Google's Project Stream beta changed my mind about a streaming future
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It works sometimes ok, but making "unexpected" moves (that are perhaps uncommon and unpredicted by the software) or looking around in busy areas makes lag and fps worse.
In the end FPS, image quality, lag and overall responsiveness are way below todays standards on consoles and PC. Would be a horror to play racers or games like Mario Odyssey or a shooter.
By the way OPs post sounds a bit like a marketing 1x1 with all these buzz words and bolded sentences. Probably a coincidence.
In the end FPS, image quality, lag and overall responsiveness are way below todays standards on consoles and PC. Would be a horror to play racers or games like Mario Odyssey or a shooter.
By the way OPs post sounds a bit like a marketing 1x1 with all these buzz words and bolded sentences. Probably a coincidence.
You can't just make your points and move on, you have to throw in a little dig and insinuate that the OP is marketing without a wink of evidence. Gross.
I'm having a lot of fun with Project Stream. Playing on my small Chromebook is a bit of a revelation...The colors pop so much better, and it allows me to take the game anywhere in the house (where the WiFi is strong enough). Considering this tech allows you to jump in at the click of a tab, I see a lot of potential for Google to run limited ads, where you could play the intro of an upcoming game for free, or for a rental service where you could pay a fee to have the game available to you for a week or two at a time. It works great for a beta and I'm curious to see where the tech will go from here.
Got in today and I'm fairly impressed with the quality. I live in western Nebraska so I was half expecting it to not even function but it ran pretty well. The combat/movement seems a bit loose, but not too much more than what I've played on PS4. The image quality is obviously not the same and I personally would want to stick with a console/pc running the game locally. This seems kinda viable though for folks not interested in buying a console but want to get into gaming.
OP
OP
I set it up that way and bolded the most important parts because it's a massive OP and I knew most people wouldn't read the whole thing, haha. I don't work for Google. In fact, I was a frequent naysayer of this technology before getting the opportunity to try it myself.
Check the OP for answers on both of those.
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How much data do you use in roughly an hour?
Speeds are not the issue in the streaming world. Its always been latency and data caps
Speeds are not the issue in the streaming world. Its always been latency and data caps
Are you having any issues with interruptions, stuttering, game shutting down due to poor connection? I'm experiencing all of those things. Google states that my setup is good. My connection is above 40 mbps download. Not sure what the issue is here. Seems nice if it would work as intended.
Worst I've experienced is a little stutter on WiFi and the occasional dip in resolution - about 13 hours in. Might be worth reaching out to the Project runners via support if your experience is that bad.
That's interesting i guess, im pretty traditionalist/conservative in regards to new tech tho, ill wait and see how this whole thing develops. But i gotta say im pleasantly surprised by recent feedback on gaming streaming tech, thats cool
That would be a database with more information than there are atoms in the universe. They're not going to construct an entire frame from known patterns this millennium.
There's a lot of "it's better than I thought" impressions coming in for this and Nvidia's streaming service. IMO streaming tech will be a game changer for the industry.
Yeah, my only issues so far in my five hours of using it have been occasional stutters and loss of resolution that last no longer than 5-10 seconds. Nothing that's ruined the experience of playing a game for free on my Macbook Air. Hopefully by the time this is a paid service, things like that can be mitigated. Also, considering the fact that watching a stream on Twitch can sometimes make my laptop run hot, I'm shocked that it's been perfectly chill while playing the game.
So far, color me impressed with Project Stream. I remember streaming like the first 30 minutes of Borderlands through some weird service way back in the day (was it GameFly's streaming thing? I can't remember) and it was a mess. Excited to see what Microsoft can do with it as well. Competition should be good for those interested in this tech.
So far, color me impressed with Project Stream. I remember streaming like the first 30 minutes of Borderlands through some weird service way back in the day (was it GameFly's streaming thing? I can't remember) and it was a mess. Excited to see what Microsoft can do with it as well. Competition should be good for those interested in this tech.
That is a bananas review. Appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately in europe and couldn't try it.
Did anyone tried playing from their smart tv with an android box or something like that?
Did anyone tried playing from their smart tv with an android box or something like that?
