and CRTs being replaced by slower response time LCDs (unless you pay a premium), you might even argue it got worse compared to the olden days.
sylens 4y ago
>> While GeForce Now supports a large number of my games on Steam, it doesn’t support them all. It gives me access to 88 out of my over 400 purchased games, with the emphasis being on more recent and/or more popular games. This is going to be what ends up hamstringing the service in the long run. When GeForce Now first came out, you could play a much larger catalog of titles; publishers then caught wind of this and started pulling their games off of it, in case they wanted to launch their own streaming service in the future. For this reason, I think Microsoft has the pole position with their XBox Cloud Gaming service. They have been running it as an extension of their Game Pass Ultimate service, and are rumored to allow you to play games you bought and own through the service sometime later this year. There's a future where a Microsoft game you own can be played on PC, XBox consoles, or streamed to an iPad or Chromebook, syncing progress between them.
- keyle 4y ago
  When I started using the xbox cloud gaming, I thought it was wishful thinking, a gimmick. Boy was I wrong. It's absolutely mind blowing. You do notice artefacts when you move fast in FPS type games but you even forget about it most of the time (fully wired internet) as it mostly occurs on the orbits of the screen, where you don't necessarily focus. For most games it's hard to notice unless you look for it.
  - sylens 4y ago
    I first tried it with my iPhone and iPad last year and wasn’t impressed. They supposedly did some big update in the spring as well as lord of optimization work for Edge on the Steam Deck, where it feels great.
  - causality0 4y ago
    Xbox cloud seems to have a lot of variance. I tried it on a phone with a 5G connection that was benchmarking at 70mb/s and the picture quality was absolutely awful, like a broken video clip on a twenty year old version of VLC media player.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  This is also why nvidia should just give a Linux machine mode as well. No licensing fees, let people play whatever they want.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
Comparatively, I play a fair bit on Google Stadia, a similar Gaming-in-the-cloud service powered by Google. My experience with Stadia has been pretty great. Since November 2020 I've been playing Destiny 2, an MMO FPS, so perhaps the worst-case latency-requiring kind of game, and it's been pretty great, at least for PvE activities. (PvP has been less great, but perhaps that's more the fault of my aging reflexes than near-imperceptible network latency) When traveling, I've been playing Destiny on Stadia on an iPad (!) with an Xbox controller paired, using the host Wifi. That, alone, was enough to sell me on the value of Stadia. I'm gladly paying the $10/mo (half that of GeForce Now) for the Pro tier, which gives me 4k HDR, and a bunch of games free each month. People like to harp on Stadia, and it's true that their player numbers are low. In fact, a couple of days ago Destiny announced availability on the Epic Games Store, and apparently on Day 1 the number of players via the Epic Games Store outnumbered the number of Stadia players by 10x. There was a promotion on Epic which helped, but still, 10x! Google has certainly tarnished their brand by killing well-loved products, but I also feel like they're under-promoting what they have. For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", with no promotional content to entice the user.
- 41b696ef1113 4y ago
  >For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", Not exactly encouraging that Googles cares about the service. Google IOT seemed like it had a lot more revenue promise (probably cheaper to host as well), and even that could not survive the graveyard.
  - sgift 4y ago
    Of all the things speaking against Stadia, this is probably the least important one. It doesn't surprise me that Google would stipulate a client they have (more or less) complete control over. Geforce Now also uses their own client and no one bats an eye.
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  https://wccftech.com/stadia-destiny-2-1080p-medium-rdr2-1440p https://wccftech.com/stadia-destiny-2-1080p-medium-rdr2-1440... Destiny 2 on stadia is 1080p upscaled medium not 4k. GFN actually plays it on 4k at high settings.
ramesh31 4y ago
It’s almost good enough. Much better than Stadia. I can imagine if your geographical location was close enough, and with fiber gigabit, it would be good enough to never need a gaming rig again (for noncompetitive single player gaming).
qrush 4y ago
I used GeForce Now to play Valheim for months before deciding to plonk down to build a gaming PC in 2021. It's worth it if you want to dip your toes back into PC gaming!
rdtwo 4y ago
Biggest issue is that they haven’t implemented a clipboard so that makes copy paste annoying
- tastroder 4y ago
  That's been fixed in one of the recent patches, works fine for text content now.
california2077 4y ago
I think this service is the future of PC gaming. Owning computers with powerful graphics cards is like owning a car or a suburban house - will be a thing of the past soon. Society has less and less resources to indulge greedy people who don't want to share. You're not using your GPU most of the time. You don't need to own it. As a side bonus, the fewer people will have powerful GPUs at their disposal, the fewer of them will be able to secretly generate deep fakes and do other nasty things.
- serf 4y ago
  >As a side bonus, the fewer people will have powerful GPUs at their disposal, the fewer of them will be able to secretly generate deep fakes and do other nasty things. 'we must control the proliferation of assault-grade GPUs.' if you're selling the zero-ownership lifestyle then you'd be better served not reminding people that it'll be used as a leash inevitably. i'll stick to owning things. It's hard to catch an uber out of a forest fire during an emergency, and I think that analogy might apply to more things than people realize.
- notsapiensatall 4y ago
  Sure, but latency matters, and everybody near the same datacenter will want to use your rental GPUs at about the same time every day. And as a side deficit, fewer artists will be able to run ML models to template their next works and do other creative things.
- dbttdft 4y ago
  At risk of responding to a troll post, the idea that cloud gaming somehow brings equality to society, is retarded. As is the idea of games needing more powerful GPUs (it's a bug). Ironically, the reason games need more and more powerful GPUs is because greed: they can't support basic stuff like supporting less powerful systems, because the boss doesn't want to.
priomsrb 4y ago
For my setup, I do a "local" version of Geforce Now. I have my gaming PC in another room and stream it to my laptop using Nvidia's GameStream and Moonlight. I run it at 1440p with 120fps. With everything connected via ethernet, I get an end-to-end latency of 7ms. This means my stream is only just 1 frame behind the PC. I use this setup for fast-paced games as well as regular PC usage. 99% of the time, I can't tell that it's a remote stream. The advantages of the setup are: 1. Don't have to deal with the heat and noise of my gaming PC being in my room. 2. Switching between my laptop and gaming PC is faster than using a hardware KVM switch. 3. I can easily stream games or use my PC remotely with tablets and phones. Disadvantages are: 1. Gamestream and Moonlight don't support streaming dual screens at once. 2. Gsync doesn't work over streaming. So lower frame rates (< 60fps) aren't as smooth as native.
- kbenson 4y ago
