WYP
News Guru
Running Games on the Cloud Using Google's Servers.
Read more about Google's Stadia Instant Access Game Streaming Service.
Read more about Google's Stadia Instant Access Game Streaming Service.
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Google Reveals Stadia, their Instant Access Game Streaming Service
- Thread starter WYP
- Start date
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
Yeah this is very interesting. All depends on pricing and latency for multiplayer
Input lag will be the killer, Go, No go for most every gamer out there.
I guess games can be developed were input lag can be less of a factor but for the games we all know and love the time between clicking a button and something happening is all important.
I have just pinged www.google.co.uk and got 26ms. For a single player game that is going to be fine. I'm not so sure for Rainbow six or Battlefield.
I guess games can be developed were input lag can be less of a factor but for the games we all know and love the time between clicking a button and something happening is all important.
I have just pinged www.google.co.uk and got 26ms. For a single player game that is going to be fine. I'm not so sure for Rainbow six or Battlefield.
Enabling Vsync at 30fps adds upto 33.3ms of latency, most TVs add more than 25ms in their standard mode alone. 25ms is usually pretty small in the grand scheme of things, a single frame will often take around that to render, a human will take around 10 times that to react to visual stimulus
Yea but there isn't normally 25ms of lag between your mouse & keyboard to your computer. This system will have double bubble lag.
The lag between the controller and the data centre. The game has to respond to your input. Then more lag getting the image and sound back to you. This doesn't sound like it's going to be suitable for fast-paced precise PC gaming that would be needed for an fps shooter. A console gamer might find it acceptable. PC gamers that are willing to spend thousands on our rigs to save a few milliseconds are not going to find this acceptable.
Time will tell but I would want to see a review from a trusted reviewer or better still get my hand on myself to see if this is something I would want to do.
All lag including input lag can only manifest itself as visual or audible lag in the end as those are the only senses your computer can give you feedback from(usually), all these elements including the TV and most USB hardwares 8ms of lag adds up to create one type of lag, that between your inputs and what you see.
Well, this is of course a heavily controller focussed experience, hence why the controller connects to the server directly via WiFi to avoid the USB & bluetooth lag side of things, which are both far from perfect and on a similar scale as many modern fully wired fibre connections. It's of course never going to work well with a mouse and keyboard shooter or something.
Whether or not it works well generally will likely depend on how well distributed their infrastructure is and how good a users internet is, mostly.
For reference though, I'm on old 2.4Ghz WiFi with a cheap ISP supplied router and I get 15ms when pinging google, less than a 60fps frames render time.
Well, this is of course a heavily controller focussed experience, hence why the controller connects to the server directly via WiFi to avoid the USB & bluetooth lag side of things, which are both far from perfect and on a similar scale as many modern fully wired fibre connections. It's of course never going to work well with a mouse and keyboard shooter or something.
Whether or not it works well generally will likely depend on how well distributed their infrastructure is and how good a users internet is, mostly.
For reference though, I'm on old 2.4Ghz WiFi with a cheap ISP supplied router and I get 15ms when pinging google, less than a 60fps frames render time.
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I'm looking at this from the perspective of a PC gamer, just like most everyone on this forum. I would only ever use this service on my PC sat at my desk. I am having a hard time believing that sending a signal to a remote server and waiting for the signal to get back to me is going to be good enough.
