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[twobear]

Man, people are so gullible.

A tiny patch of grass udpated 12 times per second... what happens when that patch turns into a field? How are you going to pass that kind of data over the internet fast enough? What happens when a million people are playing the game? Who's going to pay for all that CPU time? Micrsoft? They'd need to have dedicated processors ready to handle the workloads, the infrastructure required would be huge and costly.

What happens when the user is not online? The grass disappears?

Presumably further away grass will be on a lower quality local simulation.

 

[acksman]

Love reading about this stuff. We are in the infancy of this tech, but it looks like we are headed in the right direction. MS has built up a good Azure infrastructure and compute costs will just keep going down. Crazy how much Amazon and the others usage prices have gone down in the past year. Just another utility cost.

 

[badb0y]

Can't be used in games yet. When it is ready to be used in games, this generation will be over.

Before you focus on getting cloud computing out their the ISPs have to get a decent internet infrastructure out there.

 

[shandy706]

What happens when the user is not online? The grass disappears?

You could...you know...read the OP.

We are currently creating a game. But in fact, we are kind of creating two-in-one. One with Azure available, and one for offline only. Everything you code, you need to code for two scenerarios. This is a ton of work. if online = dynamic grass; if offline=static grass ... To say it very simple. And so on.That's why we are currently thinking about going "online-only". But to be very open to you, we have some fear about that. Obviously. The gaming community is very careful when they hear "online-only" ... Games like Sim City simply ... Well, did it wrong.

 

[BeforeU]

Interesting. Looking forward to Crackdown.

 

[IAmRandom31]

Man, people are so gullible.

A tiny patch of grass udpated 12 times per second... what happens when that patch turns into a field? How are you going to pass that kind of data over the internet fast enough? What happens when a million people are playing the game? Who's going to pay for all that CPU time? Micrsoft? They'd need to have dedicated processors ready to handle the workloads, the infrastructure required would be huge and costly.

What happens when the user is not online? The grass disappears?

Really if anyone could spend billions on a project like that it would be MS. They make like 30 billion a year in profits and have been doing that since forever. God knows how much money they have in the company account at this point. Hell people with not even a percent of the company in shares are millionaires with no worry of money anymore.

Distributed processing is the future of course, but is it going to be an impact this gen? I don't think so. There could be some clever little things utilized here and there, but there will need to be growing pains and the pitfalls and problems need to be tested and realized and worked out. I mean .. what happens when GTAVII comes out or whatever and 7 million people are suddenly going online at the same time and hitting up the same server clusters needing the same distributed information that is usually only being used for maybe 100,000 people at once?

Will there be a queue in the future to play games needing distributed computations to run? Few companies are going to really create 2 completely different products for offline and online play. I don't see that becoming something developers will actually do.

Lots of pitfalls and problems that will simply have to get ironed out over the years. This is a next-gen thing that could actually be pretty special, but not this gen .

 

[pr0cs]

It's really cool and hopefully more devs think outside the box and plan for situations where cloud computing can help define their game and create new game styles because of the computing power.
It's still early though and the 'cost of entry' to develop something that needs 2 paths (online/offline) is going to be prohibitive to all except those that really want to push the tech forward.
I don't really understand why people are so fixated on the grass example. This isn't a grass simulator (heh) but an example of how a developer could use cloud computing to offload a lot of processing that normally would be done on the local box to someplace else.

 

[undu]

UDP Overhead = 1568 bits

Packet Loss
In regards to packet loss, in 2014, you simply don't have any

He uses UDP and doesn't expect data loss? That's really stupid (Hello, wifi!), and that's without talking about the expected packet round-trip, which is in pretty much ideal scenario, and not "normal", as he states. Or maintaining a constant 78 kbps no matter if your sister is streaming HD videos in YouTube or watching a series in Netflix.

We'll see how the user experience for this turns up, but judging from his statements I don't think it's going to be a nice one, he's brushing all the possible scenarios as if there were fringe situations, when a perfectly fine connection is not that normal, at least from my experience.

 

[gamechanger87]

Can't be used in games yet. When it is ready to be used in games, this generation will be over.

Before you focus on getting cloud computing out their the ISPs have to get a decent internet infrastructure out there.