  Don't forget that your input (mouse, keyboard) must travel to the other end before you can start receiving the output that's changed from it. The time from you performing an action to the point where you see that change represented (minus the time to do this locally on the gaming PC) is the actual latency. It's still probably well within your acceptable tolerances, but worth keeping in mind.
  - causality0 4y ago
    Personally I get around that by using input devices connected directly to the host PC and not the display client.
  - priomsrb 4y ago
    Fair point. Though the 7ms I mentioned is broken down into: - 5ms network latency - 2ms display latency (includes decoding + vsync latency) I'm assuming that the mouse/keyboard can begin processing as soon as the network call is done. If true that's about 5ms. Keep in mind that different mice vary in their latency. Even wired mice can vary from 1.5ms to more than 25ms in click latency [1]. So if you use a low latency mouse over the network, it could be faster than some mice that are plugged in directly. [1] - https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency
freeflight 4y ago
I tried GeForce Now a few years ago, overall it was a rather underwhelming, and quite weird experience; Felt more like logging into a remote desktop. Which made the process of entering login credentials for my uPlay account (wanted to try some Assassins Creed game) kind of creepy. The final experience was predictably a bit latency heavy and lots of artifacting/unclean picture quality from the video compression. Tho the Microsoft version of it on the Windows 10 Xbox app, sees a bit more use from me due to GamePass; Way more streamlined, easy and quick way to test a game before I decide actually download several GB worth of it.
dbttdft 4y ago
Okay hackers gather round let's scoff at how hilariously bad this consumer oriented article is. It's not only content-free, but the guy is such a casual at gaming that he even has 400 games (that he never plays, as any Silicon Valley type would) and still doesn't notice game breaking lag. I tried Geforce Now on two occasions. Both times, it was completely unplayable for literally anything. Remember how bad vsync feels if you use it at 60Hz? This is like that but multiple times worse. And to top it off you can easily feel the latency increasing and decreasing as you play, so you couldn't even lead your shots consistently. The first time I started it, it shows me a VNC type window where I can login to Steam, a portent of future disappointment. The second time, I ran two games at 1024x768 and I measured and saw it only uses a small fraction of my bandwidth: 7mbps for mostly still scenes, and 20mbps for spinning the mouse around. And the latency was still unbearable. This was on a machine with very low latency to begin with (so it should be even harder for a game to bring the latency within human perception, than with an average machine): CRT, and mouse and keyboard at 1000Hz. Further debugging: Ran the built in network test in the Geforce Now menu, latency 14ms. Opened the status window in the games (ctrl+alt+f6), it shows ~50ms RTD (is that round trip duration?) at all times. That would explain the lag. I don't know enough networking yet, but I'd say once you're receiving multiple megabits (as opposed to maybe a few kilobits with most games), you no longer get good latencies. For one more test, in the Geforce Now settings, I lowered max bitrate to 5mbps, kept framerate at 60fps (highest you can get for free), and turned vsync off. This time it showed RTD 30ms. It was less bad this time (could be a coincidence), but still much worse than 60Hz vsync would feel. The graphics were ultra crap at 5mpbs too. In all of the above tests, it was never smooth either. This is to be expected as I don't think you can just go from 7mbps to 20mbps each time something interesting on screen happens and have a constant amount of latency in those instances. I did notice that whenever I flicked 90 degrees it stuttered. On all these tests, the games were on lowest graphics settings. I also noticed the color depth vastly improved after switching back to the realm game on real hardware (on a 90% dead CRT). To confirm that this is a pure streaming service (no advance stuff like 3D acceleration offloading over the net), I also tested downloading something at max speed while playing the game to confirm the graphics do degrade to sub crap jpg quality and the sound starts skipping. But what about casual games, you say? Like an RPG? The lag is still so bad that you will likely strain your wrist or arm due to constantly having to readjust your mouse to do basic tasks. I want games that don't have constant stutters due to their team not caring about a baseline resource usage. Most games will still stutter on a 3080 RTX. Streaming doesn't fix this. Streaming gaming sucks and will likely to continue to suck for the next decades. I want at least 240Hz if I'm using an LCD for smoothness but mainly because 120Hz is still too blurry, and with 1080p at the very least so it can be on a 24" monitor without too much moire, and with zero input lag on top of what the game itself already has. I feel like if streaming gaming takes off, the chance of games ever running good will never happen. It's already hard to get a baseline 240FPS at a reasonable percentile, and networks are bloated with garbage and streaming gaming will absolutely worsen this problem. Games should engineer to reduce jitter. The reason you see enemy players teleport is because their latency changes (or their network straight up cuts off for a while). And last but not least, streaming gaming is the next level after Steam where you don't own your games. Steam (and competitors) already sucks ass because it's terrible half-assed software, but it also prevents you from being able to revert whatever version of the game you want.
greggman3 4y ago
I used GeForce Now once https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzL3vcqvU7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzL3vcqvU7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_BDC-juQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_BDC-juQU Lol! Actually I was really impressed with GeForce Now. It came in super handy during a long move where my PC was on a boat for 2.5 months and a friend and I were in the middle of playing some games. Connected it to my Steam account and picked up right where I left off (kudos to steam too for syncing stuff)
rendaw 4y ago
I like the idea of cloud gaming a lot. I don't need a Gaming PC, I don't need to chase new hardware, I don't need to shut down all my software to maximize available resources, etc. But Genshin is only available on the Windows and Mac desktop apps (and the Chromebook app, not the browser on Chromebook which isn't clear), I can only assume for politico-business rules (I can't think of a possible technical reason for this). They hide it from the UI and support has no idea about this. So I haven't yet been able to try GFN.
ericls 4y ago
I love articles that list the 1. 2. 3. 4. etc..
tjpnz 4y ago
How feasible would it be to put together a DIY solution? Could I for instance spin up a GPU EC2 instance on AWS with SteamOS and get a similar experience? I would love to give Nvidia my money but until rent seeking game publishers stop ruining it for everyone I'm reluctant.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  That would probably be fun to try. I looked for pricing and I think it’d be $0.50+ per hour, so not super cost effective unless you only play a few hours a month.
PostOnce 4y ago
