IQ of onlive!!

[lopri]

How do I get an invitation? I'd like to see for myself.

In any case, thank you for sharing your experience, yasasvy.

 

[busydude]

How do I get an invitation? I'd like to see for myself. In any case, thank you for sharing your experience, yasasvy.

http://blog.onlive.com/2010/06/15/welcome-to-onlive/ There is a waiting list for that offer, I got a mail 1 week after signing up.

And your welcome . Do share your experience though.

 

[AndroidVageta]

I played a bit of Assassins Creed 2 and some Just Cause 2...I can say that AC2 didnt look bad as far as graphic quality is concerned...I noticed lack luster textures, some pop in, and some low quality shadows...but for the kind of game it is...wasnt that bad. You could tell however that the compressed "video" was quite compressed...looked like a low quality 720p video on Youtube and control lag was definitely noticeable BUT not unplayable...I didnt have any problems playing the game.

Just Cause 2 looked great! It might be due to the lack of straight lines and geometry that are found in AC2...but it certainly didnt looked highly compressed. Also the graphics looked to be be of fairly higher levels...by no means MAX settings...but very good none the less...also the control lag wasnt nearly as noticeable as it was in AC2...might be the type of game it is or maybe its just that AC2 is a little bit on the lower quality side of controls...

Played all on the below system on a 25MB down/2.5MB up connection. Noticed no lag in video during game play except for a half second pixellated glitch in AC2...

My question is though...how many people can OnLive handle at once? Im sure they dont have 1000's and 1000's of computers online...whats going to happen when a lot of people are on?

Over all I give it a 7/10 so far...AC2 was a bit "meh" but Just Cause 2 looked and played great...almost didnt notice the difference between the OnLive version and the real game on my computer maxed out at 1080p...

 

[busydude]

Glad you had a pleasant experience.

On a side note,

Latency:
Latency is the technical term for "lag", and high latency may result in you experiencing a slower than normal response from a game when you press a button or move a joystick or mouse. Because OnLive games run remotely from your home in an OnLive game data center on game servers, even though your communications to the OnLive data center is at almost the speed of light, there will more latency than if the game were running on the same game server in your home. OnLive technology was designed to keep that latency as low as possible, hopefully to the point where you don't even notice it, and at this stage in OnLive's technology evolution, most OnLive players report that they experience no latency or acceptable latency. But, some players will find the current latency unacceptable in some games. With further development, we know we can reduce the latency further, but you should decide for yourself whether OnLive's current latency is acceptable for your gameplay needs, and the best way to find out is to give the OnLive Game Service a try and play a few free demos.

How is this possible? On what basis they came to that conclusion? How can they promote this service based on that assumption. Did they reinvent a better internet?

 

[zagood]

Got my acceptance letter today, even though I stated on my app that I'm in Anchorage...should be laughable (understandably so). Will try it out tonight and give my impressions. Also going to monitor bandwidth (since I'm capped at 40gb/mo.)

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Got my acceptance letter today, even though I stated on my app that I'm in Anchorage...should be laughable (understandably so). Will try it out tonight and give my impressions. Also going to monitor bandwidth (since I'm capped at 40gb/mo.)

40GB or gb?

Either way, there are much better ways to receive 40GB/gb than onlive.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

To be fair it doesn't look THAT bad, I could see it easily rivaling consoles, particularly with newer games.

Although I'm also sure that the screen shots don't do it proper justice, its much easier to see graphical disparity when actually playing the game.

The stills of onlive don't look terrible but they certainly are blurrier/duller, and I'm sure the frame rate won't be anything particularly pleasing.

 

[busydude]

The stills of onlive don't look terrible but they certainly are blurrier/duller, and I'm sure the frame rate won't be anything particularly pleasing.

Using FRAPS I can see the games are certainly capped at 60FPS. I am not sure how accurate the measurement is though.

 

[zagood]

40GB or gb?

Either way, there are much better ways to receive 40GB/gb than onlive.

I'm sure...I'm just intrigued by the concept. I've got these damn Steam sale games sitting in my library waiting for when I decided I can burn 10GB...

Sorry...GigaByte.

 

[toyota]

well I just played Batman, FEAR 2, and Borderlands demos on there and I am not really impressed. Borderlands looked ok but Batman looked really bad and FEAR 2 wasnt much better. mouth movements did not sync up at all with audio in Batman the mouse is so floaty to the point of the games making me a little queasy and aiming can be a problem. for the prices they are asking its a huge rip off.