I don't think its a bandwidth issue its more a stability issue. Although all online only games run into the same problem. I have a feeling within the next 2 years the majority of games will be online only anyway.

 

[gamechanger87]

He uses UDP and doesn't expect data loss? That's really stupid (Hello, wifi!), and that's without talking about the expected packet round-trip, which is in pretty much ideal scenario, and not "normal", as he states. Or maintaining a constant 78 kbps no matter if your sister is streaming HD videos in YouTube or watching a series in Netflix.

We'll see how the user experience for this turns up, but judging from his statements I don't think it's going to be a nice one, he's brushing all the possible scenarios as if there were fringe situations, when a perfectly fine connection is not that normal, at least from my experience.

He admits in later posts that not everything would be so peachy, but there are only so many ways you can model out something. You need to keep some constants.

 

[Zarx]

Looks pretty cool.

For everyone wondering what would happen if you were offline. It would probably be something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_UNRp7Wrog

I'd imagine MS would be able to gather more support than NVIDIA does for all their stuff. I'm super surprised it's still so early. We should be having games using this by now. MS needs to fast track it, send their programmers out on secondment and get this into some big-name games.

speaking of Nvidia they have a decent grass simulation demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7RQ4SKBGKk

 

[Gestault]

Yes but even a server/instruction set/operator that isn't in use, still has to exist. Cloud computing is not a magic box where you throw in X and Gandalf behind the scenes can guess your intentions and spit out an animation frame.

The instruction set still needs to exist. And for that instruction set to exist in Azure, the Dev has to pay for the resourcse it takes up. Usage may be zero but you still have to pay to keep it available.

Take a look at Azure pricing page so that you can get a better grasp, for cloud services, you pay for Resources AND Uptime. Many people forget the latter.

You deliberately removed the part of my post (which wasn't that long) that addressed exactly that, and referenced that there will always be a processing budget involved. And yes, longevity is something to be aware of.

 

[methane47]

He uses UDP and doesn't expect data loss? That's really stupid (Hello, wifi!), and that's without talking about the expected packet round-trip, which is in pretty much ideal scenario, and not "normal", as he states. Or maintaining a constant 78 kbps no matter if your sister is streaming HD videos in YouTube or watching a series in Netflix.

We'll see how the user experience for this turns up, but judging from his statements I don't think it's going to be a nice one, he's brushing all the possible scenarios as if there were fringe situations, when a perfectly fine connection is not that normal, at least from my experience.

I actually pointed out very similar things the first time that post popped up on Neogaf.
Here is an actual Azure speed test you can use to check your connection
http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

My connection at my office which basically has the very best/fastest internet my country offers and i get about 100ms to the nearest *dataCenter

 

[Bl4ckSunsh1n3]

If this got to a point where the cloud affected games to the point where there was a drastic difference in between the XBone and PS4 multi-platform games then I would, 100%, be all in on an XBone. Even if it was only for exclusives and they looked better than anything capable on other console hardware I would be in like 99%.

That being said, it's a long way off from being at a point where I buy into it.

 

[kodecraft]

Cloud power.

 

[methane47]

You deliberately removed the part of my post (which wasn't that long) that addressed exactly that, and referenced that there will always be a processing budget.

So that means, you agree with me then.

Starting up a game 5 years later after the resources are deallocated won't magically make the cloud work again.

 

[Sakura]

This means: the physic calculations you see are costing us pretty much no local power (excluding GPU ofc). We can use the saved power for other things - like AI, animations and so on.

I don't get it.
Why not just use the cloud for things like AI too then while you are at it? Or can the cloud only be used for superficial things like amazing grass physics because you have to take into consideration people who are not online? And considering it doesn't free up any GPU just some CPU, it doesn't really seem too impressive to me. But maybe I'm just crazy.

 

[spencman]

This could become an "arrow in the knee"...but this and kinect together are the most interesting things to me in this console gen.

 

[HawksWinStanley]

So a lot of times I'll see people bring up the fact that Sony is using the cloud on PS4 as well, but they don't seem to be touting it the way MS is. Are they utilizing the cloud in the same way, or is this something MS is doing on their own?

 

[IAmRandom31]

So a lot of times I'll see people bring up the fact that Sony is using the cloud on PS4 as well, but they don't seem to be touting it the way MS is. Are they utilizing the cloud in the same way, or is this something MS is doing on their own?