You guys are walking into a trap. This is going to be way worse than movie streaming, and unlike movies, when one of these companies pulls a game you once loved and it's not available, there will be no pirates to save you, because the software is trapped in the cloud. The future may well be streaming-only. Mods will be greatly impacted eventually, with only sanctioned mods allowed to run in the cloud. There'll be no deep tweaking, no introspection or learning opportunities. Cloud mod API only. And it'll go the way of all cloud services: fragmented. You'll have to subscribe to a different one for each game you want to play. And you won't stop paying. To play a game over the course of 10 years, as many of you have with Diablo or Quake or Minecraft, you'll have to pay your $15/mo to each streaming service, so instead of Diablo being $50, it'll be $1500. That's before we even start talking about the F2P/IAP/DLC casinos. You used to choose on the character select screen or find items in the game, now new characters are $10 and items are $10 up to $100+, we all know it should be part of the game. Think, they don't really make arcade games anymore. I guess traditional videogames will die off too. More than one company has quit normal games to run a casino for children. I guess I'll go pen a dirge for the dying art I have loved. P.S., thank god for indie developers who make games without input from accountants and psychiatrists who specialize in addiction, they may save us all yet. There's also a glimmer of hope at gog.com where they still sell real games without DRM. I'll keep hoping.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. If you ever decide you don’t want to stream - you can build a gaming PC like people already do. Those games that come out to $1500 over a decade? Don’t forget that a decade is probably 2x $2000 for building gaming PCs.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. Some of your gaming library, for example no Blizzard games are playable. Though this is not Nvidia's fault. I think a few publishers realized where this is going and pulled their games by threatening to sue so they could work towards a streaming service of their own.
smeagull 4y ago
GeForce Now is that thing I always had to struggle to not install when setting up my drivers for Nvidia cards on Windows. Glad I'm done with that platform.
michaelmrose 4y ago
Why did he compare the cost of a 3090 an expensive nicety available to few gamers vs a virtual and possibly imaginary 3080 while playing games at a resolution that could have been achieved by a 2060. It's no small difference, $1740 given by the article for a 3090 and $290 for a 2060. I've found that when decisions are somewhat arbitrary one chooses numbers that best make the argument for us. Best practice is not to pick your examples in a fashion that amounts to fudging the numbers and stick to more practical details like the fact that you can only play a fraction of the games and they can be taken away at any time or become more expensive. Altogether a nearly worthless service. A novelty without substantial value.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
> but also because GPUs (the processors that run graphics cards) are really efficient for cryptocurrency mining. Wannabe Bitcoin barons have been snapping graphics cards of all kinds and driving prices to ridiculous levels. Not Bitcoin, but Ethereum. Several years ago people have stopped using graphic cards to mine Bitcoin, and instead use dedicated ASICs.
drewrbaker 4y ago
I would urge people to try out Shadow. It’s a cloud based windows gaming machine that you remote connect to. It’s great. You can install anything you want.
- thebitstick 4y ago
  I had to Ctrl/⌘ + F because I couldn't find anyone mentioning Shadow. Why is GeForce Now still more popular than Shadow, especially when Nvidia limits the games you are allowed to play. I haven't plugged my local gaming PC into the wall in months. The future of Mac gaming for me is Shadow.
LeanderK 4y ago
I have always enjoyed strategy games the most and a few years back I briefly used a service like GeforceNow. Since input lag is not super important for those games, I enjoyed using it and didn't have a lot of problems. If I would start some casual gaming now, I would probably use such a service since I would definitely not get an extra computer and like the simplicity and availability (I just need a laptop and a stable internet connection). I use an old macbook with a crappy inbuilt graphic card, I can't play anything.
d1sxeyes 4y ago
One way I’ve benefited from this is by using Epic’s free games deals. They’re a bit iffy over the summer, but during the holiday season they gave away a bunch of games like the Metro series, the Tomb Raider series etc. I have a founders subscription which makes it good value but even without, by maximising the free games potential and Steam sales etc, I have a great gaming library I can spin up in a minute or two without needing a gaming PC. Not had noticeable latency issues. YMMV as always, but if I ever decide to build a gaming PC, I have those games in my Steam or Epic library and can run them locally (and most games will sync saves etc. so no progress lost). One game that really pissed me off was Elite: Frontiers because they decided they were no longer going to support macOS, but I was able to continue playing just by using GFN. So the argument of “once you’ve bought it once, you can play it forever” doesn’t really hold true for games you download and run locally in all cases either.
etempleton 4y ago
Cloud streaming will probably never be my preferred option, but the tech has gotten to an impressive place. Microsoft’s implementation is amazing. The thing I find less useful about it is that it requires a good internet connection. And where I have a good internet connection is home. At home, the advantages of a cloud streaming platform are minimal, so I am not sure if this will ever be for me, though I can see a world where this is preferred to many consumers because they have no up front cost of a device.
squarefoot 4y ago
This crap looks like the next step towards total personal computing annihilation by SaaS. I hope I'll be dead before computers will be turned into stupid terminals forced to download and store everything remotely, lacking even the hardware needed to render graphics in favor of capabilities that can be used only to show what is served from elsewhere. That will be the future if we don't leave that path asap.
mrkramer 4y ago
Cloud gaming is inevitable because of the Moore's law but as Moore's law slows down "fewer and fewer computer users will think their computer is too slow[0]." And they won't buy new computer or laptop for gaming because the computer they already have will be powerful enough to run most of the games. This is where the complexity of managing games and managing the whole gaming experience comes along. Simply offering cloud gaming service is not enough, you need to include extra services and perks in order for people to consider signing up and using your cloud gaming service. [0] https://jlforrest.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/the-forrest-curve/ https://jlforrest.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/the-forrest-curve...
joshspankit 4y ago
> My rural internet connection is 40mbps/sec down in theory — in practice it’s between 25 and 40 depending which second you poll it, and the speed is affected by whether someone is downstairs watching Netflix while I’m upstairs playing a graphics-intensive game. I’m constantly surprised by how few ISPs have implemented CoDel or CAKE. While it does not fix actual packet loss, it solves basically everything else: inconsistent speeds due to some packets getting priority, bufferbloat, laggy streaming. If I could hand people a router that just had an in port and out port and CoDel installed it would solve 90% of the problems. Unfortunately (for us) ISPs have done away with modems and instead gone for modem/router/wifi combo boxes which makes traffic shaping much much more complicated.

