6 ms·

Interesting, I gave Stadia it's first try as a result of this post. Tried the Worm Game. It confirms exactly my concerns about cloud gaming in general. The i

Interesting, I gave Stadia it's first try as a result of this post. Tried the Worm Game. It confirms exactly my concerns about cloud gaming in general. The input lag. The classic "worm" game is timing sensitive, gotta turn before you hit a wall or yourself, but also gotta turn as late as possible to ensure you don't leave empty space. The input lag was noticeably bad, doing precise turns requires correctly guessing the input lag and clicking the turn command early. I guess I see why it's being shut down.

jolux 4y ago
I’ve played input-sensitive games with friends on GeForce Now for several months at this point — no major issues with lag.
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  Unless the GeForce now servers were co-located to your local ISP, it's hard to believe. Even then, you're adding quantifiable jitter to the equation on the order of a few milliseconds. It's noticeable.
  - jolux 4y ago
    I mean, in the case of multiplayer probably a lot comes out in the wash of optimistic updates and such, but it’s still very playable and I couldn’t personally notice the lag most of the time. Occasionally when my connection got bad it would have issues, but that was more noticeable because the resolution dropped significantly.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    I’ve had the same experience. I could not tell the latency for GeForce now, and I’m using a municipal ISP. I’m not really a casual gamer either. I’m still surprised that GeForce now doesn’t have an app for Linux. I switch to my Mac laptop to play stuff like Fortnite.
    - bobleeswagger 4y ago
      > I switch to my Mac laptop to play stuff like Fortnite. Fortnite is about as casual as it gets. You won't rank very high in a twitch shooter like CS:GO (or keep consistent ranking) using a cloud gaming service.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
        People have won a million dollars playing fortnite, there’s nothing casual about that…
        bobleeswagger 4y ago
        Ah yes, tell me more about how the exception speaks for everyone. Most folks playing Fortnite are casual gamers.
        jamiek88 4y ago
        Most people playing any massive online game are casual gamers. That’s just math. Just because one game has guns doesn’t make it less ‘casual’, which btw is a dismissive word to use in the context. Why are ‘twitch reactions’ less ‘casual’ than puzzle solving?
        acomjean 4y ago
        I think the point being made was Fortnite tends to have a wider breadth of gamer than other games (casual to hard core). My partner has a group that plays, but it’s more about crazy fun For them. They’ve tried other games but found they just get dropped and lose too quickly to make it fun. Plus cross platform.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        casual is the wrong way to gatekeep it. Someone could be a pro motorcycle racer with better reaction times than most professional gamers and still be a casual gamer. What you're really trying to test for is reaction times so just come right out and say that instead. Unless you're afraid of being beat by a filty casual.
  - Epuineeb5 4y ago
    I played CP2077 few days after release date, no issues with input lag. On the other hand my ISP had trouble to keep stable 40Mb/s - so in peak ours it wasn't playable at all. It was a bit surprising at first but makes sense - even a second or two buffer for other streaming services is enough to ignore variations in connection speed - but gaming has no such luxury.
- cloudking 4y ago
  I was skeptical on cloud gaming, but I also tried GeForce Now and had a great experience. No time spent downloading and installing, instant access to thousands of games, playable on older laptop without fans spinning up. I do think you need a solid internet connection for it to work well.
- bpye 4y ago
  It really just depends how close you are to the data centre and how your traffic gets routed. A couple ms is probably acceptable, 50ms certainly not.
  - sulam 4y ago
    Most people put our ability to perceive network lag at 100-150ms. Human perceptual limits in vision is around 13ms, but that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here. 50ms is very very playable in networked games, I wouldn’t notice personally until 120ms.
    - codeyperson 4y ago
      50ms works for network games when the input update loop is done locally, and with lots of fancy techniques to correct for the network lag. 50ms of input lag on the other hand is very easily noticeable. And makes games unplayable for lots of people.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    I think a problem with cloud gaming is that companies are being very secretive about where they have compute resources. Which I think is the wrong approach. they should partner with Comcast and say Atlanta is a Geforce Now hub. If someone is too far, they should just not let them access the service.
sidibe 4y ago
It's being shut down because very few people used it. I think most people were OK with the input lag.
- msbarnett 4y ago
  You could equally conclude that one of the reasons that very few people used it was because of the input lag.
  - dijit 4y ago
    The major reason stadia failed was sentiment. Why buy games full price? All my gamer friends say its crap! Google shuts things down, why invest? The tech was pretty good for casual gamers, it also pushed linux gaming in the AAA studios. I think a lot of negative sentiment also came from gamers thinking that Stadia intended to replace their gaming setups.
    - abofh 4y ago