OK as I type this I'm thinking about another angle. We play multiplayer games on our computers connecting to a remote server, so there is lag at that end, the game server. Getting shot behind cover, tick rates, that one player from Kathmandu with a ping of 250 screwing up everyone's game. Maybe all of those other things get sorted. It sure as heck would be nice to play on a server without any hackers and aimbots. Maybe this is a great idea? I really don't know. If it is then I won't have to upgrade my PC for the next ten years or so because if this thing is just here to run Chrome I feel it may be a little overpowered
OK as I type this I'm thinking about another angle. We play multiplayer games on our computers connecting to a remote server, so there is lag at that end, the game server. Getting shot behind cover, tick rates, that one player from Kathmandu with a ping of 250 screwing up everyone's game. Maybe all of those other things get sorted. It sure as heck would be nice to play on a server without any hackers and aimbots. Maybe this is a great idea? I really don't know. If it is then I won't have to upgrade my PC for the next ten years or so because if this thing is just here to run Chrome I feel it may be a little overpowered
Personally I think the most value for a service likes this comes from its "portability", with 5G networks the bandwidth and the latency becomes much less of an issue and these cloud services are all targeting markets that will be first to get 5G for this reason, it's being pegged as one of the 'killer apps' of next gen networks, so you can play it on your phone or laptop or whatever with just a controller at hand in a bunch of places you couldn't or wouldn't bring your desktop or a gaming laptop and have a console kind of experience but with top end PC graphics and light everyday hardware. Personally I think the next generation of Switch will also have 5G support for this kind of stuff.
Daiyus
Member
Call me old fashioned, but I just don't think I'll ever buy into this games as a service thing. I like to know that should a company shut down I'll have the files on my computer. I may need to crack them to play them, but they're there just in case.
And yes, I do still buy CD's and Blu-rays. I even buy proper paper books.
And yes, I do still buy CD's and Blu-rays. I even buy proper paper books.
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
No thanks, I'll stick with custom PC's and the day I can no longer do that my money will stay in my bank account.
As Google said in its keynote, the flip side of this is that you don't need to add any more latency for multiplayer networking. All that networking is done in the data centre.
Currently you may be moving without lag in the game, but by the time your actions reach other players they're no longer current there. Google simply changes when the lag is experienced, and because Google has servers in many locations, likely a lot more than any game company has, the lag is likely to be lower.
It would be interesting to see how this affects gameplay in practice, but on the face of it, it doesn't sound like a real loss.
Also, Google's controller sending the data directly to the cloud is a nice touch. Saves on having an intermediate device sample it and send it.
Also helps that 5G networks will have significantly lower latency than any type of network technology before it, it could have as much as 20 times lower latency than traditional British home broadband (IE 1ms ping times are expected). This is partly because of our reliance on fibre-to-the-cabinet though with copper conversion at the last mile limiting us to around 10ms absolute minimum for home broadband here while full fibre could be a fraction of that.
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All this 5G stuff, I only got 4G last year where I live. Heck, 2G in the house only became a thing a couple of years ago! 
We have had good fibre to the cabinet, copper to the house for 10 years or so.
5G needs more towers and down here in rural Cornwall that might take a while. If 5G becomes the defacto standard, replacing home internet, congestion becomes a really big issue.
That can be solved by adding more and more towers. Not too tricky in the towns and cities but us guys out in the sticks it's going to be a problem. I can see myself continuing to be using my BT infinity connection for quite some time.
We have had good fibre to the cabinet, copper to the house for 10 years or so. 5G needs more towers and down here in rural Cornwall that might take a while. If 5G becomes the defacto standard, replacing home internet, congestion becomes a really big issue.
That can be solved by adding more and more towers. Not too tricky in the towns and cities but us guys out in the sticks it's going to be a problem. I can see myself continuing to be using my BT infinity connection for quite some time.
I remember when I moved to the outskirts of Birmingham 4 years ago and I was genuinely shocked to find they didn't have fully stable 4G across the region yet, while here in Salford it's been rock solid since 2013, though I guess since BT was privatised Britain has always had an issue with getting good connectivity to rural areas, the concept of fibre internet was first developed by then nationalised BT to address these very issues in the 70s and 80s, until thatchers globalist ideology got in the way and she sold off all the technology we'd developed to American and Japanese private companies, so they could sell it back to us decades later at several times the cost, mostly just so those ideologues could say "Look what globalism brings us!". Exactly the same thing happened with British Rail and the technology for high speed trains.