133 points by rcarmo 4y ago

Follow-up to: "(Not) getting a new computer"[1]. [1] https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/08/22/not-getting-a-new-computer/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/08/22/not-getting-a-new-com... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553017 (58pts, 2d ago, 90comments)

wyldfire 4y ago

Is this Scalzi the author?

Arubis 4y ago
Byline is “by John Scalzi”.
- wyldfire 4y ago
  Sorry - I meant is this the same John Scalzi who wrote novels like "Redshirts"? And it sounds like the answer is "yes".
loeg 4y ago
Yes.

WithinReason 4y ago

GeForce Now has a free tier so you can try it without spending money: The session is limited to 1 hour and there is a queue when many people want to play, but otherwise it's the same you get with 1 tier up. Worth giving it a shot, I was surprised how well I could play Witcher 3 on a FireTV Stick plugged into a TV.

macNchz 4y ago

I tested out GeForce Now and Stadia two years ago and decided fairly quickly to build a desktop machine instead. Turns out that lots of PC games work really well on desktop Linux these days! The author discusses his internet connection, but for me even with a 500mbit connection and ~10ms ping to NYC area data centers I felt the video compression artifacts and periodic stutters were too noticeable. I also had some input glitches that were basically impossible to diagnose and made certain games hard to play.

nullwarp 4y ago
I came to the same conclusion really, it's a neat service but even using something like Parsec locally induces enough latency that I just can't use it. I still run windows in a VFIO setup but Linux is really good for gaming these days. Was even playing Cyberpunk on the release day!
vlunkr 4y ago
Even using Steam in-home streaming on the same network games look much worse because of compression.
- wingworks 4y ago
  Yeah, don't use Steams streaming system, it's buggy and so low quality. Personally I've had allot more success with Parsec. Even when playing with others across the internet.
broast 4y ago
It's unclear in this comment if you are lumping them together, but GeForce Now's performance and stream quality is leagues ahead of Stadia's. As someone who exclusively games on the cloud. My main driver, though, is ShadowPC, which gives me dual monitors, 4k, and full desktop access (for modding etc) on a stream
- macNchz 4y ago
  I did find Geforce Now to be better than Stadia, however I remember being super distracted by the compression artifacts on both. Dark scenes with motion and lots of detail/particles just didn’t look good to me.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    This is exactly how I feel streaming 4k. One stupid little black square and it breaks my immersion. I stick with UHD discs and 4k files on a usb drive.
4y ago

ralusek 4y ago

My experience with GeForce Now is that despite having fiber internet and WiFi 6, games are still unplayably laggy. I also wasn't able to play Cities Skylines, because none of my Steam Workshop mods would install.

WithinReason 4y ago
It's better if you have Ethernet, that way I get no stutter and the lag is almost unnoticeable (I get 9ms ping which is lower than the duration between 2 monitor refreshes at 60Hz)
- djbeadle 4y ago
  More anacedata: GeForce now over Ethernet is significantly better than Wi-Fi 6 in my apartment building.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    My only question is how this is even surprising. Wi-Fi is an arms race between you and your neighbours about who has the most powerful Wi-Fi transmitter, while Ethernet works wonderfully and collision free, in terms of network packets. We all have at least three Wi-Fi devices, including the smartphone, using some frequency bandwidth. Yes, people dislike cables, but if you ever play and transmit the game via OBS to Twitch, for example, Wi-Fi is simply not going to cut it any more.
    - WithinReason 4y ago
      In principle Wi-Fi devices should be able to find a free frequency channel to communicate in (especially Wi-Fi 6 that parent refers to), so yes, this is surprising. Maybe there is a reason GeForce Now has a page about recommended Wi-Fi routers: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/recommended/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/recommended/
      - Shorel 4y ago

burlesona 4y ago

FWIW I’ve had a blast with GFN, but I have fiber internet and use a wired Ethernet connection to the router. It’s not very good over wifi IMO. I would recommend it but only for those with great bandwidth and a wired connection.

rdtwo 4y ago

I found that it worked really well on the free tier. There are hiccups and i can’t tell why my isp gives me 1-5% packet loss but I really like that it kicks me out after an hour so I have to have reasonable play sessions. Wait times are rare the service is too good for a free tier

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
It's true, I agree, the 1 hour limit is a feature not a pain point lol.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  It’s one of the reasons I didn’t upgrade I like that it cuts me off and at least makes me decide if I want to continue.

urthor 4y ago

If I was 9 years old, again... I, urgently, must play the latest AAA extravaganza, again... ...I've only $30 to my name, again. I'm collecting my family's supply of $2 coins, again. I'd be all over it. --------------------------------------------------------- Tons of software works REALLY well on Geforce now. Asynchronous, turn based games. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is one. Server side rendering latency w/ monitor is a fascinating problem. I found the idea incredibly technically interesting. NOT so much for me, an engineer who one click buys electronics. I'm not the audience.

simplicio 4y ago

I've found it to be a pretty good product, at least for my use case. I only have an hour or two/wk to play games these days, so it doesn't make a ton of sense to spend the time and $ to buy and install a new video card. So I got whatever the bottom paid tier is for GeForce Now and, while there are occasional lag-spikes and jitters, they're generally rare enough to only rise to the level of minor annoyance. If I wanted to spend a lot of time playing games, especially multi-player ones, I don't think it would be a good substitute for using my own machine, but for being able to occasionally dip a toe into a game when I get the itch, its a pretty good deal.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

I've used it for about 14 months extensively - I wasn't able to upgrade my rig when cyberpunk 2077 came out. It was brilliant - I played the game at max settings, looked beautiful, not a care in The world. Then I used it too for some turn based / strategy / rpg games as I could play them on laptop, desktop etc, and it was easy to try games without bothering with downloading and local storage. It was sufficiently excellent experience that even once I got an upgraded gaming computer, I still kept the basic foundation paid package due to sheer convenience. It's just great to try and play games with low frequency without installation / configuration / troubleshooting hassle. I have also found it consistently less glitchy over last year to stream a game from cloud to my media computers via geforce now, than from my next room gaming rig via steam link... Which speaks more bad things of steam link itself, but also I think at least some good things of geforce now. Note that I have Ethernet for my laptop and desktop. I can not speak to latency via wireless - my assumption would be "frustrating" so I didn't even test.

exodust 4y ago
How is latency avoided? I've not paid attention to streaming games or looked how it works. If your mouse input needs to go via the internet to control the 3d character on screen, how is there not a noticeable lag compared to a local rendering of the game?
- solarkraft 4y ago
  I think networks are simply that good now.
  - dbttdft 4y ago
    They aren't. The people who advocate stream gaming are precisely like this guy in the article who bought 400 games and never played any of them.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Partially it's modern speedy networks; but partially it's also the player. There are people who need (and people who believe they need) 165HZ or heck 240HZ screen, 8000Hz Mouse, and notice every millisecond of lag. And there are people like me and apparently Scalzi :-). My experience with GeforceNow was perfect. I'm sure somebody with better reflexes and more into competitive multiplayer would find it complete unacceptable.

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago

GFN is tested to be faster than native consoles in terms of input latency. https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs https://imgur.com/TzPnCLs People are talking about turn based games but my experience is that it's flawless and indistinguishable from native in twitch games like fortnite and counterstrike. But then again I live on the East Coast pretty close to a datacenter and I'm on fiber, so obviously this won't be the case for people in rural areas. But for people who are in situations like mine, it's great.