This thing works really well.
But oh my god this game is awful. I cannot imagine paying for this gameplay, not my thing at all!
Really wish they went with something like Far Cry 5 instead, I at least enjoy the basic gameplay in that one.
But oh my god this game is awful. I cannot imagine paying for this gameplay, not my thing at all!
Really wish they went with something like Far Cry 5 instead, I at least enjoy the basic gameplay in that one.
It's going to be interesting to watch how big of a player Google becomes in the gaming sector if this service performs up to snuff.
Image quality is not very impressive, no options to have better IQ either right now I guess.
No stutters, very smooth overall video, but I have a very reliable internet so others may have different experience I'm sure. 50 mbps down at least and I usually get higher than that.
Feels a little less responsive than what I played with PlayStation Now as well on games like Twisted Metal and Killzone, but I'm not sure how much is that due to Assassin's Creed gameplay and controls.
The IQ is nowhere near native gameplay on a console though. Kind of expected more from Google here tbh. I feel like playing Bloodborne on PS Now has better stream IQ. Most of the time the image is very clear on PS Now, but here it's pretty muddy throughout, not sure if that's gameplay settings but stream itself isn't that great IQ.
Played through chrome on my desktop.
No stutters, very smooth overall video, but I have a very reliable internet so others may have different experience I'm sure. 50 mbps down at least and I usually get higher than that.
Feels a little less responsive than what I played with PlayStation Now as well on games like Twisted Metal and Killzone, but I'm not sure how much is that due to Assassin's Creed gameplay and controls.
The IQ is nowhere near native gameplay on a console though. Kind of expected more from Google here tbh. I feel like playing Bloodborne on PS Now has better stream IQ. Most of the time the image is very clear on PS Now, but here it's pretty muddy throughout, not sure if that's gameplay settings but stream itself isn't that great IQ.
Played through chrome on my desktop.
My image quality wasn't super hot when playing over wifi, but i wired my laptop up to get 950mbps down and it's been flawless. spent 90% of my playtime pin sharp since. I would put the service as somewhat unusable over wifi - it macro blocks too frequently and the input lag is noticeable.
I'm a total convert. I'm all for having a cheap chrome box in the living room and paying monthly for games instead of upgrading hardware.
I'm a total convert. I'm all for having a cheap chrome box in the living room and paying monthly for games instead of upgrading hardware.
I think you misunderstood how it works. When you're at any given frame and the game doesn't know what you're going to do next - it calculates a series of options, one where you press x, one where you do nothing, one where you jump etc - sends all the frames back and your local machine chooses the correct one. It does not store them, it does not have a library of every frame that could be shown, or every thing that can possibly happen.
The neural network comes in to make this more accurate, it only holds patterns of inputs and does not 'see' - so if someone dodged, attacked, and this event is happening - they're probably not going to call their horse, so the frame generation can see what you just did, try to guess what you're going to do next and intercept you actually doing that with hopefully the correct input. if it was wrong, your input lag jumps by 20ms for one frame.
The purpose of this beta is for them to find out how accurate that can truly get with massive numbers playing it, build the database and see how few frames it can generate as options while being right 99% of the time.
They had to use a modern game that was a brand new/hyped release because they'd never get the numbers to test it otherwise, it'd take years to collect the data we're giving them each month.
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Ideally, yeah, that's how it should work.
The major players will still put out boxes or dongles though, stuff that makes streaming easier or supports different peripherals, has better antennae, so on and so forth.
But yeah, in theory, once game streaming is where it needs to be technically, it SHOULD be good forever. They just need to get there and that's going to be a very steep uphill battle.
That's super weird. The only problem I've had thus far, save for the game crashing, which it's done twice, is one moment of poor video buffering. Other than that, it's been a flawless experience. Well, as flawless as ACO goes, ACO has problems. I even streamed a few hours of it last night and had no real issues.
That's more on the telcoms than it is for the stream providers, but yeah, that'll be something that needs to get figured out since Ajit Pai decided to sell out the country for the cost of his big mug.
Who needs 4k when you can have full "console exclusive" RTX effects essentially making your 1080p game look substantially prettier than the hardware box?