 

[Zoeff]

I'd just like to mention that only two of the planned 7 or so server farms are online last I checked. One in california and another one someplace else.

If you don't live in the middle of nowhere and have a stable connection, OnLive should work just fine. It's been proven over and over again that the input lag isn't noticable and the IQ improved with it under these conditions. 1080p will also be available later down the road.

Using FRAPS I can see the games are certainly capped at 60FPS. I am not sure how accurate the measurement is though.

Last I checked most monitors these days are at about 60Hz, and you also you expect 100 FPS to be stable over the internet?

 

[busydude]

Last I checked most monitors these days are at about 60Hz, and you also you expect 100 FPS to be stable over the internet?

So, What is the point you trying to make?

 

[Lonbjerg]

start at 35:30, not 34:00

and he is wrong, it isn't about the speed of light, it is about the speed of processors... the gateways, the routers, the chips that encode/decode packets... they are the main cause of latency.
Light takes 0.0053681937522257481207215693198 seconds to travel 1000 miles.
thats 5ms to travel a distance GREATER than the length of texas at its widest. so from a center of each state it should take under 2ms to reach most location in the state.
And electricity propagates at the speed of light

from texas to syndy australia it will take light 46 ms

No it dosn't
Electricity moves at ~66% the speed of c in a shielded copper cable.
But we don't don't use copper in the internetnet backbone, we use fiber.
But there the same rules apply, light only moves at ~66% the speed of c in a fiber cable.
Simple physics FYI.

The only place you can reach c is in a vacuum.

You need to redo your math.

Oh, BTW you need to learn something about networking too:

Tracing route to [URL="http://www.anandtech.com"]www.anandtech.com[/URL] [208.65.201.105]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
 
  1    <1 ms     *       <1 ms  xxx.xxx.xxx [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
  2    10 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  ve8.cosw1.hoer.dk.ip.fullrate.dk [90.185.3.25]
  3     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  te2-2.boanxc7.dk.ip.tdc.net [195.215.109.229]
  4    31 ms    16 ms    16 ms  xe-0-3-0.cr1.lhr1.uk.nlayer.net [195.66.224.37]
  5    95 ms   107 ms    94 ms  xe-7-0-0.cr1.nyc3.us.nlayer.net [69.22.142.30]
  6   100 ms   100 ms    99 ms  xe-2-0-0.cr1.iad1.us.nlayer.net [69.22.142.92]
  7   100 ms   100 ms   100 ms  ae1-40g.ar1.iad1.us.nlayer.net [69.31.31.178]
  8   100 ms   100 ms   100 ms  r1.vadc1.eicomm.net [69.31.30.218]
  9   100 ms   100 ms   100 ms  208.65.201.105
Trace complete.

Notice how switching/routing adds no real measurable lantency, but distance does?

That because the biggest fator of lantency in world wide communication is distance, not the number op hops.

Network Technician (with an understanding of physics) for an ISP here.

Just F.Y.I.

 

[Unkle_Tar]

Still limited to PC games is going to be a big drawback.

 

[AndroidVageta]

OK...a little update from my last post...played DiRT 2 and UT3...

Dirt 2 looks decent for what it is...really didnt notice the overly compressed stream unless not moving, which you never do in Dirt 2 lol...only problem, and it was a major game breaking problem is again the control lag...I just BARELY won the first race on Easy...and I kill at this game...the lag really messed me up on this one, when I needed to accelerate I would do so that fraction of a second to late and it would royally fuck me lol...so DiRT 2 is a no go for me...

UT3 is basically the same as DiRT 2 except with a FPS and not a racer...graphic quality was good but the high compression was not...controls, like all the games, was too laggy and just messed me up...

OVERALL I would say that the only game Ive played so far that was doable control wise and looked good while doing it was Just Cause 2...

 

[toyota]

well I just tried Just Cause 2 and it was a little too sluggish for me. the graphics were much worse looking than me putting the pc version on 720.

 

[AndroidVageta]

well I just tried Just Cause 2 and it was a little too sluggish for me. the graphics were much worse looking than me putting the pc version on 720.