No. Sony has servers for streaming games to the PS4 and such.

MS seems to be building a network for distributed computing as well as renting out servers to devs for multiplayer

 

[spencman]

So a lot of times I'll see people bring up the fact that Sony is using the cloud on PS4 as well, but they don't seem to be touting it the way MS is. Are they utilizing the cloud in the same way, or is this something MS is doing on their own?

MS can tout this, because they're having good ressources for realizing it.

 

[Enectic]

So a lot of times I'll see people bring up the fact that Sony is using the cloud on PS4 as well, but they don't seem to be touting it the way MS is. Are they utilizing the cloud in the same way, or is this something MS is doing on their own?

Sony's implementation of the Cloud is more akin to something like OnLive. The game is completely rendered on a device while the video is streamed to another device. Microsoft's implementation seems to be different in that they plan to use it to augment the capabilities of the device that is currently rendering the game by offloading certain tasks to another device..

 

[Ol No Bones]

So a lot of times I'll see people bring up the fact that Sony is using the cloud on PS4 as well, but they don't seem to be touting it the way MS is. Are they utilizing the cloud in the same way, or is this something MS is doing on their own?

They aren't really doing the same thing. Not that we know of anyway.

 

[JaggedSac]

So that means, you agree with me then.

Starting up a game 5 years later after the resources are deallocated won't magically make the cloud work again.

What are you referring to when you say deallocated? The client company no longer has their deployment package ready to be deployed and spun up on demand?

 

[pixlexic]

so what if you don't have net or get disconnected

power of the cloud dream is dead?

Same thing that happens when playing an online mp game or mmo?

 

[SLOSifl]

Sony's implementation of the Cloud is more akin to something like OnLive. The game is completely rendered on a device while the video is streamed to another device. Microsoft's implementation seems to be different in that they plan to use it to augment the capabilities of the device that is currently rendering the game by offloading certain tasks to another device..

This is a strange and backwards interpretation of what "the cloud" is.

Sony and Microsoft both host servers. Developers can also host their own servers. Any of these servers can handle whatever type of action the developer wants to implement. It's not really any different than a web server "cloud computing" a scripted web page, and then having the client render it, or literally any implementation of a web service, or any number of other similar technologies.

Online multiplayer games already do "cloud computing" in the exact same way you are attributing to MS here.

 

[TyrantII]

No. You can not boost your games resolution with Azure. And no. You can not create better lighting effects with Azure. But, if you focus on it, you can still boost the overall graphical look of your game by a mile. We are currently creating a game. But in fact, we are kind of creating two-in-one. One with Azure available, and one for offline only. Everything you code, you need to code for two scenerarios. This is a ton of work. if online = dynamic grass; if offline=static grass ... To say it very simple. And so on.That's why we are currently thinking about going "online-only". But to be very open to you, we have some fear about that. Obviously. The gaming community is very careful when they hear "online-only" ... Games like Sim City simply ... Well, did it wrong.

So 2X the time and money. That's a huge problem. Or you window your customer base down to online only.

It interesting, but the fact remains that it makes no sense to leverage unless it's being directly funded by MS (potentially as a loss leader).

The industry is trying to do thing cheaper, faster, better; which is why this is not going to work in its current form. Saying nothing about the change in IQ and appearance when the second offline code takes over.

 

[methane47]

So a lot of times I'll see people bring up the fact that Sony is using the cloud on PS4 as well, but they don't seem to be touting it the way MS is. Are they utilizing the cloud in the same way, or is this something MS is doing on their own?

I don't think we haven't heard any mention of cloud use for graphics or AI or animation.
But there is nothing stopping anyone from doing it.

Cloud is not exclusive to the Xbox
Cloud Compute is not exclusive to the Xbox
Azure is not exclusive to the Xbox

What is exclusive to the Xbox is
- the pricing scheme Microsoft offers developers.
- Feature set in the Dev kit that makes it easy to deploy + implement
- Support.

What are you referring to when you say deallocated? The client company no longer has their deployment package ready to be deployed and spun up on demand?

