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> Of course, sophisticated representations of entire 3D scenes for large groups of users interacting with one another in-world could conceivably push bandwidth

> Of course, sophisticated representations of entire 3D scenes for large groups of users interacting with one another in-world could conceivably push bandwidth requirements up. But at this point, we’re getting into Matrix-like imagined technologies without any solid evidence to suggest a good 4G or 5G connection wouldn’t meet the tech’s bandwidth demands. Open-world games such as Cyberpunk 2077 already have hours-long downloads for some users. That's when you load the whole world as one download. Doing it incrementally is worse. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 can pull 100 to 200 Mb/sec from the asset servers. They're just flying over the world, without much ground level detail. Metaverse clients go further. My Second Life client, Sharpview, will download 400Mb/s of content, sustained, if you get on a motorcycle and go zooming around Second Life. The content is coming from AWS via Akamai caches, which can deliver content at such rates. If less bandwidth is available, things are blurry, but it still works. The level of asset detail is such that you can stop driving, go into a convenience store, and read the labels on the items. GTA 6 multiplayer is coming. That's going to need bandwidth. The Unreal Engine 5 demo, "The Matrix Awakens", is a download of more than a terabyte. That's before decompression. The CEO of Intel, during the metaverse boom, said that about 1000x more compute and bandwidth was needed to do a Ready Player One / Matrix quality metaverse. It's not that quite that bad.

SteveNuts 2y ago
How many people consuming these services are doing so over a mobile network? For my area all the mobile network home internet options offer plenty of speed, but the bandwidth limitations are a dealbreaker. Everyone I know still uses their cable/FTTH as their main internet, and mobile network as a hotspot if their main ISP goes down.
- Maakuth 2y ago
  Here in rural Finland, 4G/5G is the only option available to me. I'm getting 50-150Mbps download speed, but often just a dozen Mbps upload. On the night hours it's better and that's when I my game downloads and backup uploads. I think there's going to be another municipal FTTH program, let's see if I get a fixed line at that point.
- john_minsk 2y ago
  Right now - not many. But at some point in the future, if metaverse is everywhere, you can pull out a phone and a combined data for the room you are in might be 100GB. Would we want to have 6G then?
drawfloat 2y ago
Few people play games built for mobiles, let alone looking to play GTA6 on an iPhone
- Animats 2y ago
  For the better games, you'll need goggles or a phone that unfolds to tablet size for mobile use. Both are available, although the folding-screen products still have problems at the fold point.
kmeisthax 2y ago
On my current mobile plan (Google Fi[0]) the kind of streaming 3D world they think I would want to download on my phone would get me throttled in less than a minute. 200 MB is about a day's usage, if I'm out and about burning through my data plan. The reason why there isn't as much demand for mobile data as they want is because the carriers have horrendously overpriced it, because they want a business model where they get paid more when you use your phone more. Most consumers work around this business model by just... not using mobile data. Either by downloading everything in advance or deliberately avoiding data-hungry things like video streaming. e.g. I have no interest in paying 10 cents to watch a YouTube video when I'm out of the house, so I'm not going to watch YouTube. There's a very old article that I can't find anymore which predicted the death of satellite phones, airplane phones, and weirdly enough, 3G; because they were built on the idea of taking places that traditionally don't have network connectivity, and then selling connectivity at exorbitant prices, on the hopes that people desperate for connectivity will pay those prices[1]. This doesn't scale. Obviously 3G did not fail, but it didn't fail predominantly because networks got cheaper to access - not because there was a hidden, untapped market of people who were going to spend tens of dollars per megabyte just to not have to hunt for a phone jack to send an e-mail from their laptop[2]. I get the same vibes from 5G. Oh, yes, sure, we can treat 5G like a landline now and just stream massive amounts of data to it with low latency, but that's a scam. The kinds of scenarios they were pitching, like factories running a bunch of sensors off of 5G, were already possible with properly-spec'd Wi-Fi access points[3]. Everyone in 5G thought they could sell us the same network again but for more money. [0] While I'm ranting about mobile data usage, I would like to point out that either Android's data usage accounting has gotten significantly worse, or Google Fi's carrier accounting is lying, because they're now consistently about 100-200MB out of sync by the end of the month. Didn't have this problem when I was using an LG G7 ThinQ, but my Pixel 8 Pro does this constantly. [1] Which it called "permanet", in contrast to the "nearernet" strategy of just waiting until you have a cheap connection and sending everything then. [2] I'm told similar economics are why you can't buy laptops with cellular modems in them. The licensing agreements that cover cellular SEP only require FRAND pricing on phones and tablets, so only phones and tablets can get affordable cell modems, and Qualcomm treats everything else as a permanet play. [3] Hell, there's even a 5G spec for "license-assisted access", i.e. spilling 5G radio transmissions into the ISM bands that Wi-Fi normally occupies, so it's literally just weirdly shaped Wi-Fi at this point.
markedathome 2y ago
> The Unreal Engine 5 demo, "The Matrix Awakens", is a download of more than a terabyte. That's before decompression. The PS5 and Xbox Series S/X both had disks that were incapable of holding a terabyte at the launch of The Matrix Awakens. Not sure where you are getting that info from, but both the X S/X and PS5 were about 30GB in size on disk, and the later packaged PC release is less than 20GB. The full PC development system might total a TB with all Unreal Engine, Metahumans, City Sample packs, Matrix Awakens code and assets (audio, mocap, etc) but even then the consumer download will be around the 20-30GB size as noted above.