Offline games sure maybe I can see a day where that happens online multiplayer games like my favorite type fighting games probably not anytime soon.
How can they be generating multiple frames? The server-side would have to be loading a complete game state (the current 'frame') multiple times per frame then (Ubisoft didn't implement an undo system, I assume), and calculating multiple results each time.
That'd be like running the game at 500 fps AND basically loading the entire game to L1 cache (talking about today's memory speed) for each user. Are you telling me Google's computers are from the future?
Or is the prediction all faked and only visual, and the actual gameplay will have the latency no matter what? Even that case seems doubtful to me, as you would need a massive database of imagery and the artifacting would be terrible.
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The question of whether streaming works or not has never seriously been a thing for those in the know.
The biggest impediment to streaming services are the habits and wants of consumers themselves. Ultimately it comes down to whether consumers will value having control over their gaming experience themselves or giving that away to corporations for the small benefit of convenience.
History will tell which way it goes, but I would place my money on streaming carving out a nice niche for itself, but not necessarily making traditional hardware platforms obsolete.
The biggest impediment to streaming services are the habits and wants of consumers themselves. Ultimately it comes down to whether consumers will value having control over their gaming experience themselves or giving that away to corporations for the small benefit of convenience.
History will tell which way it goes, but I would place my money on streaming carving out a nice niche for itself, but not necessarily making traditional hardware platforms obsolete.
Check this video to see what Google might be doing.
Outatime: Using Speculation to Enable Low-Latency Continuous Interaction for Cloud Gaming
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/res...ency-continuous-interaction-for-cloud-gaming/
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It will be really cool once we start to see games that support Ray tracing on this type of service. That will really increase image quality beyond what is possible on any console right now and you will have access to it without having to pay US$500+ just for the GPU capable of doing it.
White paper says they extensively modified Doom 3 to support many features (they even took out the RNG). They not only added parallel threads and probably some command structure, but they changed the gameplay to support the system.
Not only is time warp viable in Doom 3 (due to it being old), it's open source.
So it's not possible to do this with AC. Is there anything to suggest Google is employing these same techniques?
Fantastic write-up OP, thanks for providing an in-depth look at your real experiences.
I would love a streaming service like this... But at an estimated 9 Gigs used per hour that would mean I would hit my 1 TB data cap in just over 100 hours of gaming per month not taking into account any other internet use.
I would estimate I typically use 300-500 Gigs a month right now, so I could probably only play this game for 50-60 hours streaming before I hit that cap. Which would be really easy to run into with a game as large as Odyssey and both me and my spouse playing it separately.
So maybe in the future if the ISPs ever get better... But even for just 1 game I can't jump on board streaming just yet for fear of hitting a data cap
I would love a streaming service like this... But at an estimated 9 Gigs used per hour that would mean I would hit my 1 TB data cap in just over 100 hours of gaming per month not taking into account any other internet use.
I would estimate I typically use 300-500 Gigs a month right now, so I could probably only play this game for 50-60 hours streaming before I hit that cap. Which would be really easy to run into with a game as large as Odyssey and both me and my spouse playing it separately.
So maybe in the future if the ISPs ever get better... But even for just 1 game I can't jump on board streaming just yet for fear of hitting a data cap
Just concentrate on the fact that there is a solution already tested that shows that it is posible to use frame Speculation . I didn't say Google was using this technique exactly, but they might be using something similar, if not more kudos to them since it seems they are handling latency very good. I can bet you my life that as streaming services become more popular you will see innovative solutions like Outatime Speculation. You can also check the link below for another example of what might be used to reduce latency.
LucasArts' 60FPS Force Unleashed II tech demo
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-force-unleashed-60fps-tech-article
I think so, I got mine yesterday....I tried it for half an hour, not much latency, but it's still not as clear as running a game natively, but I can't complain since I'll get to play through Odyssey for free :)
Lol. Well other users were claiming Google was using this technique and I'm simply stating why that's extremely unlikely. Why should I concentrate on distractions that don't actually solve the problem at hand -- running modern games? I doubt they're doing anything at all similar.
That DF article isn't relevant for cloud-gaming...
Why do you think it would be running at 500fps?