      I will tell you I 100% refused to buy anything from stadia because I was sure Google would cancel it in a year or two. You can attribute sentiment wherever you want, but Google failed because it was Google, not because it was a bad idea.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Where "most people" is just the few people who actually used it? So basically, most people who like [unpopular thing] think that [reason that thing is unpopular] isn't a problem. It didn't reach mainstream adoption because most people who care about games didn't think it was a good deal and input lag was a big part of the reason why. And people who don't care about games... didn't care about Stadia for obvious reasons. The target demo for Stadia was basically people who have a mild interest in gaming but not enough of an interest to already own hardware suitable for running games themselves. That was never going to be a profitable niche.
  - 4y ago
giraffe_lady 4y ago
I played 200 hours of endgame destiny 2 on stadia during the pandemic so it's definitely not inherent to the platform.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Same, it was by far one of the best performing games on the platform, and whatever stream post-processing magic was happening it looked stunning at 1440p. Likewise with RDR2. The latency was never an issue for me; granted I live near a major city and have a fiber connection.
trarmp 4y ago
I’ve always wondered where that lag comes from, since I experience it even when doing remote play on my LAN. Like, we’re able to push a lot of other things through the cable in less than a few milliseconds. Is it the compressing that takes up so much time?
- Hamuko 4y ago
  I actually found the lag and compression artifacts between my Mac and gaming PC (which are connected by cable to the same switch) using the Steam remote play thing to be actually worse than Stadia.
- foota 4y ago
  I don't think it's the throughput, but the variance. There are so many places for something to go wrong between two computers, so doing something that needs a very tight latency budget is hard. Harder still when you don't have control over any of the parts connecting things. In a DC, everything can be built for qos and latency, but on a desktop you're using a porbably garbage router with a home OS running a million things.
haunter 4y ago
I don't have a gaming PC or console atm so I can only use streaming (Geforce Now and Xbox Cloud) and I notice it but somehow you also get used to it like adjusting your gameplay to it. It's really not that bad (and I'm nowhere near any big data centers). Anyways it wasn't the lag that killed Stadia but the monetization: buy the games full price + pay a monthly sub too. It's just plain bad. On Geforce Now you can use your existing libraries (Steam, Uplay, Epic) and don't even have to pay if you can stand the queues. On Xbox Cloud you have to pay a monthly sub (except for Fortnite) but they give the games too, pretty much a Netflix for gaming. Both has its merits, currently I dig Xbox Cloud more.
- ccouzens 4y ago
  The monthly sub was to get greater than 1080p resolution, and some free games. But a lot of other people also thought you had to pay twice, which can't have helped.
  - acdha 4y ago
    The free tier also came later and wasn’t well publicized: one of the lessons from Stadia’s failure is that Google giving it a bad reputation at launch squandered a lot of what they did later. Another example was the refund at the end, which would have addressed one of the most common review points had it been policy. Here’s a representative launch review listing that under “The ugly”: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-stadia-might-be-gamings-future-but-in-the-present-it-looks-rough/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-stadia-might-b...
ID1452319 4y ago
The lag on Worm Game is terrible. I've been playing PUBG on Stadia all day with zero lag.
saurik 4y ago
Isn't predicting the input lag like half the "fun" of those worm games? My prototypical experience playing that game involves tons of input lag.
- Scalene2 4y ago
  Only if the input lag is static and not dynamic.
- Underphil 4y ago
  Definitely, but only if it's consistent and predictable.
derefr 4y ago
Stadia isn't being shut down because it wasn't successful; it was no less successful than other services that are still up (like GeForce Now, or, for that matter, PS Now.) Instead, it is my understanding that the point of Stadia was to give Google Cloud GPU instances a first-party "spot workload" to run when otherwise underutilized, since Google were building that instance type out ahead of confirmed business demand. They had all these idle GPUs just sitting around; may as well let people play games on them! The moment the first GPU-backed generative AI models were open-sourced, though, there was suddenly tons of business demand for cloud GPU instances, to back all the "this[whatever]doesnotexist"-type services that were popping up. And "actually renting the GPU time to people with a business use-case for it" is much higher-margin than letting people play games with them. (That was the original intent of building out the instance class, after all.) Stadia accomplished its purpose. The demand for the instances arrived, so Google didn't need Stadia any more.
- sulam 4y ago
  This sounds like a retcon at best. Google wouldn’t have had to build a first party studio of the intent was to turn if off all along. I know the Eng VP that was there from the beginning (not to the end, tho!) and this is not his story at all. I think they honestly are trying to find new “surfaces” to give people access to compute.
  - derefr 4y ago
    Cunningham's Law at work. I've asked whether my hypothesis was anything like the truth numerous times now, but never received a knowing response. Phrase it one time as a bald statement of fact, though, and someone who can cite primary sources as to why I'm wrong will be summoned! :)
- yreg 4y ago
  Do we think Stadia during its lifetime earned more money than it cost though?
  - shaunsingh 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Waterluvian 4y ago
I used some nvidia thing that was out years before Stadia and it was amazing. Yes, I’d prefer crisper graphics and lower latency, but it was ridiculous for demoing games or doing casual LAN parties and such. A lot of “supplemental” use cases for this technology.