jb_s 4y ago
I've unfortunately played way too many twitch shooters on PC and latency is really noticeable to me. To the point where I can't stand using my work-supplied laptop because of slight mouse lag (I think the mouse travels maybe 30-40ms behind my hand) and 60hz screens. This is somewhat annoying coming from 165Hz, gaming peripherals. Then I have to connect to a VM to do development. Absolute hell.
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  Yeah, it won't match the requirements for very high end competitive gamers. I was just talking empirical results found by Digital Foundry matching consoles. > mouse travels maybe 30-40ms behind my hand That sounds awful. But it reminds me that the chart I posted is tested using a very exacting tool and even the 3090 has a 30ms latency on 120hz and that's about as good as it gets. So you shouldn't take these numbers in a vacuum but more comparatively. GFN on 120hz is better than a 3060 on native in 60hz. I know it's not compelling for anyone who hates 60hz heh but for people who are okay with 60hz then GFN latency won't feel any different to you.
  - blibble 4y ago
    given GFN is running the same software as you'd run locally (the game), and using the same local hardware (keyboard, mouse, etc) to send the inputs, and then the same local hardware to display the server rendered output (your monitor/TV)... how can be true that GFN doesn't add at least the same input latency as running it locally? unless there's some trick I'm missing it's going to be at least the same (plus the network latency)

cpleppert 4y ago

>> My rural internet connection is 40mbps/sec down in theory — in practice it’s between 25 and 40 depending which second you poll it, and the speed is affected by whether someone is downstairs watching Netflix while I’m upstairs playing a graphics-intensive game. I'm surprised he even bothered trying the service let alone he found it playable. A rural area with 25-40mbps with someone using the internet at the same time ( let alone netflix!) is basically worst case scenario. If you are playing near a datacenter with reasonable internet your experience will be significantly better. Geforce now is technically very good when configured properly; it is similar to parsec (which is probably state of the art). Worth pointing out: the Geforce now library is not great and and I wouldn't hold my breath on it improving too much. Most interested publishers have already signed up and the rest are either commited to other platforms or aren't willing to choose nvidia over other monetization options.

sp332 4y ago
25 Mbps is plenty for 1080p60 even for real-time video. Latency is more important. GFN says they can even cram 2560x1600 at 120 FPS into 35 Mbps.
- some-guy 4y ago
  Ultra-low latency is important, but zero packet loss and low jitter is even more important. I have "on paper" great internet in the SF Bay Area (Monkeybrains), and while I can get 600mpbs symmetrical throughput, the jitter and 0.5% average packet loss (it's a microwave mesh network), game streaming is completely unplayable.
kcexn 4y ago
For the most part, I have found that GeForce Now is not bandwidth limited. NVIDIA has spent a lot of time and money tuning the service to do clever dynamic upscaling locally on your machine to minimise the sort of block compression artifacts and frame skipping that you would normally see from say YouTube or Netflix. It's not even particularly latency bound, since round trip times less than 40ms are for most people (unless you're a very competitive player), completely unnoticeable. I've played with latencies at around 60ms and I still find it tolerable (although occasionally a bit annoying). Instead it's very sensitive to network jitter. Even 1 or 2 ms of random jitter can dramatically reduce the quality of the service. And given the distance between your local machine, and the number of hops required between your device and the server, there's a lot of room for random jitter. Part of the problem can be mitigated, by carefully ensuring that everything in your home network is dimensioned properly. But the rest of the pipe is owned by your ISP, and they could apply all sorts of dodgy QoS parameters that increase your likelihood of experiencing jitter.

abridgett 4y ago

GeForce Now was/is great. Bethesda though (amongst others) have lost a formerly loyal fan due to pulling their games. Why? I own the games, I paid for them. If I had my old PC still I could play them just the same. Presumably so that in several years they can run their own cloud service. The greed of companies will be their own downfall.

mupuff1234 4y ago
Sadly Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft who are running their own cloud gaming service.
Haegin 4y ago
All (or at least most, though I didn't notice any missing that aren't super old - it has Morrowind on there) of the Bethesda games are available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. It's more expensive but comes with the games so might be worth a look if you particularly like Bethesda's products.

stavros 4y ago

Rather offtopic, but would anyone recommend one of Scalzi's books if I enjoyed Old Man's War?

sushisource 4y ago
Lock In and the sequel Head On are both fun reads with his same humorous style that you'll probably read in two or three sittings
- stavros 4y ago
  Excellent, thank you!
NikolaNovak 4y ago
Rest of the series is pretty decent up to last book which is a collection of stories. My favourite though is the independent novella God Engines.
- stavros 4y ago
  I'll try them, thanks!
sarlalian 4y ago
The whole Collapsing Empire series is also quite excellent.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
drosan 4y ago
I've enjoyed Interdependency trilogy immensely and now reading "Kaiju Preservation Society" and it is awesome too.

chatmasta 4y ago

GeForce Now is great for simulation games like Factorio or Civilization. Unfortunately 2K Games decided to arbitrarily restrict users of GeForce Now from playing Civilization VI, even with a licensed copy from the Steam store. In the beginning, it worked great. I could play on a giant map with 13 AI civilizations who completed their turns in a few seconds. And my laptop didn’t sound like an airplane. I’m still bitter at 2K about this. If they offered an alternative cloud gaming subscription then I would purchase it to play Civ on a cloud machine. But they just decided to interfere in my choice of which hardware I use to run their software, while offering no alternative. Super disappointing. I do still pay for GeForce Now though, because it’s a low price and because I have anxiety about what would happen to my save files if I stopped paying.

NikolaNovak 4y ago
I agree 100%. However note your save games should be safe on steam cloud. Nothing gets stored on geforce now - your virtual instance gets destroyed once you log off. Should be easy to verify via your laptop even if you don't load up the save.
- Cristan 4y ago
  You can also check the status of your cloud saves directly in your Steam profile through a browser: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage. You can even download the files too.
akkartik 4y ago
Sounds like they don't need to care what you think :) The only way to influence these companies is to vote with your dollars.
- izacus 4y ago
  With publisher/content owner IP monopolies, there's no such thing as "voting with your dollars".
- 4y ago

gherkinnn 4y ago

I played a couple of slowish action games like the Metro series on GeForce Now and couldn’t be happier. Tons of games from my old Steam library, all on my MBP. No more separate gaming rig required. A CoD campaign should work just as well, but I don’t trust it to be fast enough for competitive MP or Doom 2016. Stadia does not exist and Shadow PC had an eternal waiting list.

sascha_sl 4y ago
Shadow is now available the same day, probably because they almost doubled the price.
xeromal 4y ago
Not exactly GeForce Now, but you'd be surprised with streaming games that require timing. I stream Elden Ring from my place in LA to my family's place in ATL using Steam and I manage to do well. Just beat a tough boss tonight.

taftster 4y ago

I tried it over the end-of-year holiday break with my 3 boys to play Guild Wars 2 from our Macs. It sucked down over our 1.2 TB of Xfinity bandwidth within maybe just a day's worth of playing. If we would have continued, I would have easily hit the $100 additional bandwidth fee and decided we had better stop before I broke the bank. I couldn't figure out how to reduce the video stream bandwidth with any of the settings. It worked really well technically, but without some improvements in this regard, I don't know how I can use it. I guess folks with unlimited bandwidth can make it work, but that's about it. I paid for the full service and then promptly had to cancel all of our accounts, since it wasn't going to be viable for us.

boppo1 4y ago
Who is your ISP?
- metadat 4y ago
  Xfinity == Comcast cable

smoldesu 4y ago

> It gives me access to 88 out of my over 400 purchased games, with the emphasis being on more recent and/or more popular games. Jesus Christ, how can it be that bad? Their servers are running Windows, right? I don't see how Nvidia's coverage can be that bad unless they're encumbered by licensing quirks. Even Valve's Proton manages to cover ~75-77% of the Steam store's titles...

