3 ms·

> needs a strong internet connection I've used Xbox Cloud Gaming on a cheap $300 Walmart laptop all over my home on WiFi, several different cafe/bar WiFi netwo

> needs a strong internet connection I've used Xbox Cloud Gaming on a cheap $300 Walmart laptop all over my home on WiFi, several different cafe/bar WiFi networks, and several places tethered to my phone without any real playability concerns. I might not recommend it if you're playing some kind of twitch shooter kind of game, but I've played a lot of Forza, Starfield, Gotham Knights, and Ghost Recon Wildlands on it.

didibus 3y ago
You must not be sensitive to lag or low latencies. Some players have no issue playing a 30fps games with dips into the 10s for example. Others do. For me, it's just simply not up to the quality I can enjoy the game at.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I am pretty sensitive to it. It never dropped into low framerates. Sometimes I'd get a quick blast of compression noise but not often. It's not 4K 120FPS, but on a 1080p laptop the quality was fine. Maybe unacceptable when playing on a 70" TV, but a 14" laptop or a 1920x1200 27" screen it's fine. Not as nice as natively rendered, but way nicer than what that $300 laptop could have done on its own! It never dropped into the 30s, I consider framerates like that unplayable.
  - danielbln 3y ago
    Compression artifacts, spotty connections etc. all of those can be issues with remote gaming. What is never an issue is framerate or graphical fidelity (minus video compression artifacts), which makes sense, considering you tend to have a nice machine remotely that plays your game (e.g. a 4080 on GeForce Now).
    - vel0city 3y ago
      One thing I noticed was loading times on Starfield were even faster than on my desktop with an NVMe drive.
- danielbln 3y ago
  Cyberpunk at 1440p, 75Mbit/s and 120hz/fps feels pretty darn responsive, streaming in from GeForce Now. A local rig will beat it of course, can't cheat lights peed, but if you're close to a datacenter the added lag is negligible, especially if you can get the video stream at 120hz.
  - didibus 3y ago
    Even if it's 120 fps you can still have high latencies, because the time from button press to the next frame acting on that button press can be slow. The game can stream at 120fps, but take extra like to register a jump for example. Again, you might just not be sensitive to that. There's also compression artifacts and bitrate that can make fine details already coarse and all that, even if it's 4k. That's what some won't find to be an issue and others will.
    - danielbln 3y ago
      Oh definitely, everyone's experience will be different, not just due to their location in regards to the Nvidia datacenters, but also personal sensitivity to latency and such.
mehlmao 3y ago
I'm surprised, I had pretty much the opposite experience. I used Xbox Cloud Gaming to play through Halo 5 (the only game in the series to not have a PC port) in four sessions over a few months, wrapping up last weekend. I'm on a high spec desktop playing with an Xbox controller connected by USB. The desktop is on Ethernet, 200 Mbps down / 30 Mbps up. In my experience, the game frequently failed to start. Most often I would watch the rocket ship loading screen for about a minute, then close it and retry. Probably about 1 in 10 times the game would start instantly, otherwise it would display the loading animation forever. My understanding is that the game runs in 1080p on the original hardware (launch Xbox One) and runs in 4k on modern hardware (Series X). I'm not sure what the source resolution is for Cloud Streaming, but visually it looked like an old YouTube video. The game was designed with a large visual dynamic range. Video compression made it very hard to see in dark areas (think The Long Night episode of Game of Thrones). In colorful areas with more contrast I experienced lots of macroblocking. Input lag made the game very frustrating to play. The Halo series is known for having generous aim assist, even so I found precision weapons useless and too hard to line up a shot. Occasional dropped button inputs got me killed too. All-in-all I can't recommend Cloud Streaming to anyone. Looking at their catalog, maybe it would be more acceptable for games with limited motion like Phoenix Wright or Car Mechanic Simulator, but those run natively on cell phones or low-end hardware. Even then repeatedly failing to start a session is a turn off. Experiencing all of these problems every time I played makes me think it's not just a fluke.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > In my experience, the game frequently failed to start I definitely got that a bunch right after Starfield launched, but it balanced out after several days. The period leading up before and after were and have been much better. Still happens sometimes though. It's definitely not 4K, I'll grant you that. Playing Starfield locally installed on my desktop definitely gives a better framerate and higher quality, but ultimately I've put more hours in on cloud gaming simply because it's everywhere I have internet. I can play on my phone and an Xbox controller, anywhere. I don't have much input lag, but I'm in a pretty well connected part of the country. On my phone right now ive got 20ms to microsoft.com, 19ms to google.com. At home on WiFi these values are in the low single digits. I dont know where Microsoft's servers are for the cloud gaming, that might be a part of it.

