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Originally Posted by Misha
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1) The Hardware Question
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To give the kind of performance OnLive is promising (720p at 60 frames-per-second) realistically its datacenters are going to require the processing equivalent of a high-end dual core PC running a very fast GPU - a 9800GT minimum, and maybe something a bit meatier depending on whether the 60fps gameplay claim works out, and which games will actually be running. That's for every single connection OnLive is going to be handling.
So, let's say that Grand Theft Auto V is released via OnLive, and (conservatively) one million people want to play it at the same time. We can talk about Tesla GPUs, server clusters, the whole nine yards, but the bottom line is that the computing and rendering power we're talking about is mammoth to a degree never seen before in the games business, perhaps anywhere. There may be a way how this can be handled (more on that later), but even having capacity for 'just' 5,000 clients running at the same time is a monumental effort and expense. It would be the equivalent of us running a single Eurogamer server for every reader who connects to the site at the same time. The expense involved is staggering (not to mention the heat all this hardware would generate - think of the children!).
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The OnLive guys that gave the press conference pretty much answered these questions already. They didn't go into specifics but it has been stated that it would be 1 to 1 ratio person to gpu on the service. They stated they are completely custom servers and very cheap. The servers themselves will be data centers spread across the US built for full time cooling. They also stated that the scaling of the service is extremely simple. Make a server rack and plug it in. You have to remember that amount of time behind this and money. With supporters with deep pockets like Warner Brothers for example if the subscription base gets big enough the service will scale as well.
2) The Video Encoding Conundrum
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Not only will these datacenters be handling the gameplay, they will also be encoding the video output of the machines in real time and piping it down over IP to you at 1.5MBps (for SD) and 5MBps (for HD). OnLive says you will be getting 60fps gameplay. First of all, bear in mind that YouTube's encoding farms take a long, long time to produce their current, offline 2MBps 30fps HD video. OnLive is going to be doing it all in real-time via a PC plug-in card, at 5MBps, and with surround sound too.
It sounds brilliant, but there's one rather annoying fact to consider: the nature of video compression is such that the longer the CPU has to encode the video, the better the job it will do. Conversely, it's a matter of fact that the lower the latency, the less efficient it can be.
More than that, OnLive overlord Steve Perlmen has said that the latency introduced by the encoder is 1ms. Think about that; he's saying that the OnLive encoder runs at 1000fps. It's one of the most astonishing claims I've ever heard. It's like Ford saying that the new Fiesta's cruising speed is in excess of the speed of sound. To give some idea of the kind of leap OnLive reckons it is delivering, I consulted one of the world's leading specialists in high-end video encoding, and his response to OnLive's claims included such gems as "Bulls***" and "Hahahahaha!" along with a more measured, "I have the feeling that somebody is not telling the entire story here." This is a man whose know-how has helped YouTube make the jump to HD, and whose software is used in video compression applications around the world.
He recommended a series of settings and tweaks that would allow for h264 processing at the kind of latencies OnLive has to work with, so here's a comparison video: source on the left, 5MBps 60fps encode on the right. As is usual with my videos, the action is slowed down to eliminate macro-blocking on playback as much as possible. Burnout Paradise is the chosen game, which features heavily on OnLive's front-end demo, and is also a good test for arcade-style video.
It's not particularly pretty, but with the constrictions OnLive has to live with, this is the sort of performance the current market leader in compression has to offer. The bottom line here is that OnLive's 'interactive video compression algorithm' must be so utterly amazing, and orders of magnitude better than anything ever made, that you wonder why the company is bothering with videogames at all when the potential applications are so much more staggering and immense.
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This was also talked about at the press conference and later again at GDC. Steve Perlman, the CEO of OnLive, was also the brain behind Quicktime. He understands video compression and what needs to be done to make it work. They have stated they have come up with the necessary compression and algorithms to make it possible. The early impressions from GDC are very promising. Yes there is some artifacting but it is minimal and the OnLive service is still in pre-alpha stage.
3) The Insurmountable Challenge: Latency
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OnLive says that it has conducted years of 'psychophysical' research to lessen the effects of internet latency. That's the key issue here, and I can't see how OnLive can fudge its way around this one. In reality, it's going to need sub-150 millisecond latency from its servers at least, and a hell of a QoS (quality of service) to guarantee that this will in any way approximate the experience you currently have at home. The latency factor will probably need to be somewhat lower than that to factor in the video encoding server-side, and decoding client-side, which by any measurable standard right now is going to be iimpactful.
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This will, without a doubt, be the toughest sale to gamers. It would seem likely there would be some kind of latency. Even the founders understand there is no way to get around it. What they have done however in the 7 years this has been in developement has cut latency down from milliseconds to microseconds. So small that human perception can't pick up on the slow down.
Nothing will give us more insight then hands on with the final product. But this is the future. It is better for the developers and publishers because it gets rid of piracy. In the long run it will be better for us because I believe it will give us better games. Developers will be able to push the envelope farther knowing there is one platform to develop for and it can handle anything you throw at it.
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