SteveNuts 2y ago

How many people consuming these services are doing so over a mobile network? For my area all the mobile network home internet options offer plenty of speed, but the bandwidth limitations are a dealbreaker. Everyone I know still uses their cable/FTTH as their main internet, and mobile network as a hotspot if their main ISP goes down.

Maakuth 2y ago
Here in rural Finland, 4G/5G is the only option available to me. I'm getting 50-150Mbps download speed, but often just a dozen Mbps upload. On the night hours it's better and that's when I my game downloads and backup uploads. I think there's going to be another municipal FTTH program, let's see if I get a fixed line at that point.
john_minsk 2y ago
Right now - not many. But at some point in the future, if metaverse is everywhere, you can pull out a phone and a combined data for the room you are in might be 100GB. Would we want to have 6G then?

drawfloat 2y ago

Few people play games built for mobiles, let alone looking to play GTA6 on an iPhone

Animats 2y ago
For the better games, you'll need goggles or a phone that unfolds to tablet size for mobile use. Both are available, although the folding-screen products still have problems at the fold point.

kmeisthax 2y ago

On my current mobile plan (Google Fi[0]) the kind of streaming 3D world they think I would want to download on my phone would get me throttled in less than a minute. 200 MB is about a day's usage, if I'm out and about burning through my data plan. The reason why there isn't as much demand for mobile data as they want is because the carriers have horrendously overpriced it, because they want a business model where they get paid more when you use your phone more. Most consumers work around this business model by just... not using mobile data. Either by downloading everything in advance or deliberately avoiding data-hungry things like video streaming. e.g. I have no interest in paying 10 cents to watch a YouTube video when I'm out of the house, so I'm not going to watch YouTube. There's a very old article that I can't find anymore which predicted the death of satellite phones, airplane phones, and weirdly enough, 3G; because they were built on the idea of taking places that traditionally don't have network connectivity, and then selling connectivity at exorbitant prices, on the hopes that people desperate for connectivity will pay those prices[1]. This doesn't scale. Obviously 3G did not fail, but it didn't fail predominantly because networks got cheaper to access - not because there was a hidden, untapped market of people who were going to spend tens of dollars per megabyte just to not have to hunt for a phone jack to send an e-mail from their laptop[2]. I get the same vibes from 5G. Oh, yes, sure, we can treat 5G like a landline now and just stream massive amounts of data to it with low latency, but that's a scam. The kinds of scenarios they were pitching, like factories running a bunch of sensors off of 5G, were already possible with properly-spec'd Wi-Fi access points[3]. Everyone in 5G thought they could sell us the same network again but for more money. [0] While I'm ranting about mobile data usage, I would like to point out that either Android's data usage accounting has gotten significantly worse, or Google Fi's carrier accounting is lying, because they're now consistently about 100-200MB out of sync by the end of the month. Didn't have this problem when I was using an LG G7 ThinQ, but my Pixel 8 Pro does this constantly. [1] Which it called "permanet", in contrast to the "nearernet" strategy of just waiting until you have a cheap connection and sending everything then. [2] I'm told similar economics are why you can't buy laptops with cellular modems in them. The licensing agreements that cover cellular SEP only require FRAND pricing on phones and tablets, so only phones and tablets can get affordable cell modems, and Qualcomm treats everything else as a permanet play. [3] Hell, there's even a 5G spec for "license-assisted access", i.e. spilling 5G radio transmissions into the ISM bands that Wi-Fi normally occupies, so it's literally just weirdly shaped Wi-Fi at this point.

markedathome 2y ago

> The Unreal Engine 5 demo, "The Matrix Awakens", is a download of more than a terabyte. That's before decompression. The PS5 and Xbox Series S/X both had disks that were incapable of holding a terabyte at the launch of The Matrix Awakens. Not sure where you are getting that info from, but both the X S/X and PS5 were about 30GB in size on disk, and the later packaged PC release is less than 20GB. The full PC development system might total a TB with all Unreal Engine, Metahumans, City Sample packs, Matrix Awakens code and assets (audio, mocap, etc) but even then the consumer download will be around the 20-30GB size as noted above.