3 ms·

I've actually tried OnLive, and in less than ideal circumstances. I was amazed by how good it actually was, even with RTT for 120ms. Some games, like rally game

by vegardx 12y ago

I've actually tried OnLive, and in less than ideal circumstances. I was amazed by how good it actually was, even with RTT for 120ms. Some games, like rally games didn't suffer that badly from the added latency. For things like first person shooters it didn't work that well, the latency and input lag was very noticeable. But get that down to a RTT of 20-30ms then I'm sure most casual gamers will hardly notice. The encoding and decoding is done in hardware and is negligible at best. Also something to keep in mind is that kids today are used to input lag. Both PS4 and Xbox One uses wireless controllers.

ssiddharth 12y ago
Honestly, 120ms is certainly not all that bad. I grew up in the sub continent playing Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike at ~100ms and it wasn't half bad. Sure, the latency is there but it takes only a short period to get used to it.
- vegardx 12y ago
  It's a little different in this case, with OnLive the latency is also added to inputs. With games like CS and UT things are calculated on the client. Incidentally this is also why cheating is relatively easy: You have to trust the clients.
raverbashing 12y ago
> The encoding and decoding is done in hardware and is negligible at best. The CPU usage may be negligible, but not the latency. If you live on a place that still has Analog and Digital TV you can flip between both channels and see what's the delay between them. I've seen it being around 0.5s, maybe more, maybe less (Satellite TV is even worse, of course)
- vegardx 12y ago
  I can only speak from personal experience, but the latency added by encoding and decoding has had to be negligible, as we already had a really high RTT. And TV's are hardly anything to benchmark against. They are designed to be cheap, and I'm sure most of them do it in software as well, as it's way cheaper. Nobody notices a 300ms latency in the image, as they don't have any inputs to measure it against.
archagon 12y ago
> Also something to keep in mind is that kids today are used to input lag. Both PS4 and Xbox One uses wireless controllers. The input "lag" with wireless controllers is not in any way comparable to the lag introduced by streaming your game over the internet. For example, tests have shown that my current wireless mouse — the Logitech G602 — has no more latency than a wired mouse. (The range is crap, but that's another issue.) Nor have I had any latency issues using my Logitech F710 gamepad, even with high octane games like Super Meat Boy.
- vegardx 12y ago
  Could you link to some of those tests? I'm finding it a little hard to believe, just with the amount of noise that is on the frequencies used.
  - archagon 12y ago
    Unfortunately, it's hard for me to find now since I bought the mouse years ago. But it has a dedicated receiver and a 500hz polling rate with a reported 2ms latency. Having to be no more than a few feet away from the receiver probably helps. (In my experience, it just sporadically stops working once the mouse gets too far away instead of introducing lag.) And again, with the previous generation of Logitech's wireless gamepad, I was able to complete Super Meat Boy 100% with no issues at all. Good luck doing that with any degree of latency! (I've noticed that Bluetooth tends to be significantly more laggy, but that might just be confirmation bias.)
freehunter 12y ago
I actually finished Red Faction Guerrilla on OnLive, and other than the screen getting blurry at times when they downsampled the image, it was hardly noticeable that I was streaming the game. I mean, of course I knew that I was, but I didn't care too much.

by vegardx 12y ago

ssiddharth 12y ago

Honestly, 120ms is certainly not all that bad. I grew up in the sub continent playing Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike at ~100ms and it wasn't half bad. Sure, the latency is there but it takes only a short period to get used to it.

vegardx 12y ago
It's a little different in this case, with OnLive the latency is also added to inputs. With games like CS and UT things are calculated on the client. Incidentally this is also why cheating is relatively easy: You have to trust the clients.

raverbashing 12y ago

> The encoding and decoding is done in hardware and is negligible at best. The CPU usage may be negligible, but not the latency. If you live on a place that still has Analog and Digital TV you can flip between both channels and see what's the delay between them. I've seen it being around 0.5s, maybe more, maybe less (Satellite TV is even worse, of course)

vegardx 12y ago
I can only speak from personal experience, but the latency added by encoding and decoding has had to be negligible, as we already had a really high RTT. And TV's are hardly anything to benchmark against. They are designed to be cheap, and I'm sure most of them do it in software as well, as it's way cheaper. Nobody notices a 300ms latency in the image, as they don't have any inputs to measure it against.

archagon 12y ago

> Also something to keep in mind is that kids today are used to input lag. Both PS4 and Xbox One uses wireless controllers. The input "lag" with wireless controllers is not in any way comparable to the lag introduced by streaming your game over the internet. For example, tests have shown that my current wireless mouse — the Logitech G602 — has no more latency than a wired mouse. (The range is crap, but that's another issue.) Nor have I had any latency issues using my Logitech F710 gamepad, even with high octane games like Super Meat Boy.

vegardx 12y ago
Could you link to some of those tests? I'm finding it a little hard to believe, just with the amount of noise that is on the frequencies used.
- archagon 12y ago
  Unfortunately, it's hard for me to find now since I bought the mouse years ago. But it has a dedicated receiver and a 500hz polling rate with a reported 2ms latency. Having to be no more than a few feet away from the receiver probably helps. (In my experience, it just sporadically stops working once the mouse gets too far away instead of introducing lag.) And again, with the previous generation of Logitech's wireless gamepad, I was able to complete Super Meat Boy 100% with no issues at all. Good luck doing that with any degree of latency! (I've noticed that Bluetooth tends to be significantly more laggy, but that might just be confirmation bias.)

freehunter 12y ago

I actually finished Red Faction Guerrilla on OnLive, and other than the screen getting blurry at times when they downsampled the image, it was hardly noticeable that I was streaming the game. I mean, of course I knew that I was, but I didn't care too much.