jolux 4y ago

I’ve played input-sensitive games with friends on GeForce Now for several months at this point — no major issues with lag.

bobleeswagger 4y ago
Unless the GeForce now servers were co-located to your local ISP, it's hard to believe. Even then, you're adding quantifiable jitter to the equation on the order of a few milliseconds. It's noticeable.
- jolux 4y ago
  I mean, in the case of multiplayer probably a lot comes out in the wash of optimistic updates and such, but it’s still very playable and I couldn’t personally notice the lag most of the time. Occasionally when my connection got bad it would have issues, but that was more noticeable because the resolution dropped significantly.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  I’ve had the same experience. I could not tell the latency for GeForce now, and I’m using a municipal ISP. I’m not really a casual gamer either. I’m still surprised that GeForce now doesn’t have an app for Linux. I switch to my Mac laptop to play stuff like Fortnite.
  - bobleeswagger 4y ago
    > I switch to my Mac laptop to play stuff like Fortnite. Fortnite is about as casual as it gets. You won't rank very high in a twitch shooter like CS:GO (or keep consistent ranking) using a cloud gaming service.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
      People have won a million dollars playing fortnite, there’s nothing casual about that…
      - bobleeswagger 4y ago
        Ah yes, tell me more about how the exception speaks for everyone. Most folks playing Fortnite are casual gamers.
        jamiek88 4y ago
        Most people playing any massive online game are casual gamers. That’s just math. Just because one game has guns doesn’t make it less ‘casual’, which btw is a dismissive word to use in the context. Why are ‘twitch reactions’ less ‘casual’ than puzzle solving?
      - acomjean 4y ago
        I think the point being made was Fortnite tends to have a wider breadth of gamer than other games (casual to hard core). My partner has a group that plays, but it’s more about crazy fun For them. They’ve tried other games but found they just get dropped and lose too quickly to make it fun. Plus cross platform.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      casual is the wrong way to gatekeep it. Someone could be a pro motorcycle racer with better reaction times than most professional gamers and still be a casual gamer. What you're really trying to test for is reaction times so just come right out and say that instead. Unless you're afraid of being beat by a filty casual.
- Epuineeb5 4y ago
  I played CP2077 few days after release date, no issues with input lag. On the other hand my ISP had trouble to keep stable 40Mb/s - so in peak ours it wasn't playable at all. It was a bit surprising at first but makes sense - even a second or two buffer for other streaming services is enough to ignore variations in connection speed - but gaming has no such luxury.
cloudking 4y ago
I was skeptical on cloud gaming, but I also tried GeForce Now and had a great experience. No time spent downloading and installing, instant access to thousands of games, playable on older laptop without fans spinning up. I do think you need a solid internet connection for it to work well.
bpye 4y ago
It really just depends how close you are to the data centre and how your traffic gets routed. A couple ms is probably acceptable, 50ms certainly not.
- sulam 4y ago
  Most people put our ability to perceive network lag at 100-150ms. Human perceptual limits in vision is around 13ms, but that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here. 50ms is very very playable in networked games, I wouldn’t notice personally until 120ms.
  - codeyperson 4y ago
    50ms works for network games when the input update loop is done locally, and with lots of fancy techniques to correct for the network lag. 50ms of input lag on the other hand is very easily noticeable. And makes games unplayable for lots of people.
- fragmede 4y ago
  I think a problem with cloud gaming is that companies are being very secretive about where they have compute resources. Which I think is the wrong approach. they should partner with Comcast and say Atlanta is a Geforce Now hub. If someone is too far, they should just not let them access the service.

sidibe 4y ago

It's being shut down because very few people used it. I think most people were OK with the input lag.

msbarnett 4y ago
You could equally conclude that one of the reasons that very few people used it was because of the input lag.
- dijit 4y ago
  The major reason stadia failed was sentiment. Why buy games full price? All my gamer friends say its crap! Google shuts things down, why invest? The tech was pretty good for casual gamers, it also pushed linux gaming in the AAA studios. I think a lot of negative sentiment also came from gamers thinking that Stadia intended to replace their gaming setups.
  - abofh 4y ago
    I will tell you I 100% refused to buy anything from stadia because I was sure Google would cancel it in a year or two. You can attribute sentiment wherever you want, but Google failed because it was Google, not because it was a bad idea.
LarryMullins 4y ago
Where "most people" is just the few people who actually used it? So basically, most people who like [unpopular thing] think that [reason that thing is unpopular] isn't a problem. It didn't reach mainstream adoption because most people who care about games didn't think it was a good deal and input lag was a big part of the reason why. And people who don't care about games... didn't care about Stadia for obvious reasons. The target demo for Stadia was basically people who have a mild interest in gaming but not enough of an interest to already own hardware suitable for running games themselves. That was never going to be a profitable niche.
- 4y ago

giraffe_lady 4y ago

I played 200 hours of endgame destiny 2 on stadia during the pandemic so it's definitely not inherent to the platform.

