3 ms·

I would agree their tech was AMAZING. Even on my rather not so hot charter cable and very outdated 6 year old laptop i was able to play their latest games. Th

I would agree their tech was AMAZING. Even on my rather not so hot charter cable and very outdated 6 year old laptop i was able to play their latest games. The problem was the connection. I could feel the lag. I really tried to make it work but the lag was just to much. It wasn't onlive's fault. the ping time was just to much.

frik 12y ago
> I could feel the lag That's exactly the problem. If the "ping" to the datacenter is too high, the gaming experience will be not great (lags). As the mouse/keyboard/gamepad inputs have to do a round-trip to the datacenter that is more problematic than traditional multiplayer games. You need several data enters around the world, near the gamers. Even than it will be unsuitable for certain games like high speed multiplayer ego shooters (Counter Strike, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament '99) where even a minimal lag of a wireless mouse/keyboard is noticeable and wired gaming input devices are used.
- yazaddaruvala 12y ago
  So what I always found interesting was that they didn't use the ping to their advantage. Most online games have the ping problem anyways. Imagine everything in a [] is in the same datacenter or house. [client] ------ [game server] ------ [other_clients] [client] ------ [onlive server - game server ] ------ [other_clients] And it doesn't really matter how the other clients are connected, they could be using OnLive as well. This would work amazingly well for online shooters or MMOs.
  - rasz_pl 12y ago
    yes, shooters with >70ms latency BEFORE data even starts going out of your box into the display, plus additional 20-50ms before keypresses are even registered on the game code running hardware is the way of the future
beermann 12y ago
I actually wrote an article for Gamasutra about this when they were first launching: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaleBeermann/20090327/83618/Games_as_a_Service_Why_Im_Skeptical_of_OnLive.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaleBeermann/20090327/83618/G.... Still, when I first tried it in their demo booth I was really impressed. But the data center was only 60 miles away. As soon as you get too far from the data center, there are actual physical limitations of being able to accomplish this effectively.

frik 12y ago

> I could feel the lag That's exactly the problem. If the "ping" to the datacenter is too high, the gaming experience will be not great (lags). As the mouse/keyboard/gamepad inputs have to do a round-trip to the datacenter that is more problematic than traditional multiplayer games. You need several data enters around the world, near the gamers. Even than it will be unsuitable for certain games like high speed multiplayer ego shooters (Counter Strike, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament '99) where even a minimal lag of a wireless mouse/keyboard is noticeable and wired gaming input devices are used.

yazaddaruvala 12y ago
So what I always found interesting was that they didn't use the ping to their advantage. Most online games have the ping problem anyways. Imagine everything in a [] is in the same datacenter or house. [client] ------ [game server] ------ [other_clients] [client] ------ [onlive server - game server ] ------ [other_clients] And it doesn't really matter how the other clients are connected, they could be using OnLive as well. This would work amazingly well for online shooters or MMOs.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  yes, shooters with >70ms latency BEFORE data even starts going out of your box into the display, plus additional 20-50ms before keypresses are even registered on the game code running hardware is the way of the future

beermann 12y ago

I actually wrote an article for Gamasutra about this when they were first launching: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaleBeermann/20090327/83618/Games_as_a_Service_Why_Im_Skeptical_of_OnLive.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaleBeermann/20090327/83618/G.... Still, when I first tried it in their demo booth I was really impressed. But the data center was only 60 miles away. As soon as you get too far from the data center, there are actual physical limitations of being able to accomplish this effectively.