By Deallocated I mean, not in a state of actively/passively awaiting a connection.
Some people seem to think that Cloud means "hey I can just throw up this website and it will stay up forever!! for free! Like magic!, and Servers will be always available even 20 years from the release date"

 

[AuRoN89]

again??

Ohhh c'mon...

 

[nynt9]

I don't think we haven't heard any mention of cloud use for graphics or AI or animation.
But there is nothing stopping anyone from doing it.

Cloud is not exclusive to the Xbox
Cloud Compute is not exclusive to the Xbox
Azure is not exclusive to the Xbox

What is exclusive to the Xbox is
- the pricing scheme Microsoft offers developers.
- Feature set in the Dev kit that makes it easy to deploy + implement
- Support.



By Deallocated I mean, not in a state of actively/passively awaiting a connection.
Some people seem to think that Cloud means "hey I can just throw up this website and it will stay up forever!! for free! Like magic!, and Servers will be always available even 20 years from the release date"

That these things need to be explained to some is kind of a testament to Microsoft's success in marketing their buzzword and making it sound like magic tech.

 

[Kinthalis]

Really if anyone could spend billions on a project like that it would be MS. They make like 30 billion a year in profits and have been doing that since forever. God knows how much money they have in the company account at this point. Hell people with not even a percent of the company in shares are millionaires with no worry of money anymore.

Distributed processing is the future of course, but is it going to be an impact this gen? I don't think so. There could be some clever little things utilized here and there, but there will need to be growing pains and the pitfalls and problems need to be tested and realized and worked out. I mean .. what happens when GTAVII comes out or whatever and 7 million people are suddenly going online at the same time and hitting up the same server clusters needing the same distributed information that is usually only being used for maybe 100,000 people at once?

Will there be a queue in the future to play games needing distributed computations to run? Few companies are going to really create 2 completely different products for offline and online play. I don't see that becoming something developers will actually do.

Lots of pitfalls and problems that will simply have to get ironed out over the years. This is a next-gen thing that could actually be pretty special, but not this gen .

Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft stockholders and investors will LOVE to hear how the billions the company makes in business applications and solutions is being pissed away to make grass in games bend a little....

 

[vcc]

Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft stockholders and investors will LOVE to hear how the billions the company makes in business applications and solutions is being pissed away to make grass in games bend a little....

Which can be done at a much lower expense locally.

 

[Kinthalis]

That these things need to be explained to some is kind of a testament to Microsoft's success in marketing their buzzword and making it sound like magic tech.

This. The marketing machine works... unfortunately.

 

[PanicFreak]

So 2X the time and money. That's a huge problem. Or you window your customer base down to online only.

It interesting, but the fact remains that it makes no sense to leverage unless it's being directly funded by MS (potentially as a loss leader).

The industry is trying to do thing cheaper, faster, better; which is why this is not going to work in its current form. Saying nothing about the change in IQ and appearance when the second offline code takes over.

Why do you care what Microsoft spends its money on?

 

[Caayn]

I actually pointed out very similar things the first time that post popped up on Neogaf.
Here is an actual Azure speed test you can use to check your connection
http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

My connection at my office which basically has the very best/fastest internet my country offers and i get about 100ms to the nearest *dataCenter

Doubt that 100ms is considered the best/fastest internet in the US. Even then the positive reactions to PS Now (which is only available in the US at the moment) and Nvidia demonstrated (one year ago) that even with high ping times cloud computing for gaming is still perfectly possible.

Just for shit 'n giggles my connection results are 15ms to the CDN and 25ms to the closest data center. That's with an average internet connection in my country, I don't have fiber.

again??

Ohhh c'mon...

Did you even took the trouble to read the thread?

 

[PFD]

It sounds cool, but I'll remain skeptical until we see results in a finished game.

 

[QaaQer]

The problem with gaming is not that there is no cool tech that can be used for great things, but that an economic case has to be made for using that tech.

I'd love a big budget game that leveraged the cloud, but I'd also love a big budget game that leveraged the power of a 780ti with a 4930k and 32gb sysram. Right now neither makes sense financially.

 

[SteamyPunk]

This tech and PS Now seem like a dead end to me... How will they be more cost efficient than just passing on hardware costs to the customer?

Also, if I was making a game where a stable connection was required to make the graphics look good I'd be worried about all the funny "glitch" videos that would pop up on YouTube as gamers mess with their connection to induce issues.

