Nvidia rolls out game streaming on a GTX 1080 cloud for $2.50 an hour

[cytg111]

I would have to see some reviews on youtube before anyone can convince me that the latency would not drive me nuts... bare that, then its a decent "first move" .. lets hope it works well and takes off and prices come down.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yeah I was wondering if you'd do some kind of local work as well to get around having the games installed on their servers, but that would still require you to have a good CPU (so no laptop usage really except already gaming ones). Plus it would get rid of the work laptop usage, since you'd need steam / games installed locally. Plus I'm sure the input lag would be terrible with the game rendering on your machine, then remotely and then local again. Seems like there would be massive stuttering.

Dunno though, but it seems like the 1060 would be the only way to do this, as the quality would be lacking on the 1080 version anyway, might as well save a few bucks / session.

I wouldn't even bother with that, the only kinds of games in which the input lag wouldn't drive me up the rafters would be turn based strategy games, or something equally latency-agnostic. In those cases though, you don't *need* a high end graphics card. And it still doesn't get around the fact that you'll burn through the cost of the card in a few months of casual gaming.

 

[Face2Face]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/nvidia-geforce-now-compatibility-quality-latency

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/nvidia-geforce-now-compatibility-quality-latency

That review isn't encouraging, considering it was probably in ideal (or near ideal) conditions. Artifacting and latency issues, as expected, no >1080p support, and even he admits that he wouldn't expect it to look any worse on a 1060gtx.

NV would have been better off offering this service as a flat fee (like $5/mo), and it simply uses whatever card 'level' is necessary for a game at a given graphic quality, so a 1070 for maxed out W3, 1080 for maxed out hitman or whatever, etc.

 

[Yakk]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/nvidia-geforce-now-compatibility-quality-latency

How much latency is expected? 30ms ping is the target.

Here we go you bunch of non-believers.

Nvidia will be able to show Riot (League of Legends) how it's done and how to manage their warehouses of servers and massive bandwidth requirements.

 

[Bacon1]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/nvidia-geforce-now-compatibility-quality-latency

Thanks, guess that answered my questions:

How many games will it have at launch? 100. Nvidia plans to launch 50 additional games per month. The focus will mainly be on AAA titles.

So they will handle all the games server side.

Which seems to be opposite what Polygon thought from the original article:

Once connected, they can install games from “popular digital game stores -- like Steam, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay and GOG -- and start playing.” Free-to-play games like League of Legends or World of Tanks can also be installed directly from their respective websites.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Here we go you bunch of non-believers.

Non-believers? 30ms input latency for mouse/keyboard movements is f'ing terrible.

 

[Yakk]

Non-believers? 30ms input latency for mouse/keyboard movements is f'ing terrible.

...


/sarcasm off

 

[nathanddrews]

30ms is just so much more cinematic.

 

[Headfoot]

It's not 30ms, its 30 additional ms. You still have to account for keyboard to PC -> PC to Nvidia and back = 30ms (BEST CASE) -> display processing via hardware, small but still present -> monitor delay, which can be substantial.

Very doubtful most people can get 30ms for there, processing, and back. It's more likely that most people have 30ms ping just to get to their servers in the first place, each way, plus the 10-16ms of GPU time to process the frame, a few MS to encode it, another 30ms back then plus local latency. It'll be half a second between pressing a key and seeing the final image on the display, especially if you're on a wireless network at home too.

 

[Yakk]

It's not 30ms, its 30 additional ms. You still have to account for keyboard to PC -> PC to Nvidia and back = 30ms (BEST CASE) -> display processing via hardware, small but still present -> monitor delay, which can be substantial.

Very doubtful most people can get 30ms for there, processing, and back. It's more likely that most people have 30ms ping just to get to their servers in the first place, each way, plus the 10-16ms of GPU time to process the frame, a few MS to encode it, another 30ms back then plus local latency. It'll be half a second between pressing a key and seeing the final image on the display, especially if you're on a wireless network at home too.

Bingo! My previous post was missing the /sarcasm off tag indeed.

I'd say unless you live right besides the server I'd expect a combined 100-150 minimum latency and wouldn't be surprised to see upwards of 200+ counting distance, wireless, and older equipment (target clientele) which would drive me up the wall even on 4x games with that laggy cursor effect it would create.

 

[cytg111]

30ms alone is gonna feel ~ those titles capped at 30fps. VR is never gonna happen.

 

[Teizo]

If it was like $20 per month and you didn't have to own the game, that might be attractive.

$20 a month would be $240 a year or less than half the price of a 1080. That makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I think that'd be awesome for inexpensive weak laptops if the internet latency can handle it... and if it was like $.25/hr. Then even a weak-ish laptop could be a gaming station. But too expensive in my opinion.

 

[bystander36]

$20 a month would be $240 a year or less than half the price of a 1080. That makes no sense whatsoever.

That actually makes a fair bit of sense. I think what is being missed here, is that you are basically renting a GTX 1080 with this service, along with paying for cloud bandwidth. Given that, I'd think they'd probably need to charge a little more to make it at all profitable.

That said, there is no way in hell I'd pay for a service like this due to the online streaming. Not only will it require serious bandwidth on your side, there is going to be a lot of latency issues, and reliability issues.

 

[casiofx]

I think i found a good usage on this service:
Benchmarking a card you don't have lol!

 

[Capt Caveman]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3155...acbook-air-thanks-to-nvidias-geforce-now.html

 

[Sonikku]

Holy crap at that price I wouldn't even bother with side quests or wrapping up loose end, just send me off to the bad guy and let me be done with it, FAST.

 

[Madpacket]

This has to be the dumbest thing Nvidia has done as of late. I didn't think they could top forcing users to sign in to downloaded applications to gain access to what you already paid for, but here we are.

 

[Genx87]

I think it will more popular than havin your own rig.

That is what I am wondering. Once we have fast low latency internet connections is this more economical than building a gaming computer? This current price is steep. But prices should fall.

 

[Teizo]

That actually makes a fair bit of sense. I think what is being missed here, is that you are basically renting a GTX 1080 with this service, along with paying for cloud bandwidth. Given that, I'd think they'd probably need to charge a little more to make it at all profitable.

That said, there is no way in hell I'd pay for a service like this due to the online streaming. Not only will it require serious bandwidth on your side, there is going to be a lot of latency issues, and reliability issues.

I have a friend who is a lost cause Apple fanboy and he was rather excited about the prospect of this service. Maybe Mac users will be more attracted to this than windows users. I can see laptop users with lower powered gpus liking the idea of buying a game..then renting out a 1080 to max it out graphics wise and be done with the game when they are done. I don't know how popular it will be, but I doubt they would have launched it without doing the proper market research. OnLive failed. Maybe Nvidia can make it work.

 

[Piroko]

I can hook a Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor to a Lumia 950. I would actually pay for this if it made that combination with Witcher 3 happen, if only as a party gag.

As a service on my desktop PC - completely uninteresting.

 

[dark zero]

Non-believers? 30ms input latency for mouse/keyboard movements is f'ing terrible.

And in MOBAs is worse...

 

[ElFenix]

They'd need to have data centers in every city hooked right in to ISPs just to combat internet lag. Maybe the 2.50 an hour is to pay Comcast its carriage peerage fees

 

[Keysplayr]

I think this is a live test model. I don't think anyone at Nvidia really knows how it would do or be received by the masses, so this may only be a test roll-out. A thermometer to see what people would be willing to pay for something like this because nobody really knows. And the latency is ALWAYS going to be a problem. Insane lag and skipping mega frames to keep up online won't be very fun. I don't see this succeeding at all.