
Thoughts on OnLive - alexyim
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/06/Thoughts-on-OnLive#top
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jordanroher
What really amazes me about OnLive is the interface. It's really a thin
client: your entire interface is streamed from OnLive's servers. Since the UI
is a video, they jam it full of movie clips. Reminds me of the video wall from
Back to the Future.

My expectations were shattered when I clicked on a game preview video,
expecting a 10 second wait while it loaded and buffered. Nope! It started
playing immediately. Heck, even the infinitesimal load screens they have are
videos.

I clicked on all the "Brag Clip" videos and they played immediately. You can
even watch people playing live. Since there's no wait penalty for moving
through the interface, you find yourself clicking a lot more.

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derefr
This seems like it could be a perfect complement to a low-power device running
something like ChromeOS. I wonder if they'll branch out from games, though?
Any CPU-intensive application could be made to live in the cloud: OnLive
Photoshop, OnLive AutoCAD... it would just need to be coupled with a cloud
document store of some sort. (Hopefully Dropbox.)

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zyb09
He did mention there's a certain mouse-lag on cursor based games and Photoshop
with mouse-lag would be kinda bad. I don't see how you could solve the problem
either. His 14 ms ping is probably as good as it gets and even the smartest
software can't circumvent physical limitations.

~~~
jeff18
This is actually easy to solve -- most VNC applications already implement the
solution, which is to have a local, lag-free cursor that is shown to the user,
and hide the laggy cursor on the other machine.

One thing I forgot to mention in the post is that there is apparently an
OnLive API that some games are using that replaces the cursor in the game with
a local cursor. Not all games can use it (for example, World of Goo's cursor
is blocked by walls and such which is critical to gameplay), but Unreal
Tournament, and OnLive itself, use it in the UI.

Edit: of course this wouldn't solve the case where you are actually doing
something in Photoshop that might require real-time feedback like the airbrush
tool!

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juicebox
This is why I'm entirely skeptical of this whole OnLive business.

If you're having trouble with a mouse cursor, then no video game that requires
interaction will be playable. QuakeWorld, IIRC, was the first real game to
solve the latency problem. And they did it with prediction that lets the UI
maintain responsiveness while hiding latency. That game was playable up to
maybe a 200ms ping time and with a dial-up modem. That's impressive. But it
was also a lot of client-side magic, which is what VNC is doing with the
mouse.

In addition to that, no Wii game will be playable with this thing, no FPS, no
World of Warcraft, etc. etc. I think this is why serious game companies aren't
even commenting on it. It doesn't even register to them. I can really only see
OnLive taking business away from the Appstore or Android handheld markets.
Extreme casual gamers that don't know the difference between an Xbox
controller, a Wii nunchuk, and a 1980s joystick will be the market here.

~~~
jeff18
Disagree, I found FPS to be the most playable games on the service. You should
definitely try it out. Also what makes you say that serious game companies
aren't commenting on it? Their games are already there.

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nroach
I'd love to try it out. How? It looks like their "sign up" is just a waiting
list at this point. I'd also question whether they have really "launched" if
at this point all they're doing is what amounts to a limited subscriber no-
cost public beta.

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liuliu
I tried OnLive in beta phase. For most 3D games, it works just fine, I can
jump, turn my head around and everything. But for racing game, the lagging is
killing me, I cannot finish one round because the dismatch between my
perception and the actually driving. Not a FPS person, have no opinion on
that.

Overall, I still think that OnLive is a product born too ahead of time; we
just simply don't have that hight quality Internet to support it.

~~~
houseabsolute
It's making me imagine a box that you can install in an apartment complex
where you just plug in a number of game consoles and a SAN, and it allows
anyone in the apartment complex to use an onlive-like interface to play the
games. This is probably doable with today's technology, although the lack of
digital delivery and HD game storage to the consoles makes it a little too
much of a challenge in the short term. But that would get around the network
infrastructure issue.

~~~
liuliu
The reason why OnLive is economical than your game console is not that one
OnLive server can power several game instances. Maybe the most powerful server
(expensive ones but still x86 arch) can serve 3 or 5 game instances
simultaneously. However, in per dollar perspective, it is not cheaper than
your game console.