 

[Delryk]

Cloud is pretty much a baby right now and needs to grow/mature (which it will)... unfortunately the time isn't right now (could be in 3-4 years though). Cloud computing will mostly likely be the future like it or not though...

 

[EASTC0AST_GH05T]

This. The marketing machine works... unfortunately.

the consumers suck all that BS right up and its embedded in there heads for the duration of a generation. The Cloud, Snap, all in one, They hype it up as much as the microsoft staff does even when in reality its nothing special at all. A little grass moved from a ball rolling across it and its ZOMG! the cloud is the truth! a 500 usd dollar machine with hype built off promises that could be years away.

 

[Ol No Bones]

the consumers suck all that BS right up and its embedded in there heads for the duration of a generation. The Cloud, Snap, all in one, They hype it up as much as the microsoft staff does even when in reality its nothing special at all. A little grass moved from a ball rolling across it and its ZOMG! the cloud is the truth! a 500 usd dollar machine with hype built off promises that could be years away.

Snap is a buzzword?

 

[sportz103]

I actually pointed out very similar things the first time that post popped up on Neogaf.
Here is an actual Azure speed test you can use to check your connection
http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

My connection at my office which basically has the very best/fastest internet my country offers and i get about 100ms to the nearest *dataCenter

Wow that site definitely changed my opinion on this. 22ms to the closest data center (East US) and <100ms to every center in US and two in Europe. This cloud thing is possible after all!

 

[EASTC0AST_GH05T]

Snap is a buzzword?

yep, apparently some consumers think "snap" is exclusive to the x1 when the only thing exclusive about it is the name.

 

[Ivan]

Maybe they could use cloud partially for some segments of the scene that don't need to be updated every milisecond, but are still good looking and effective.

I don't know if that's possible, though.

Cloud rendered stuff lags, but you don't feel it because you're controling other part which is locally rendered. Separate things. This is nonsense, right?

 

[vcc]

Maybe they could use cloud partially for some segments of the scene that don't need to be updated every milisecond, but are still good looking and effective.

I don't know if that's possible, though.

Cloud rendered stuff lags, but you don't feel it because you're controling other part which is locally rendered. Separate things. This is nonsense, right?

Why wouldn't they just pre-compute that stuff and store it on disk? That's always my question, This adds expensive infrastructure problems to the game and a lot of it could just be pre-computed.

 

[Gestault]

So that means, you agree with me then.

Starting up a game 5 years later after the resources are deallocated won't magically make the cloud work again.

Actually, so long as the service is up, that's exactly what it means. Your underlying concern isn't so different from any closed-network services (Like PSN and Live); obviously they will cease some day, the point is that they have utility while they're up. The reason cloud computing has the appeal it does is that it doesn't require a rigid allocation. Computing power grows with both network size and hardware capability, meaning over time the computing draw for older software will be scaling down, in comparison to overall capability. You simply don't need to de-allocate a given set of tasks.

 

[Occam]

The following problems are obvious:

The laws of physics. The speed of light being what it is means there will be lag, unless you happen to live next to a data center.
Cost. The computational power required for each concurrent user and its upkeep.
Longevity. How long will each cloud-reliant game remain available? What if you wish to play it 10 years later? Built-in planned obsolescence.

 

[jem0208]

yep, apparently some consumers think "snap" is exclusive to the x1 when the only thing exclusive about it is the name.

Are there any other consoles where snap is available?

 

[ps3ud0]

The following problems are obvious:

The laws of physics. The speed of light being what it is means there will be lag, unless you happen to live next to a data center.
Cost. The computational power required for each concurrent user and its upkeep.
Longevity. How long will each cloud-reliant game remain available? What if you wish to play it 10 years later? Built-in planned obsolescence.

Id also add how to deal with the transition between cloud to local compute and vice versa.

As soon as you deal with the possibility of user interaction then surely it has to be dealt with locally...

ps3ud0 8)

 

[gamechanger87]

Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft stockholders and investors will LOVE to hear how the billions the company makes in business applications and solutions is being pissed away to make grass in games bend a little....

Azure wasn't developed for Xbox One. This is just MS leveraging what it has for other applications for XBO.

They don't have to spend billions on it. They already are to support their massive Azure business.