Gigachad 4y ago
There are apparently a lot of licensing issues.
bfgoodrich 4y ago
Because game vendors think they can double dip. As mentioned in another post, all of the Firaxis games worked brilliantly on GFN, but despite the fact that it's my own copy that I'm playing, in my own Steam account, Firaxis decided that they would remove all of their games from GFN unless they get a payoff. It's notable that legally Firaxis (and the other sleazy scumbags) largely have no legal basis, but nvidia decided not to make enemies and let them do this. As a result, I have bought no additional Civ expansions, and will never buy another Firaxis game.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >largely have no legal basis Presumably that is covered by this part of the EULA: >You agree not to, and not to provide guidance or instruction to any other individual or entity on how to: >except as otherwise specifically provided by the Software or this Agreement, use or install the Software (or permit others to do same) on a network, for on-line use, or on more than one computer or gaming unit at the same time;

snarfy 4y ago

I might be a bit too hardcore for this product. I play FPS like Quake casually but somewhat competitively. Ever millisecond matters to me. It's probably quite compelling for games where latency is not as important.

beebeepka 4y ago
I guess the experience would be comparable to playing Quake back in the olden days. Quake 3 prior to late CPMA netcode was quite bad even at 50ms.
- FrostKiwi 4y ago
  Not really. Input latency is what matters here. Even with great netcode, streaming games just doesn't fit certain genres. With how many technologies get caked unto the rendering pipeline and CRTs being replaced by slower response time LCDs (unless you pay a premium), you might even argue it got worse compared to the olden days.

sylens 4y ago

>> While GeForce Now supports a large number of my games on Steam, it doesn’t support them all. It gives me access to 88 out of my over 400 purchased games, with the emphasis being on more recent and/or more popular games. This is going to be what ends up hamstringing the service in the long run. When GeForce Now first came out, you could play a much larger catalog of titles; publishers then caught wind of this and started pulling their games off of it, in case they wanted to launch their own streaming service in the future. For this reason, I think Microsoft has the pole position with their XBox Cloud Gaming service. They have been running it as an extension of their Game Pass Ultimate service, and are rumored to allow you to play games you bought and own through the service sometime later this year. There's a future where a Microsoft game you own can be played on PC, XBox consoles, or streamed to an iPad or Chromebook, syncing progress between them.

keyle 4y ago
When I started using the xbox cloud gaming, I thought it was wishful thinking, a gimmick. Boy was I wrong. It's absolutely mind blowing. You do notice artefacts when you move fast in FPS type games but you even forget about it most of the time (fully wired internet) as it mostly occurs on the orbits of the screen, where you don't necessarily focus. For most games it's hard to notice unless you look for it.
- sylens 4y ago
  I first tried it with my iPhone and iPad last year and wasn’t impressed. They supposedly did some big update in the spring as well as lord of optimization work for Edge on the Steam Deck, where it feels great.
- causality0 4y ago
  Xbox cloud seems to have a lot of variance. I tried it on a phone with a 5G connection that was benchmarking at 70mb/s and the picture quality was absolutely awful, like a broken video clip on a twenty year old version of VLC media player.
aaomidi 4y ago
This is also why nvidia should just give a Linux machine mode as well. No licensing fees, let people play whatever they want.

AceJohnny2 4y ago

Comparatively, I play a fair bit on Google Stadia, a similar Gaming-in-the-cloud service powered by Google. My experience with Stadia has been pretty great. Since November 2020 I've been playing Destiny 2, an MMO FPS, so perhaps the worst-case latency-requiring kind of game, and it's been pretty great, at least for PvE activities. (PvP has been less great, but perhaps that's more the fault of my aging reflexes than near-imperceptible network latency) When traveling, I've been playing Destiny on Stadia on an iPad (!) with an Xbox controller paired, using the host Wifi. That, alone, was enough to sell me on the value of Stadia. I'm gladly paying the $10/mo (half that of GeForce Now) for the Pro tier, which gives me 4k HDR, and a bunch of games free each month. People like to harp on Stadia, and it's true that their player numbers are low. In fact, a couple of days ago Destiny announced availability on the Epic Games Store, and apparently on Day 1 the number of players via the Epic Games Store outnumbered the number of Stadia players by 10x. There was a promotion on Epic which helped, but still, 10x! Google has certainly tarnished their brand by killing well-loved products, but I also feel like they're under-promoting what they have. For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", with no promotional content to entice the user.

41b696ef1113 4y ago
>For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", Not exactly encouraging that Googles cares about the service. Google IOT seemed like it had a lot more revenue promise (probably cheaper to host as well), and even that could not survive the graveyard.
- sgift 4y ago
  Of all the things speaking against Stadia, this is probably the least important one. It doesn't surprise me that Google would stipulate a client they have (more or less) complete control over. Geforce Now also uses their own client and no one bats an eye.
KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
https://wccftech.com/stadia-destiny-2-1080p-medium-rdr2-1440p https://wccftech.com/stadia-destiny-2-1080p-medium-rdr2-1440... Destiny 2 on stadia is 1080p upscaled medium not 4k. GFN actually plays it on 4k at high settings.

ramesh31 4y ago

It’s almost good enough. Much better than Stadia. I can imagine if your geographical location was close enough, and with fiber gigabit, it would be good enough to never need a gaming rig again (for noncompetitive single player gaming).

qrush 4y ago

I used GeForce Now to play Valheim for months before deciding to plonk down to build a gaming PC in 2021. It's worth it if you want to dip your toes back into PC gaming!

rdtwo 4y ago

Biggest issue is that they haven’t implemented a clipboard so that makes copy paste annoying

tastroder 4y ago
That's been fixed in one of the recent patches, works fine for text content now.

california2077 4y ago

I think this service is the future of PC gaming. Owning computers with powerful graphics cards is like owning a car or a suburban house - will be a thing of the past soon. Society has less and less resources to indulge greedy people who don't want to share. You're not using your GPU most of the time. You don't need to own it. As a side bonus, the fewer people will have powerful GPUs at their disposal, the fewer of them will be able to secretly generate deep fakes and do other nasty things.

serf 4y ago
>As a side bonus, the fewer people will have powerful GPUs at their disposal, the fewer of them will be able to secretly generate deep fakes and do other nasty things. 'we must control the proliferation of assault-grade GPUs.' if you're selling the zero-ownership lifestyle then you'd be better served not reminding people that it'll be used as a leash inevitably. i'll stick to owning things. It's hard to catch an uber out of a forest fire during an emergency, and I think that analogy might apply to more things than people realize.
notsapiensatall 4y ago
Sure, but latency matters, and everybody near the same datacenter will want to use your rental GPUs at about the same time every day. And as a side deficit, fewer artists will be able to run ML models to template their next works and do other creative things.
dbttdft 4y ago
At risk of responding to a troll post, the idea that cloud gaming somehow brings equality to society, is retarded. As is the idea of games needing more powerful GPUs (it's a bug). Ironically, the reason games need more and more powerful GPUs is because greed: they can't support basic stuff like supporting less powerful systems, because the boss doesn't want to.