You'd be right if there was no ai trying to predict inputs based on context, but there is. That's what the neural network is for. the overhead of 3 variations would be nowhere near the same as running 3 simultaneous copies of the game either.
You should do some more reading on the subject, this is absolutely a thing and this is Google using us to train their neural network to see how possible and/or good it really is. Arguing with me that it's not possible is pointless because I didn't personally work on it, I just read that is a thing they are doing. These aren't opinions
Good to see that you use unlikely instead of imposible. If you at least see the video and read the paper you can see how that would actually reduce the latency. The DF article is relevant for cloud gaming because the higher the framerate the game runs in the cloud, the less it will take to generate the frame that will be send to your house. The DF article shows how there are ways to increase the framerate without necessary using brute force hardware solutions. You will see a lot of solutions like this when developers start to create games designed to run in the cloud.
I got in last night and it works about the same as the other options I've tried recently (PS Now, PS Remote Play, Steam streaming, etc). When the internet connection is perfect its great, but as soon as there's a little hiccup the image quality goes to crap, framerate drops and its basically unplayable for a couple seconds. Doesn't happen often but it definitely happens and its why streaming will not replace normal gaming for years if not decades.
Imagine the following... you've been playing a game for 40 hours, get to the last boss, beat the last boss, the end cutscene is starting and ... uh oh, internet got slow for a couple minutes and you either miss the entire ending or its a pixelated garbled mess. If it's a game like Assassin's Creed Odyssey you're out of luck and will have to just watch on YouTube or hope I saved right before the final boss, etc.
(edited as apparently there are multiple save slots in AC: Odyssey -- which i honestly haven't found, I just assumed there was autosaving like other entries I've played and that was it)
Imagine the following... you've been playing a game for 40 hours, get to the last boss, beat the last boss, the end cutscene is starting and ... uh oh, internet got slow for a couple minutes and you either miss the entire ending or its a pixelated garbled mess. If it's a game like Assassin's Creed Odyssey you're out of luck and will have to just watch on YouTube or hope I saved right before the final boss, etc.
(edited as apparently there are multiple save slots in AC: Odyssey -- which i honestly haven't found, I just assumed there was autosaving like other entries I've played and that was it)
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I have FiOS but only wifi in the living room. Is that big of a deal? I play XBl on wifi all the time. And my Xbox is like 10 feet from the AP. Always get ping in the mid teens
My main issues with the technology are not addressed with your renewed impressions. This are:
- Economics of the service.
For many consumers, the promise of maxed out games on their cheap chromebooks is indeed tantalizing. But, how does that make sense for the companies offering the service? For that to be possible, they have to lease you the equivalent of a high end gaming PC on demand for the price of a game, not mention their bandwidth cost which are bound to be much higher than something like Netflix. And the game often is not even theirs!
Just compare that to the current model, where the consumer pays for the game, the hardware, the electricity to keep it running and no bandwidth costs... where the upside for the companies? The answer, is of course, GAAS. There's no other way around it, if/when cloud gaming takes of, consumers will end paying even more for games. Cloud gaming is the ultimate DRM scheme after all.
- The technology is the most discriminatory for of content distribution there is.
For people in big cities located in USA/CAN, western Europe, AUS and SK/JP this might not be an issue. But the RoW? As it stands, we people not fortunate enough to live in priority markets often have to deal with expensive exports or inflated prices if we are lucky. If cloud gaming ever becomes the future, we will lose access to many experiences out right.
- The quality of the experience.
Sure, you said that the experience was good for you. But, the reality of the services out of controlled trials is that many user experience subpar performance, and I doubt that is only because Sony is incompetent or something. To go back to my original point, do people really expect to the service to lease you, on demand, the equivalent of a 2080ti for a few bucks a month? Geforce now and Project Stream are controlled trials.
And even then, from what you said, Project Stream is giving you less than PS4P quality.
- Economics of the service.
For many consumers, the promise of maxed out games on their cheap chromebooks is indeed tantalizing. But, how does that make sense for the companies offering the service? For that to be possible, they have to lease you the equivalent of a high end gaming PC on demand for the price of a game, not mention their bandwidth cost which are bound to be much higher than something like Netflix. And the game often is not even theirs!
