3 ms·

Not affiliated with this project but it looks to be incredibly cool - very small team. I hope this shows up as a Linux / Steamdeck option in the near future a

Not affiliated with this project but it looks to be incredibly cool - very small team. I hope this shows up as a Linux / Steamdeck option in the near future as well. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ TL;DW: Mounts a virtual filesystem that on-demands downloads game content to your local drive in the form of a cache. Start playing games instantly without downloading the entire game.

PaulHoule 3y ago
I am little skeptical since a game needs to load one file and then another file and then another file and this could add up to an awful lot of waiting in an uncontrolled manner. Although big downloads are slow in my rural area I feel included by them because I can play the game in the end whereas streaming is not a good option at all.
- monkeywork 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ This video shows a good demo of it with Halo on Steam.
  - interroboink 3y ago
    Thanks for the link. As they say in the video though, latency issues depend on the game's implementation. From [1]: "If the game does like a read-wait-read-wait pattern, then it's bottlenecked by the latency... and that can become a problem." Halo presumably has a solid streaming foundation, so it's a good fit for the service. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ&t=591s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ&t=591s
    - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      You could just push files to the client in advanced of request based on basic statistics.
      - chevas 3y ago
        "Server Side Prediction: Via servers are constantly learning from repeat access patterns of players. This let's us make high quality predictions for what content you'll need, before you need it."
        teaearlgraycold 3y ago
        Nice
- vvanders 3y ago
  Yep, you even had to account for this on spinning media(i.e. DVDs) where you'd want "seek-free" loading since you'd hitch/stall of you ended up bouncing all over the disk. I worked on a title where this was particularly problematic from a game design perspective(limited ram, large assets), we ended up designing in "slow" sequences to mask the disk load.
- foota 3y ago
  They say they're planning to implement prediction, so learning from previous play of a game to learn what's going to be requested next and fetch it. Not sure how well it works.
- imtringued 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the demo didn't increase latency and only throttled the download speed.
oehpr 3y ago
You know if it also took the time to utilize the bandwidth while it has it. Like via shouldn't stop downloading if a game doesn't request the files. They might even be able to integrated a bit of brains into it and keep a record of which files tend to be historically requested next for a game. In the background you're slowly grabbing those, and those threads pause for direct requests. I guess this is simpler but it feels like using via is costing you by inducing longer load times for the whole game.
- 0xCMP 3y ago
  The page implies they learn from user's download patterns to do this and predict which files the user will need before they need them.

PaulHoule 3y ago

I am little skeptical since a game needs to load one file and then another file and then another file and this could add up to an awful lot of waiting in an uncontrolled manner. Although big downloads are slow in my rural area I feel included by them because I can play the game in the end whereas streaming is not a good option at all.

monkeywork 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ This video shows a good demo of it with Halo on Steam.
- interroboink 3y ago
  Thanks for the link. As they say in the video though, latency issues depend on the game's implementation. From [1]: "If the game does like a read-wait-read-wait pattern, then it's bottlenecked by the latency... and that can become a problem." Halo presumably has a solid streaming foundation, so it's a good fit for the service. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ&t=591s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wAn-4e5hQ&t=591s
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    You could just push files to the client in advanced of request based on basic statistics.
    - chevas 3y ago
      "Server Side Prediction: Via servers are constantly learning from repeat access patterns of players. This let's us make high quality predictions for what content you'll need, before you need it."
      - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
        Nice
vvanders 3y ago
Yep, you even had to account for this on spinning media(i.e. DVDs) where you'd want "seek-free" loading since you'd hitch/stall of you ended up bouncing all over the disk. I worked on a title where this was particularly problematic from a game design perspective(limited ram, large assets), we ended up designing in "slow" sequences to mask the disk load.
foota 3y ago
They say they're planning to implement prediction, so learning from previous play of a game to learn what's going to be requested next and fetch it. Not sure how well it works.
imtringued 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the demo didn't increase latency and only throttled the download speed.

oehpr 3y ago

You know if it also took the time to utilize the bandwidth while it has it. Like via shouldn't stop downloading if a game doesn't request the files. They might even be able to integrated a bit of brains into it and keep a record of which files tend to be historically requested next for a game. In the background you're slowly grabbing those, and those threads pause for direct requests. I guess this is simpler but it feels like using via is costing you by inducing longer load times for the whole game.

0xCMP 3y ago
The page implies they learn from user's download patterns to do this and predict which files the user will need before they need them.