Google Stadia

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Alex79
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Re: Google Stadia

Post by Alex79 »

KSubzero1000 wrote: March 20th, 2019, 7:47 pm
Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 7:34 pm But one day, it will. One day the difference in input time and lag will be quite literally unnoticeable from playing the game locally.
May I ask what you're basing this on? Like Flabyo said, you cannot send data any faster than the speed of light.
I am saying the lag from you pressing a button whilst streaming a game will not be noticeably any different to the lag you currently experience pressing a button on the wireless controller you are using right now. You may not be able to send data faster than the speed of light, but you probably don't need to.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Google Stadia

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Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 8:03 pm I am saying the lag from you pressing a button whilst streaming a game will not be noticeably any different to the lag you currently experience pressing a button on the wireless controller you are using right now.
Well I hope you're right, but this doesn't really tell me how you foresee this working out in practice. I would imagine that data centers will probably become more and more common in the future, but the idea of the entire world benefiting from the type of near-instantaneous infrastructure necessary to render current local gaming obsolete sounds rather far-fetched to me at the moment.

Again, happy to be proven wrong.
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Alex79
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Re: Google Stadia

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15 years ago I used to leave my computer on overnight to download a single episode of South Park. I can now download an 8gb movie rip in under ten minutes. Technology is advancing exponentially every single week, let alone year. It's both illogical and backwards thinking to not imagine a future where this is the case.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Grokster was rad.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Google Stadia

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Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 8:22 pm Technology is advancing exponentially every single week, let alone year. It's both illogical and backwards thinking to not imagine a future where this is the case.
...Oh, is it now?

I happen to prefer fact-based arguments over faith-based ones. Technology isn't magic. The laws of physics apply even to Google. Data being transferred over long distances and back again will always cause lag. And also, politics come into play really fast. Last time I checked there wasn't a single Overwatch server on the entire African continent, for example. So forgive me for not blindly buying into the premise that Big Tech will somehow figure everything out based on little more than a fancy PR sketch and Western European download speeds improving over time.

Sure, technology is always improving somehow. But that doesn't make the people being skeptical of the practical implementations of certain concepts illogical and backwards.

I'm not saying this concept is doomed from the start. But we have more questions than answers at this point and yet people are somehow jumping to drastic conclusions left and right.
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Re: Google Stadia

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There's sceptical, though, and there is determined effort to resist against progress and refusing to acknowledge the positives in anything someone doesn't like. They're not the same thing.
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Re: Google Stadia

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If you honestly think the latency of a WiFi controller that’s about three feet from your console is ever going to be reachable over a distance of a hundred miles or more...

I can’t help you if you’re willing to think one of the funamental laws of physics can be broken.
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Re: Google Stadia

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

Well, looking back at the conversation, there's only one real way to settle this...

Stadia has Google Assistant... lets ask...
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Alex79
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Re: Google Stadia

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I am saying I think it'll get to the point where its unnoticeable, yes.

Surely they wouldn't be trying to push this as a viable concept if they weren't confident in it working. I think the service will potentially start out pretty good, and only get better.

Even now, PS Now works just fine enough to use.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Google Stadia

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Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 9:02 pm There's sceptical, though, and there is determined effort to resist against progress and refusing to acknowledge the positives in anything someone doesn't like. They're not the same thing.
Seriously? :shock:

How about addressing the sensible concerns being raised instead of insulting me and dodging the topic?

I'm not "refusing to acknowledge the positives". Of course this new concept would be convenient and (probably) affordable. I totally understand why people are excited for it, I just happen to think there's a lot of fine print to be worked through first.

Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 9:15 pm Even now, PS Now works just fine enough to use.
Yeah, for the folks lucky enough to have it. Unsurprisingly, it's not available in Australia, for example.
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Alex79
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Re: Google Stadia

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KSubzero1000 wrote: March 20th, 2019, 9:21 pm
Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 9:02 pm There's sceptical, though, and there is determined effort to resist against progress and refusing to acknowledge the positives in anything someone doesn't like. They're not the same thing.
Seriously? :shock:

How about addressing the sensible concerns being raised instead of insulting me and dodging the topic?
I'm not insulting you at all. I'm also becoming increasingly hesitant to ever reply to your posts for fear of being drawn in to an overly critical analysis of everything. You have a tendency to leap on anything you don't agree with and force a point in to submission.

I don't have an answer to your concerns. Not a single person on this forum does, because we are not experts in streaming services, latency or can see the future.

I think it sounds good. I think it's a concept that could work, and I think the day will come where the difference between playing a game locally and via a streaming service is unnoticeable.

I appreciate, and respect the fact, you disagree.
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Re: Google Stadia

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

At the rich end of town, Stadia will do fine. In many others parts of the globe, the infrastructure just doesn't exist.