priomsrb 4y ago

For my setup, I do a "local" version of Geforce Now. I have my gaming PC in another room and stream it to my laptop using Nvidia's GameStream and Moonlight. I run it at 1440p with 120fps. With everything connected via ethernet, I get an end-to-end latency of 7ms. This means my stream is only just 1 frame behind the PC. I use this setup for fast-paced games as well as regular PC usage. 99% of the time, I can't tell that it's a remote stream. The advantages of the setup are: 1. Don't have to deal with the heat and noise of my gaming PC being in my room. 2. Switching between my laptop and gaming PC is faster than using a hardware KVM switch. 3. I can easily stream games or use my PC remotely with tablets and phones. Disadvantages are: 1. Gamestream and Moonlight don't support streaming dual screens at once. 2. Gsync doesn't work over streaming. So lower frame rates (< 60fps) aren't as smooth as native.

kbenson 4y ago
Don't forget that your input (mouse, keyboard) must travel to the other end before you can start receiving the output that's changed from it. The time from you performing an action to the point where you see that change represented (minus the time to do this locally on the gaming PC) is the actual latency. It's still probably well within your acceptable tolerances, but worth keeping in mind.
- causality0 4y ago
  Personally I get around that by using input devices connected directly to the host PC and not the display client.
- priomsrb 4y ago
  Fair point. Though the 7ms I mentioned is broken down into: - 5ms network latency - 2ms display latency (includes decoding + vsync latency) I'm assuming that the mouse/keyboard can begin processing as soon as the network call is done. If true that's about 5ms. Keep in mind that different mice vary in their latency. Even wired mice can vary from 1.5ms to more than 25ms in click latency [1]. So if you use a low latency mouse over the network, it could be faster than some mice that are plugged in directly. [1] - https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency

freeflight 4y ago

I tried GeForce Now a few years ago, overall it was a rather underwhelming, and quite weird experience; Felt more like logging into a remote desktop. Which made the process of entering login credentials for my uPlay account (wanted to try some Assassins Creed game) kind of creepy. The final experience was predictably a bit latency heavy and lots of artifacting/unclean picture quality from the video compression. Tho the Microsoft version of it on the Windows 10 Xbox app, sees a bit more use from me due to GamePass; Way more streamlined, easy and quick way to test a game before I decide actually download several GB worth of it.

dbttdft 4y ago

Okay hackers gather round let's scoff at how hilariously bad this consumer oriented article is. It's not only content-free, but the guy is such a casual at gaming that he even has 400 games (that he never plays, as any Silicon Valley type would) and still doesn't notice game breaking lag. I tried Geforce Now on two occasions. Both times, it was completely unplayable for literally anything. Remember how bad vsync feels if you use it at 60Hz? This is like that but multiple times worse. And to top it off you can easily feel the latency increasing and decreasing as you play, so you couldn't even lead your shots consistently. The first time I started it, it shows me a VNC type window where I can login to Steam, a portent of future disappointment. The second time, I ran two games at 1024x768 and I measured and saw it only uses a small fraction of my bandwidth: 7mbps for mostly still scenes, and 20mbps for spinning the mouse around. And the latency was still unbearable. This was on a machine with very low latency to begin with (so it should be even harder for a game to bring the latency within human perception, than with an average machine): CRT, and mouse and keyboard at 1000Hz. Further debugging: Ran the built in network test in the Geforce Now menu, latency 14ms. Opened the status window in the games (ctrl+alt+f6), it shows ~50ms RTD (is that round trip duration?) at all times. That would explain the lag. I don't know enough networking yet, but I'd say once you're receiving multiple megabits (as opposed to maybe a few kilobits with most games), you no longer get good latencies. For one more test, in the Geforce Now settings, I lowered max bitrate to 5mbps, kept framerate at 60fps (highest you can get for free), and turned vsync off. This time it showed RTD 30ms. It was less bad this time (could be a coincidence), but still much worse than 60Hz vsync would feel. The graphics were ultra crap at 5mpbs too. In all of the above tests, it was never smooth either. This is to be expected as I don't think you can just go from 7mbps to 20mbps each time something interesting on screen happens and have a constant amount of latency in those instances. I did notice that whenever I flicked 90 degrees it stuttered. On all these tests, the games were on lowest graphics settings. I also noticed the color depth vastly improved after switching back to the realm game on real hardware (on a 90% dead CRT). To confirm that this is a pure streaming service (no advance stuff like 3D acceleration offloading over the net), I also tested downloading something at max speed while playing the game to confirm the graphics do degrade to sub crap jpg quality and the sound starts skipping. But what about casual games, you say? Like an RPG? The lag is still so bad that you will likely strain your wrist or arm due to constantly having to readjust your mouse to do basic tasks. I want games that don't have constant stutters due to their team not caring about a baseline resource usage. Most games will still stutter on a 3080 RTX. Streaming doesn't fix this. Streaming gaming sucks and will likely to continue to suck for the next decades. I want at least 240Hz if I'm using an LCD for smoothness but mainly because 120Hz is still too blurry, and with 1080p at the very least so it can be on a 24" monitor without too much moire, and with zero input lag on top of what the game itself already has. I feel like if streaming gaming takes off, the chance of games ever running good will never happen. It's already hard to get a baseline 240FPS at a reasonable percentile, and networks are bloated with garbage and streaming gaming will absolutely worsen this problem. Games should engineer to reduce jitter. The reason you see enemy players teleport is because their latency changes (or their network straight up cuts off for a while). And last but not least, streaming gaming is the next level after Steam where you don't own your games. Steam (and competitors) already sucks ass because it's terrible half-assed software, but it also prevents you from being able to revert whatever version of the game you want.

greggman3 4y ago

I used GeForce Now once https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzL3vcqvU7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzL3vcqvU7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_BDC-juQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_BDC-juQU Lol! Actually I was really impressed with GeForce Now. It came in super handy during a long move where my PC was on a boat for 2.5 months and a friend and I were in the middle of playing some games. Connected it to my Steam account and picked up right where I left off (kudos to steam too for syncing stuff)

rendaw 4y ago

I like the idea of cloud gaming a lot. I don't need a Gaming PC, I don't need to chase new hardware, I don't need to shut down all my software to maximize available resources, etc. But Genshin is only available on the Windows and Mac desktop apps (and the Chromebook app, not the browser on Chromebook which isn't clear), I can only assume for politico-business rules (I can't think of a possible technical reason for this). They hide it from the UI and support has no idea about this. So I haven't yet been able to try GFN.

ericls 4y ago

I love articles that list the 1. 2. 3. 4. etc..

tjpnz 4y ago

How feasible would it be to put together a DIY solution? Could I for instance spin up a GPU EC2 instance on AWS with SteamOS and get a similar experience? I would love to give Nvidia my money but until rent seeking game publishers stop ruining it for everyone I'm reluctant.

donmcronald 4y ago
That would probably be fun to try. I looked for pricing and I think it’d be $0.50+ per hour, so not super cost effective unless you only play a few hours a month.