The way OnLive is cheaper is that it smoothes the usage curve by allowing
people in different places, different time-zones to play on the same server.
Once the utilization rate up, it is a scalable business.

In your "dorm room" scenario, I fail to see any advantages in server
utilization perspective.

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crystalis
How do multiple time zones jive with local cdns serving at 14 ms...?

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bdr
An unmentioned benefit is that this stops a lot of cheating.

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aw3c2
Until you use the free cpu to do image analysis for some cheap hacks like
aiming. This might be interesting (I doubt people will do it though).

~~~
bdr
That would be possible, but other classes of cheating wouldn't be, like
maphacks.

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Maciek416
This is a pretty remarkable service, but there is one awkward caveat mentioned
in the article:

 _"Unfortunately, because of licensing restrictions, we can only offer Mass
Effect 2 for play under Windows. So, if you do not have access to a PC, your
only option to play it on a Mac is under Windows using Boot Camp or a similar
system. We apologize for the inconvenience. OnLive has no other games in the
pipeline that are Windows-only, and we do not expect to have any others."_

D'oh!

[edit: As a Canadian surfer, I run into US services and sites every week that
don't allow non-US users. Netflix, Comedy Central, etc. I could imagine the
licensing issues could be similarly irritating with OnLive as well]

~~~
thiele
"OnLive has no other games in the pipeline that are Windows-only, and we do
not expect to have any others."

As they point out, this is the only game that's not available cross platform.
It's understandable that this would happen during the beta period, while they
are still trying to prove the model to game developers.

~~~
scotje
I wonder if the restriction is because EA already licensed the Mac publishing
rights to someone like Aspyr?

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chipsy
It's more likely a Microsoft exclusive.

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siculars
This is a great writeup of OnLive. I wrote one myself a few months back,
[http://siculars.posterous.com/onlive-shows-us-the-way-to-
vid...](http://siculars.posterous.com/onlive-shows-us-the-way-to-video-game-
nirvana). Like the author, I also agree that this is the real deal and will
only continue to get better as technology improves and end users get fatter
pipes. I, for one, am looking forward to giving this a go.

I might even venture to say that at some point in the future as the platform
matures, OnLive will be the preferred distribution platform simply due to the
fact that there is no way to resell a game by the end user. Resale is a major
problem for publishers who are desperately trying to eek out every last cent
from their investments.

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thunk
I wonder if you could eventually sell cycles back to OnLive, since you aren't
doing the heavy lifting on your machine ... Maybe offset the cost of the
service? Or maybe OnLive could do an ElectricSheep-like screensaver for
distributed processing. That could mitigate some of the latency issues as
well, for those near you. Social rendering, comrade!

Edit: The more I think about this, the more it seems this is precisely (or at
least _should_ be) where they're going with this.

~~~
po
The added complexity and lack of centralized control isn't worth the cost of
cycles.

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thunk
I don't know. OnLive can't scale very well as is. A liberal estimate would be
four game instances per server, which means 250,000 servers for a million
players. But if you're spreading that around, especially on players' machines
that aren't being used at the time and may be fewer hops from the destination,
it may be worth it. Plus, it'd be a good first step towards a mostly
decentralized gaming infrastructure.

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lenni
This might be the killer app for next generation networks for countries that
don't have it already. It'll go from "Oh well, Youtube is a little slow but I
won't spend money on a better plan for _that_." to "I absolutely must have a
20Mbit connection in order to play all these _amazing_ games."

I get 700kb-1Mb/s here in Berlin on a cheapo contract - I will definitely try
it out if (and that's a big one) it becomes available here.

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mkuhn
It actually requires 700 KB/s or 5.6 Mb/s but that should still be affordable
in most of Europe.

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malkia
I saw OnLive on E3 and was greatly impressed. I wish I had this technology,
working locally at work for things like RemoteDesktop/VNC (okay not fair, as
the latter would probably deal better with high-frequency detail such as
fonts). But for testing/developing games off line, or even in a big office (to
cut down few miles a day of walking) that would be great :)

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usaar333
How does it work with custom content? If I wanted to say play Mnerva for HL2
(assuming HL2 were offered on it in the future), is there a way?

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jeff18
There is none. It's like a console in that regard.