didibus 3y ago

You must not be sensitive to lag or low latencies. Some players have no issue playing a 30fps games with dips into the 10s for example. Others do. For me, it's just simply not up to the quality I can enjoy the game at.

vel0city 3y ago
I am pretty sensitive to it. It never dropped into low framerates. Sometimes I'd get a quick blast of compression noise but not often. It's not 4K 120FPS, but on a 1080p laptop the quality was fine. Maybe unacceptable when playing on a 70" TV, but a 14" laptop or a 1920x1200 27" screen it's fine. Not as nice as natively rendered, but way nicer than what that $300 laptop could have done on its own! It never dropped into the 30s, I consider framerates like that unplayable.
- danielbln 3y ago
  Compression artifacts, spotty connections etc. all of those can be issues with remote gaming. What is never an issue is framerate or graphical fidelity (minus video compression artifacts), which makes sense, considering you tend to have a nice machine remotely that plays your game (e.g. a 4080 on GeForce Now).
  - vel0city 3y ago
    One thing I noticed was loading times on Starfield were even faster than on my desktop with an NVMe drive.
danielbln 3y ago
Cyberpunk at 1440p, 75Mbit/s and 120hz/fps feels pretty darn responsive, streaming in from GeForce Now. A local rig will beat it of course, can't cheat lights peed, but if you're close to a datacenter the added lag is negligible, especially if you can get the video stream at 120hz.
- didibus 3y ago
  Even if it's 120 fps you can still have high latencies, because the time from button press to the next frame acting on that button press can be slow. The game can stream at 120fps, but take extra like to register a jump for example. Again, you might just not be sensitive to that. There's also compression artifacts and bitrate that can make fine details already coarse and all that, even if it's 4k. That's what some won't find to be an issue and others will.
  - danielbln 3y ago
    Oh definitely, everyone's experience will be different, not just due to their location in regards to the Nvidia datacenters, but also personal sensitivity to latency and such.

mehlmao 3y ago

I'm surprised, I had pretty much the opposite experience. I used Xbox Cloud Gaming to play through Halo 5 (the only game in the series to not have a PC port) in four sessions over a few months, wrapping up last weekend. I'm on a high spec desktop playing with an Xbox controller connected by USB. The desktop is on Ethernet, 200 Mbps down / 30 Mbps up. In my experience, the game frequently failed to start. Most often I would watch the rocket ship loading screen for about a minute, then close it and retry. Probably about 1 in 10 times the game would start instantly, otherwise it would display the loading animation forever. My understanding is that the game runs in 1080p on the original hardware (launch Xbox One) and runs in 4k on modern hardware (Series X). I'm not sure what the source resolution is for Cloud Streaming, but visually it looked like an old YouTube video. The game was designed with a large visual dynamic range. Video compression made it very hard to see in dark areas (think The Long Night episode of Game of Thrones). In colorful areas with more contrast I experienced lots of macroblocking. Input lag made the game very frustrating to play. The Halo series is known for having generous aim assist, even so I found precision weapons useless and too hard to line up a shot. Occasional dropped button inputs got me killed too. All-in-all I can't recommend Cloud Streaming to anyone. Looking at their catalog, maybe it would be more acceptable for games with limited motion like Phoenix Wright or Car Mechanic Simulator, but those run natively on cell phones or low-end hardware. Even then repeatedly failing to start a session is a turn off. Experiencing all of these problems every time I played makes me think it's not just a fluke.

vel0city 3y ago
> In my experience, the game frequently failed to start I definitely got that a bunch right after Starfield launched, but it balanced out after several days. The period leading up before and after were and have been much better. Still happens sometimes though. It's definitely not 4K, I'll grant you that. Playing Starfield locally installed on my desktop definitely gives a better framerate and higher quality, but ultimately I've put more hours in on cloud gaming simply because it's everywhere I have internet. I can play on my phone and an Xbox controller, anywhere. I don't have much input lag, but I'm in a pretty well connected part of the country. On my phone right now ive got 20ms to microsoft.com, 19ms to google.com. At home on WiFi these values are in the low single digits. I dont know where Microsoft's servers are for the cloud gaming, that might be a part of it.