Well, I would say that JC2 is easily the better looking game on OnLive...as for the controls...sure theres lag, but it doesnt take anything away from the gameplay as far as I could tell...in other words, it played more naturally than any of the other games in my opinion, I had no problem driving or killing enemies like I have in all the other games Ive played on OnLive.

 

[konakona]

As for the propagation delay being dominant, I think Lonbjerg is right. At least for long distance that really is precisely what I have experienced.

I live in texas and game regularly on a korean server (it's an mmorpg, there is no other way around), about 6800 miles away from here. No matter what ISP I get, the ping hovers around 200ms + some depending on the line condition (DSL tends to fare better in most cases, but only by 10-20ms on average. cable is only worse from there). Adding more hops by going thru proxy did absolutely nothing in either direction.

Prior to moving here, I used to live in Atlanta (east coast), where my ping was about 40-50ms higher, again regardless of which ISP I have tried (about 3-4 of them, all equal more or less) and remarkably consistently at that. Some of my friends over at west coast are getting close to 150ms playing the same game. Doesn't that add up a wee bit too perfectly to be a mere coincidence?

Sad to hear your onlive experience was far from ideal. Um.. I mean no I am glad to hear it is more likely to flop. I just don't like the idea of this gaming thru a cloud computing taking off in a big way. TBH I hope they fail

 

[taltamir]

@Lonbjerg: @66% of c then simply multiply each figure by 1.5x
We are now looking at 1.5*5ms = 7.5ms to go 1000 miles. Lets do the math from the beginning to avoid rounding errors... this gives 8ms @ 1000 miles. Op is 110 miles away, so (avoiding rounding errors) for him light takes 0.9 ms to travel the distance at 66% c.
OP's ping is greater than 0.9ms.

also, http://www.anandtech.com/show/2111/10
Notice how big a difference there is in ping rates with different cards? offloading processing of packets (which I explicitly stated) improved ping by 30ms. (from about 110 ms to 80ms in that test)

I have no idea what your traceroute thing is actually saying, what does each column measure, where does it show time @ each step? Where is the total time?

 

[Ualdayan]

I recently switched from AT&T DSL to Comcast and currently have both still in service. Speedtests say the DSL is 6.92Mbps down/0.5Mbps up, and they say Comcast is 103Mbps down/6Mbps up (SMC D3G DOCSIS 3 modem, commercial line, and powerboost) On the AT&T connection Youtube always loaded at a crawl, but on Comcast they load almost instantly. Now, Youtube doesn't really come close to using the full DSL connection's bandwidth according to router, yet it loads extremely slow. I used to think Youtube was just heavily overloaded, but on the Comcast connection it loads videos almost instantly (no waiting even for 1080p videos) so it must be something on AT&T's backend to Youtube. This behavior could be why Onlive seems to vary so much for different people here.

Just because you have a 6Mbps connection and that's what they say results in the best experience for Onlive don't forget about the inherent differences between internet connections from different providers. Even at the same speed the routing differences could make two people in the same city, at the same speed, have vastly difference experiences with Onlive.

 

[taltamir]

about 6800 miles away from here. No matter what ISP I get, the ping hovers around 200ms +

@ 2/3 of c @ 6800 miles light would take 0.05475557627270263083136000706195 seconds. Aka 54.8ms notice that it is 1/4th your actual ping.

 

[konakona]

Yeah but still doesn't explain a very consistent result within a same 'zone' if you catch my drift, and each zone has a very consistent drop in speed (or increase in ping) regardless of the ISP, even their topology. Like I said adding whole lot more hops by going thru proxies in other countries had very negligible effects to ping and actual gameplay if any at all. Responsiveness in the game is well noticed and I can easily tell if things are going slower or faster if the ping differs more than by 10ms (played the game for 6 years, I know exactly how much time each action should take).

 

[taltamir]

Yeah but still doesn't explain a very consistent result within a same 'zone' if you catch my drift, and each zone has a very consistent drop in speed (or increase in ping) regardless of the ISP, even their topology. Like I said adding whole lot more hops by going thru proxies in other countries had very negligible effects to ping and actual gameplay if any at all. Responsiveness in the game is well noticed and I can easily tell if things are going slower or faster if the ping differs more than by 10ms (played the game for 6 years, I know exactly how much time each action should take).

perhaps it is mostly decoding/encoding at your place and the destination server rather than, with the ISPs equipment not taking any noticeable amount of time.