PostOnce 4y ago

You guys are walking into a trap. This is going to be way worse than movie streaming, and unlike movies, when one of these companies pulls a game you once loved and it's not available, there will be no pirates to save you, because the software is trapped in the cloud. The future may well be streaming-only. Mods will be greatly impacted eventually, with only sanctioned mods allowed to run in the cloud. There'll be no deep tweaking, no introspection or learning opportunities. Cloud mod API only. And it'll go the way of all cloud services: fragmented. You'll have to subscribe to a different one for each game you want to play. And you won't stop paying. To play a game over the course of 10 years, as many of you have with Diablo or Quake or Minecraft, you'll have to pay your $15/mo to each streaming service, so instead of Diablo being $50, it'll be $1500. That's before we even start talking about the F2P/IAP/DLC casinos. You used to choose on the character select screen or find items in the game, now new characters are $10 and items are $10 up to $100+, we all know it should be part of the game. Think, they don't really make arcade games anymore. I guess traditional videogames will die off too. More than one company has quit normal games to run a casino for children. I guess I'll go pen a dirge for the dying art I have loved. P.S., thank god for indie developers who make games without input from accountants and psychiatrists who specialize in addiction, they may save us all yet. There's also a glimmer of hope at gog.com where they still sell real games without DRM. I'll keep hoping.

vineyardmike 4y ago
This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. If you ever decide you don’t want to stream - you can build a gaming PC like people already do. Those games that come out to $1500 over a decade? Don’t forget that a decade is probably 2x $2000 for building gaming PCs.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > This is all true… but GeForce now let’s you bring your own gaming library. Some of your gaming library, for example no Blizzard games are playable. Though this is not Nvidia's fault. I think a few publishers realized where this is going and pulled their games by threatening to sue so they could work towards a streaming service of their own.

smeagull 4y ago

GeForce Now is that thing I always had to struggle to not install when setting up my drivers for Nvidia cards on Windows. Glad I'm done with that platform.

michaelmrose 4y ago

Why did he compare the cost of a 3090 an expensive nicety available to few gamers vs a virtual and possibly imaginary 3080 while playing games at a resolution that could have been achieved by a 2060. It's no small difference, $1740 given by the article for a 3090 and $290 for a 2060. I've found that when decisions are somewhat arbitrary one chooses numbers that best make the argument for us. Best practice is not to pick your examples in a fashion that amounts to fudging the numbers and stick to more practical details like the fact that you can only play a fraction of the games and they can be taken away at any time or become more expensive. Altogether a nearly worthless service. A novelty without substantial value.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

> but also because GPUs (the processors that run graphics cards) are really efficient for cryptocurrency mining. Wannabe Bitcoin barons have been snapping graphics cards of all kinds and driving prices to ridiculous levels. Not Bitcoin, but Ethereum. Several years ago people have stopped using graphic cards to mine Bitcoin, and instead use dedicated ASICs.

drewrbaker 4y ago

I would urge people to try out Shadow. It’s a cloud based windows gaming machine that you remote connect to. It’s great. You can install anything you want.

thebitstick 4y ago
I had to Ctrl/⌘ + F because I couldn't find anyone mentioning Shadow. Why is GeForce Now still more popular than Shadow, especially when Nvidia limits the games you are allowed to play. I haven't plugged my local gaming PC into the wall in months. The future of Mac gaming for me is Shadow.

LeanderK 4y ago

I have always enjoyed strategy games the most and a few years back I briefly used a service like GeforceNow. Since input lag is not super important for those games, I enjoyed using it and didn't have a lot of problems. If I would start some casual gaming now, I would probably use such a service since I would definitely not get an extra computer and like the simplicity and availability (I just need a laptop and a stable internet connection). I use an old macbook with a crappy inbuilt graphic card, I can't play anything.

d1sxeyes 4y ago

One way I’ve benefited from this is by using Epic’s free games deals. They’re a bit iffy over the summer, but during the holiday season they gave away a bunch of games like the Metro series, the Tomb Raider series etc. I have a founders subscription which makes it good value but even without, by maximising the free games potential and Steam sales etc, I have a great gaming library I can spin up in a minute or two without needing a gaming PC. Not had noticeable latency issues. YMMV as always, but if I ever decide to build a gaming PC, I have those games in my Steam or Epic library and can run them locally (and most games will sync saves etc. so no progress lost). One game that really pissed me off was Elite: Frontiers because they decided they were no longer going to support macOS, but I was able to continue playing just by using GFN. So the argument of “once you’ve bought it once, you can play it forever” doesn’t really hold true for games you download and run locally in all cases either.

etempleton 4y ago

Cloud streaming will probably never be my preferred option, but the tech has gotten to an impressive place. Microsoft’s implementation is amazing. The thing I find less useful about it is that it requires a good internet connection. And where I have a good internet connection is home. At home, the advantages of a cloud streaming platform are minimal, so I am not sure if this will ever be for me, though I can see a world where this is preferred to many consumers because they have no up front cost of a device.

squarefoot 4y ago

This crap looks like the next step towards total personal computing annihilation by SaaS. I hope I'll be dead before computers will be turned into stupid terminals forced to download and store everything remotely, lacking even the hardware needed to render graphics in favor of capabilities that can be used only to show what is served from elsewhere. That will be the future if we don't leave that path asap.

mrkramer 4y ago

Cloud gaming is inevitable because of the Moore's law but as Moore's law slows down "fewer and fewer computer users will think their computer is too slow[0]." And they won't buy new computer or laptop for gaming because the computer they already have will be powerful enough to run most of the games. This is where the complexity of managing games and managing the whole gaming experience comes along. Simply offering cloud gaming service is not enough, you need to include extra services and perks in order for people to consider signing up and using your cloud gaming service. [0] https://jlforrest.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/the-forrest-curve/ https://jlforrest.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/the-forrest-curve...

joshspankit 4y ago

> My rural internet connection is 40mbps/sec down in theory — in practice it’s between 25 and 40 depending which second you poll it, and the speed is affected by whether someone is downstairs watching Netflix while I’m upstairs playing a graphics-intensive game. I’m constantly surprised by how few ISPs have implemented CoDel or CAKE. While it does not fix actual packet loss, it solves basically everything else: inconsistent speeds due to some packets getting priority, bufferbloat, laggy streaming. If I could hand people a router that just had an in port and out port and CoDel installed it would solve 90% of the problems. Unfortunately (for us) ISPs have done away with modems and instead gone for modem/router/wifi combo boxes which makes traffic shaping much much more complicated.