I'm going to outright say I'm biased, but after a £1.28bn fine for antitrust practices, I kinda don't care for Google to succeed. It's a world of great inequality, and my personal feels colour my consumer choices more as I get older.

So, cards on the table. Totally biased.
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Re: Google Stadia

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clippa wrote: March 20th, 2019, 9:55 pm Everything has to start somewhere. If I was a film director (a big muscly one that drove a fast car), I still wouldn't use CGI for special effects, I still don't think it can hold a candle to a well lit rubber dummy, and stop motion animation may be antiquated but it has a lot more artistic charm. Of course you can tell it's not real but rather than taking me out of a film, it draws me further in.
Sorry, digressing. Point is, CGI wouldn't be at the stage it is now (halfway there? When it comes to living things?) if a lot of films didn't use it and they weren't constantly trying to refine it and make things better.

Any early adopters excited about trying out this new streaming service are alright in my book. As others have said, even if you found it lacking for certain genres, there'd be a lot of games and situations where it'd be totally usable.
What a great analogy.

I think the reason for the skepticism is because it’s google and it’s threatening a little corner of the internet that’s loves its physical media.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Having read the conversation back, Ksubzero, I apologise for any offence caused. It wasn't my intention, and I think I'm in the habit of taking things a little too personally at the moment. That's my problem, not yours. Sorry mate.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Alex79uk wrote: March 20th, 2019, 10:28 pm Having read the conversation back, Ksubzero, I apologise for any offence caused. It wasn't my intention, and I think I'm in the habit of taking things a little too personally at the moment. That's my problem, not yours. Sorry mate.
Ah, it's all right man. It's always difficult to evaluate tone and intent over the internet, and I know I can be a hardass sometimes. No worries, and I'll try to keep our differences in mind in the future.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Using the speed of light argument in relation to fibre optics is problematic since silica based fibre optic cables are currently not even close to maximising full speed-of-light potential due in part to the methods being used to transmit the data (For the record, the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 metres per second - for a bit of perspective on that distance the circumference of the Earth is only 40,074,275 metres). In relation to that problem there have been several recent innovations to address this such as using different frequencies of light which proved that they can send more data through existing pipes with a considerable reduction in interference. This breakthrough, coupled with another method in which researchers have created a way to 'twist' light waves once again potentially increasing the amount of data that could be transmitted through existing cables means that it's only a matter of time before any current limitations become a thing of the past.

If anything, devices like Stadia, if successful, increase the pressure for service providers to improve their services and in much the way the proliferation of smart phones has lead to the likes of 5G networks.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Ooh, now that's interesting!

I'm a bit wary about the geo-politics of it all, but if there's any company that has the clout and the means to achieve any genuine breakthrough in that regard, it's probably Google. Whether they should be cheered on or entrusted with that kind of power (like Joshi alluded to) is another matter, but it'll be fascinating to see it play out.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Cool, was hoping someone with some engineering nous would weigh in.

I only know about the gamefeel side of things, where anything longer than 100ms between controller input and the result reaching the eye feels crappy and you have to work to minimise every possible step in that process as much as you can, and even at the speed of light you’re still talking multiple 10s of ms per hundred miles of distance.

(It’s why fighting game players care so much about the display lag of their monitors etc...)

I mainly bring up c because it’s the hard speed limit on anything you do in datacomms. You can absolutely cram more data using fancy algorithms, but the more complex your encode steps are to cram more into less space, the more time you have to spend at the client end doing the decode.

When you watch a ‘live’ stream of a footy match on the BT sport app in HD you can end up as much as 60 seconds behind the radio commentary because of those encode/decode steps to actually make the signal fit into your bandwidth.
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Re: Google Stadia

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Basically what I’m saying is that for real-time interaction, the *amount* of data you push through the pipe is less important than the amount of time it takes to do that controller move to eyeball response loop. Google’s approach here is to move *everything* that isn’t the final decode from the client to the server, so the decode step and the travel time are the only bottlenecks, and I’m not sure that you can get that short enough yet to compare with the local couch console experience. (Emphasis on *yet*)

Read this book if you’re interested in the science of interactive feel by the way, some great stuff,

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Feel-Desi ... 0123743281
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Re: Google Stadia

Post by Michiel K »

Fascinating discussion. I'm also really interested to see how this will all play out and will reserve judgment. Craig has some strong arguments in that the mass market will probably pick convenience over quality and I do realise that the action games I love so much are but a niche in comparison.

On the quality and fast response side of things, it's also worth to considering the (probably unsustainable) environmental drain that giving the whole world (or even just first world countries) faster-than-light internet speed would present. At least with the current forms of energy sourcing.
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