[opensource-dev] On Live, SL via Cloud Computing

[Talarus Luan]

On 10/27/2010 10:53 PM, Stickman wrote:
> Had a thought, figured I'd share it in case someone with authority
> wanted to explore the topic.

I'm not an authority, but I have explored it a bit.

> On Live (http://www.onlive.com/) is a cloud computing gaming service.
> You open up the client and their computers run the game and graphics
> and stream the video to you while accepting your controls. It means
> you can run games on systems that otherwise wouldn't run them.
>

It's an iteration on an old idea. Render the scene, stream it to the 
user, accept user input back to the server to render the next scene, 
etc. It's always been a huge boondoggle because of the amount of 
bandwidth it takes, loss of image fidelity, and the control lag.

> Pros:
> -Less powerful computers can run SL on high settings

It still requires a fairly beefy computer to run the decoding in high 
image quality with high frame rates, which is pretty much a requirement 
to avoid image artifacting.

> Cons:
> -$5/month subscription fee per user (Premium option?)
> -Requires high bandwidth (3mbit) connection
> -Probably consumes more bandwidth than SL itself would

-Control lag; even though they claim it is "good enough" for FPS games, 
many FPS players who have tried it out report serious latency in control 
response, turning them off of it.
-Image quality issues: viewing a virtual world as a compressed movie 
will have significantly noticeable image quality issues (and has been 
noted in reviews of the service).

My personal take on it (and has been since the mid-90s, when this 
concept was first proposed) is "no thanks". I prefer to use the 
horsepower of my system to generate the world, especially since that 
horsepower is still ever-increasing on a geometric scale, and getting 
cheaper all the time. It also isn't that hard to keep SL's platform 
requirements within the grasp of older hardware for a good long while.

--TL