But yeah, sometimes I forget that not all of the UK is getting 5G in a few months, it's just by coincidence I don't personally know anyone in an area that isn't (Most of my friends in Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, London, IE all cities getting 5G in first rollout)
But yeah, sometimes I forget that not all of the UK is getting 5G in a few months, it's just by coincidence I don't personally know anyone in an area that isn't (Most of my friends in Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, London, IE all cities getting 5G in first rollout)
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looz
Active member
What a short-sighted way of looking at it, this means there's no possibility of lag compensation. Any remotely competitive multiplayer is going to be sub-par. A stable latency introduced by DSL, distance etc. can be compensated in code and many games do it rather well, but when the game runs in the cloud that's not possible. As a result players closer to the data centre have a distinct advantage unless they introduce fake lag, which means poor experience for everyone.
Anything latency critical is going to be pretty disappointing unless you live nearby and have a connection which is ethernet all the way home, since wireless and DSL connections add their own bit of latency. Even then, it's probably going to be 60fps locked so a console competitor at most. 5G might mend this but 4G sure as hell isn't stable enough latency wise.
It's getting 120fps support at some point but then apparently so are the consoles, 120Hz TVs are becoming a big thing now.
Lag compensation doesn't really exist to improve user experience directly though, it mostly exists to attempt to keep clients in sync and avoid "alternate timeline" kind of splits, obviously this isn't an issue in the first place with something like Stadia so has no need to exist and no benefit to offer anyway.
But of course, I think it goes without saying most of the worlds infrastructure isn't in place for this yet, but companies aren't going to wait around for that to happen when there's still already millions of potential customers who do have access to viable internet particularly across parts of Europe, this is meant to be 5G's killer app, it's the "launch day title", it's meant to demonstrate that even home broadband in many countries is slower in some ways than 5G(latency).
For reference, a USB controller has around 8ms of latency, a bluetooth one can have around 10 times that.
I think our perception of internet service viability is dogged by the private networks in many of our countries that absolutely rinse us for the most basic and outdated of services. There are many "lesser developed" countries in Europe with full fibre 300Mbps minimum to the home for chicken feed prices, back in my families home of Gozo, a remote island not even large enough for an airport, has to be accessed via boat, has had full fibre as standard across the island for over half a decade now, with ~10ms ping times to most of Europe a standard, the sister island of Malta, the most densely populated nation in Europe(And the first with full access fibre), being the same.
Lag compensation doesn't really exist to improve user experience directly though, it mostly exists to attempt to keep clients in sync and avoid "alternate timeline" kind of splits, obviously this isn't an issue in the first place with something like Stadia so has no need to exist and no benefit to offer anyway.
But of course, I think it goes without saying most of the worlds infrastructure isn't in place for this yet, but companies aren't going to wait around for that to happen when there's still already millions of potential customers who do have access to viable internet particularly across parts of Europe, this is meant to be 5G's killer app, it's the "launch day title", it's meant to demonstrate that even home broadband in many countries is slower in some ways than 5G(latency).
For reference, a USB controller has around 8ms of latency, a bluetooth one can have around 10 times that.
I think our perception of internet service viability is dogged by the private networks in many of our countries that absolutely rinse us for the most basic and outdated of services. There are many "lesser developed" countries in Europe with full fibre 300Mbps minimum to the home for chicken feed prices, back in my families home of Gozo, a remote island not even large enough for an airport, has to be accessed via boat, has had full fibre as standard across the island for over half a decade now, with ~10ms ping times to most of Europe a standard, the sister island of Malta, the most densely populated nation in Europe(And the first with full access fibre), being the same.
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looz
Active member
Lag compensation also results in player who reacts faster winning the duel(or well, act first in server's authorative opinion) regardless of network delay, though latency from the setup itself can't really be compensated for. When the underlying network is part of your "equipment latency", it's going to feel like the opponent is cheating for anyone with DSL, for instance.
But I guess it can be looked over for more casual gaming.
Anyhow, do you have any source for the 8ms input lag caused by USB? I wasn't aware it was that significant, though I do recall hearing that (most?) USB 3.0 controllers have improved latency due to using message signaled interrupts.