wildrhythms 4y ago
Same, it was by far one of the best performing games on the platform, and whatever stream post-processing magic was happening it looked stunning at 1440p. Likewise with RDR2. The latency was never an issue for me; granted I live near a major city and have a fiber connection.

trarmp 4y ago

I’ve always wondered where that lag comes from, since I experience it even when doing remote play on my LAN. Like, we’re able to push a lot of other things through the cable in less than a few milliseconds. Is it the compressing that takes up so much time?

Hamuko 4y ago
I actually found the lag and compression artifacts between my Mac and gaming PC (which are connected by cable to the same switch) using the Steam remote play thing to be actually worse than Stadia.
foota 4y ago
I don't think it's the throughput, but the variance. There are so many places for something to go wrong between two computers, so doing something that needs a very tight latency budget is hard. Harder still when you don't have control over any of the parts connecting things. In a DC, everything can be built for qos and latency, but on a desktop you're using a porbably garbage router with a home OS running a million things.

haunter 4y ago

I don't have a gaming PC or console atm so I can only use streaming (Geforce Now and Xbox Cloud) and I notice it but somehow you also get used to it like adjusting your gameplay to it. It's really not that bad (and I'm nowhere near any big data centers). Anyways it wasn't the lag that killed Stadia but the monetization: buy the games full price + pay a monthly sub too. It's just plain bad. On Geforce Now you can use your existing libraries (Steam, Uplay, Epic) and don't even have to pay if you can stand the queues. On Xbox Cloud you have to pay a monthly sub (except for Fortnite) but they give the games too, pretty much a Netflix for gaming. Both has its merits, currently I dig Xbox Cloud more.

ccouzens 4y ago
The monthly sub was to get greater than 1080p resolution, and some free games. But a lot of other people also thought you had to pay twice, which can't have helped.
- acdha 4y ago
  The free tier also came later and wasn’t well publicized: one of the lessons from Stadia’s failure is that Google giving it a bad reputation at launch squandered a lot of what they did later. Another example was the refund at the end, which would have addressed one of the most common review points had it been policy. Here’s a representative launch review listing that under “The ugly”: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-stadia-might-be-gamings-future-but-in-the-present-it-looks-rough/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-stadia-might-b...

ID1452319 4y ago

The lag on Worm Game is terrible. I've been playing PUBG on Stadia all day with zero lag.

saurik 4y ago

Isn't predicting the input lag like half the "fun" of those worm games? My prototypical experience playing that game involves tons of input lag.

Scalene2 4y ago
Only if the input lag is static and not dynamic.
Underphil 4y ago
Definitely, but only if it's consistent and predictable.

derefr 4y ago

Stadia isn't being shut down because it wasn't successful; it was no less successful than other services that are still up (like GeForce Now, or, for that matter, PS Now.) Instead, it is my understanding that the point of Stadia was to give Google Cloud GPU instances a first-party "spot workload" to run when otherwise underutilized, since Google were building that instance type out ahead of confirmed business demand. They had all these idle GPUs just sitting around; may as well let people play games on them! The moment the first GPU-backed generative AI models were open-sourced, though, there was suddenly tons of business demand for cloud GPU instances, to back all the "this[whatever]doesnotexist"-type services that were popping up. And "actually renting the GPU time to people with a business use-case for it" is much higher-margin than letting people play games with them. (That was the original intent of building out the instance class, after all.) Stadia accomplished its purpose. The demand for the instances arrived, so Google didn't need Stadia any more.

sulam 4y ago
This sounds like a retcon at best. Google wouldn’t have had to build a first party studio of the intent was to turn if off all along. I know the Eng VP that was there from the beginning (not to the end, tho!) and this is not his story at all. I think they honestly are trying to find new “surfaces” to give people access to compute.
- derefr 4y ago
  Cunningham's Law at work. I've asked whether my hypothesis was anything like the truth numerous times now, but never received a knowing response. Phrase it one time as a bald statement of fact, though, and someone who can cite primary sources as to why I'm wrong will be summoned! :)
yreg 4y ago
Do we think Stadia during its lifetime earned more money than it cost though?
- shaunsingh 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Waterluvian 4y ago

I used some nvidia thing that was out years before Stadia and it was amazing. Yes, I’d prefer crisper graphics and lower latency, but it was ridiculous for demoing games or doing casual LAN parties and such. A lot of “supplemental” use cases for this technology.