I can't tell without more detailed information. But the speed of light accounts for only a fraction of your ping.

 

[konakona]

Technically speaking you may well be right, it probably is a fair share of transmission delay added to it. The end result though, moving from one part of the country to another somehow produces a very predictable pattern of latency shift one way or another from my own observation. Maybe the way infrastructure is set up forces you to go through more of those slow processors, gateways, etc as you describe once you move a certain distance? Either way, I guess what I am trying to say is distance seem to matter a whole effing lot, more so than anything else.

Rereading your posts indicates you didn't claim otherwise, you were just arguing where the higher latency came from. My appologies.

perhaps it is mostly decoding/encoding at your place and the destination server rather than, with the ISPs equipment not taking any noticeable amount of time.

yeah, but then moving from east coast -> texas -> west coast produces a very linear drop in ping testing with the same methodology. Can't be just something happening on the either end.

 

[Lonbjerg]

@Lonbjerg: @66% of c then simply multiply each figure by 1.5x
We are now looking at 1.5*5ms = 7.5ms to go 1000 miles. Lets do the math from the beginning to avoid rounding errors... this gives 8ms @ 1000 miles. Op is 110 miles away, so (avoiding rounding errors) for him light takes 0.9 ms to travel the distance at 66% c.
OP's ping is greater than 0.9ms.

A ping is too and from.
A sends a packet to B
B recieves packet and sends reply back.
So you need to double the distances/time.

And you forget that I am sitting on a 1G fiberlink directy into out backbone, so I don't have the intial lantency on various xDSL technologies.

SHDSL = 1-3ms latency from IAD til DSLAM
ADSL = 8-15ms lantecy from IAD to DSLAM
ADSL2+ = 20-35 ms lantecy from IAD to DSLAM

also, http://www.anandtech.com/show/2111/10

Notice how big a difference there is in ping rates with different cards? offloading processing of packets (which I explicitly stated) improved ping by 30ms. (from about 110 ms to 80ms in that test)

I know, have a KillerNic myself, due to the fact that I can compile linux apps to run directly on my NIC.

Onboard NIC's are crap...especially if you put a heavy load on your connection, or run many sessions at the same time.

I have no idea what your traceroute thing is actually saying, what does each column measure, where does it show time @ each step? Where is the total time?

I will dissect it here:

  1    <1 ms     *       <1 ms  xxx.xxx.xxx [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
[B]My connection[/B]
  2    10 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  ve8.cosw1.hoer.dk.ip.fullrate.dk [90.185.3.25]
[B]Our coreswitch...notice the lantency is the same, even if has been routed.[/B]
  3     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  te2-2.boanxc7.dk.ip.tdc.net [195.215.109.229]
[B]Another ISP, but in the same country...notice the same lantency, we have routed but travled not far[/B]
  4    31 ms    16 ms    16 ms  xe-0-3-0.cr1.lhr1.uk.nlayer.net [195.66.224.37]
[B]Notice the ping goes up...moving Denmark to UK[/B]
  5    95 ms   107 ms    94 ms  xe-7-0-0.cr1.nyc3.us.nlayer.net [69.22.142.30]
[B]Notice the pings go up...moving from the UK to the US[/B]
  6   100 ms   100 ms    99 ms  xe-2-0-0.cr1.iad1.us.nlayer.net [69.22.142.92]
[B]Moving in the US[/B]
  7   100 ms   100 ms   100 ms  ae1-40g.ar1.iad1.us.nlayer.net [69.31.31.178]
[B]In the US...but no added lantency, simple routing[/B]
  8   100 ms   100 ms   100 ms  r1.vadc1.eicomm.net [69.31.30.218]
[B]In the US...but no added lantency, simple routing[/B]
  9   100 ms   100 ms   100 ms  208.65.201.105
[B]In the US...but no added lantency, simple routing and at destination[/B]

The ping show pings form different locations(hops) on the router from my IP to anandtech.com, but my ping should be~100 ms til anandtech.com from that traceroute:

Pinging [URL="http://www.anandtech.com/"]www.anandtech.com[/URL] [208.65.201.105] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.65.201.105: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=59
Reply from 208.65.201.105: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=59
Reply from 208.65.201.105: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=59
Reply from 208.65.201.105: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=59
Ping statistics for 208.65.201.105:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 100ms, Average = 100ms

And so it is.