Just compare that to the current model, where the consumer pays for the game, the hardware, the electricity to keep it running and no bandwidth costs... where the upside for the companies? The answer, is of course, GAAS. There's no other way around it, if/when cloud gaming takes of, consumers will end paying even more for games. Cloud gaming is the ultimate DRM scheme after all.
- The technology is the most discriminatory for of content distribution there is.
For people in big cities located in USA/CAN, western Europe, AUS and SK/JP this might not be an issue. But the RoW? As it stands, we people not fortunate enough to live in priority markets often have to deal with expensive exports or inflated prices if we are lucky. If cloud gaming ever becomes the future, we will lose access to many experiences out right.
- The quality of the experience.
Sure, you said that the experience was good for you. But, the reality of the services out of controlled trials is that many user experience subpar performance, and I doubt that is only because Sony is incompetent or something. To go back to my original point, do people really expect to the service to lease you, on demand, the equivalent of a 2080ti for a few bucks a month? Geforce now and Project Stream are controlled trials.
And even then, from what you said, Project Stream is giving you less than PS4P quality.
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ACO has multiple save slots...
I think it has unlimited save slots.
To be fair, that's the hardware developer's problem, it's the publisher's dream, to not be beholden to a hardware manufacturer.
Beyond that though, you're right, it's the penultimate form of DRM.
I mean, if these things go to market and they're poor, the market will react in kind. Time has not been kind to PSNow.
I signed up for it but never got a email back with the invite :-(. Though I would feel like I am cheating since I have a gigabit connection.
Well, as far as i know, EA, Ubisoft, et al. don't develop and manufacture their own hardware (yet) ;)
Played for about an hour last night. IQ was very acceptable to me 99% of the time. I did see some minor artifacting at points but only once did the screen go to complete mush for second or two.
I'm not the greatest at detecting framerate or lag but I don't think the framerate ever dipped much below 30.
I'm not the greatest at detecting framerate or lag but I don't think the framerate ever dipped much below 30.
No. I already know a lot about the subject, that's why I'm asking you to provide a source for your claims. The overhead is way MORE than running 3 simultaneous copies of the game, unless you can completely alter the game itself.
I read the paper and understand it. If you had done the same, you wouldn't be replying back the stuff you have.
There are thousands and thousands of ways to increase framerates in games. Reducing latency in the cloud ideally would employ techniques beyond local latency reducing techniques, like the predictive technique you linked, except applicable for games you cannot modify and games that require enough hardware as to make a cloud solution economically not feasible.
If someone makes a claim that Google is doing some amazing something or other than for all intents and purposes seems impossible to me based on my knowledge on the subject matter, I want at least a shred of evidence lending toward that. I appreciate the link on general techniques, but I want to know if there even is a claim of some secret sauce by Google.
Dude WTF are you talking about? The reason why I know you didn't read the paper and replied with the following "So it's not possible to do this with AC." and even better "unless you can completely alter the game itself." is because you didn't read the following on the whitepaper:
"Our experience with Fable 3 was similar and suggests that the essential developer modifications needed to support efficient speculation are similar across commercial titles. We also examined UDK [12], one of several widely used commercial game engines upon which many games are built, and verified that the modifications described below are general and feasible in UDK as well.4 Therefore, we suggest that the techniques proposed below are broadly applicable and can be systematized."
There is nothing here stating that it would not be possible to do the same with AC. On the contrary they clearly state that the techniques they used can be broadly applicable and systematized. So try again, the princess is in another castle bro.
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And now show me a machine that can run AC at the hundreds of FPS and is able to refresh ~8GB of RAM in 5ms (to restore immutable states), let alone one that makes this project economically feasible.
I never once said it wasn't possible to modify a game to implement this. ANY software can implement the ability to restore states. It's just usually not performant.
What you're claiming Google is doing, out of misinformed speculation on your part, is impossible.
Don't try to change the subject now, after you said it was not possible when the paper clearly shows how adaptive the techniques can be. Read the paper and don't do stuff like that again, makes you look dumb. I'm done with you, I made my point.