But I guess it can be looked over for more casual gaming.
Anyhow, do you have any source for the 8ms input lag caused by USB? I wasn't aware it was that significant, though I do recall hearing that (most?) USB 3.0 controllers have improved latency due to using message signaled interrupts.
USB peripherals poll at 125Hz, so every 8ms. That's of course a variable figure depending on the timing of button pressed, but it's on top of any latency of the USB controller(chip wise) itself. You can of course force it to 1000Hz but I've never heard of a game controller than actually deviates from the standard polling rate since this can impact devices with weaker CPUs(Obviously much weaker than an x86 one) or certain USB interface chips and stuff.
There are game controllers out there, like 8bitdo's older models, which can have polling rates as low as 25Hz, or upto 40ms latency, and most people don't notice at all.
But like I've said, human reaction times (To concrete visual stimuli) are in the hundreds of milliseconds, single digital sources of latency actually impacting gaming performance is mostly a marketing ploy imo, until recently most game servers didn't poll/tick at less than 30ms internally, you need to be deep into double digits of stacked latency to notice anything even if you're very well in tune with this stuff and even then we adjust really well to consistent latency.
There are game controllers out there, like 8bitdo's older models, which can have polling rates as low as 25Hz, or upto 40ms latency, and most people don't notice at all.
But like I've said, human reaction times (To concrete visual stimuli) are in the hundreds of milliseconds, single digital sources of latency actually impacting gaming performance is mostly a marketing ploy imo, until recently most game servers didn't poll/tick at less than 30ms internally, you need to be deep into double digits of stacked latency to notice anything even if you're very well in tune with this stuff and even then we adjust really well to consistent latency.
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looz
Active member
DualShock4 polls at 1000Hz over Bluetooth, 250 over USB.
Hunting single milliseconds is pretty futile in casual setting, but when talking about competitive gameplay it shifts a little. It seems that human reaction times rougly follow a bell curve, median being at around 200ms. If you can manage to shave off 20ms button to pixel delay, that means you'll end up at an advantage against a significant portion of people. But for that to matter, well you need to play at a reasonably high level.
But on a more subjective notion, a responsive setup feels great to game on, and once you get used to low input lag, it's hard to play with TV for instance.
The tick rate of the server isn't the same, but not updating often enough can result in situations which feel unfair since you might keep going on your monitor even though someone had killed you. Or you might receive multiple bullet hits on one update and die instantly. But even at low tickrates servers can be fair(as in, network delay can be compensated), and the local game instance can be very responsive. Getting verification from server on kills, etc is obviously delayed but that isn't as major as let's say, looking around. Which will be delayed with the cloud model.
Hunting single milliseconds is pretty futile in casual setting, but when talking about competitive gameplay it shifts a little. It seems that human reaction times rougly follow a bell curve, median being at around 200ms. If you can manage to shave off 20ms button to pixel delay, that means you'll end up at an advantage against a significant portion of people. But for that to matter, well you need to play at a reasonably high level.
But on a more subjective notion, a responsive setup feels great to game on, and once you get used to low input lag, it's hard to play with TV for instance.
The tick rate of the server isn't the same, but not updating often enough can result in situations which feel unfair since you might keep going on your monitor even though someone had killed you. Or you might receive multiple bullet hits on one update and die instantly. But even at low tickrates servers can be fair(as in, network delay can be compensated), and the local game instance can be very responsive. Getting verification from server on kills, etc is obviously delayed but that isn't as major as let's say, looking around. Which will be delayed with the cloud model.
demonking
New member
If you are a steam user you are already in that boat. You subscribe to the games, If steam disappeared off the planet (somehow) you would (legally speaking) never be able to play those games again. It is how Steam circumvents a lot of laws as you are not buying anything from them you are paying for a subscription.
Either way you are technically already doing this if you have games on steam, Origin, Uplay or Epic. The only one I am aware of that allows you to "buy" games is GOG.
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