-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Nvidia just announced a handheld - releasing Q2 2013
- Thread starter Nilaul
- Start date
It has one more frame of lag than WiiU. Big whoop. And when you consider most WiiU games only run at 30 fps, they have an identical 32ms (when gaming at 60 on pc).
ViewtifulJC
Banned
RIP Nvidia
All hail our AMD overlords
All hail our AMD overlords
That we know about under perfect conditions and god knows how expensive of a wireless router. The real test will be when people who have all in one cable modem/routers or 50 dollars best buy routers like 90% of people. Also having another person or 2 on the wireless network trying to stream a video and downloading files while tring to use the shield. Those will be the real tests of the tech IMO.
I hope not.. my experience with AMD cards has been awful.
MDSLKTR
Member
This morning I loled (mostly because it looks like a razer product) but now after watching the hands on videos and giving it some thought I will definitely consider getting this. About time the steam library breaks free from the desktop. Beefy pc machine, steam box for the living room and this for everything in between = my kind of next-gen.
Looks like a custom Coolermaster case. They've made Nvidia cases in the past. Doesn't look like any of the current models but it does slightly resemble the cm 690.
I really like the design of the Shield. Not really the most beautiful handheld ever, but putting a screen on top of a "real" controller is actually interesting.
If the price is right, it can definitely hurt 3DS and Vita sales. If those handhelds were to die, I'd probably buy the Shield as a remplacement. Only if most games work with the physical buttons, though.
If the price is right, it can definitely hurt 3DS and Vita sales. If those handhelds were to die, I'd probably buy the Shield as a remplacement. Only if most games work with the physical buttons, though.
Master Nairb
Member
Did they choose that color scheme to confuse the casual market that it is X-boxish?
I've thought about it a lot and considering I already have a 600-series card in my gaming PC I might pick one of these up if the price is right. I'm not really willing to pay a lot more than I would an Android tablet of similar specs though. It's all down to Nvidia's pricing in my eyes. Anything more than $300USD and I'll probably sit it out though. At the end of the day it's still just tablet hardware tacked onto a controller and the price needs to reflect that.
60fps on PC? More like 8ms.
Because black and green have been NVIDIA's colors since you were still wearing diapers.
Fredrik
Member
Oh...
I didn't realize that you needed a nVidia card in your PC to get the off-TV play to work. I thought it would work on all PCs. That makes this a total failure. It's PS3+PSVita remote play combo but even worse. The total cost for this unit plus a gaming PC with that nVidia tech will be enormous.
This will bomb hard. Sadly.
I didn't realize that you needed a nVidia card in your PC to get the off-TV play to work. I thought it would work on all PCs. That makes this a total failure. It's PS3+PSVita remote play combo but even worse. The total cost for this unit plus a gaming PC with that nVidia tech will be enormous.
This will bomb hard. Sadly.
Probably. I wouldn't even consider it if it weren't for the fact I bought a 600-series a while ago.
Fredrik
Member
Understandable. I would've bought it day 1 if I was in the same situation. But I'm not, so. Day never.
This might actually boost WiiU sales though if the talk about off-TV play and asychronous gameplay gets out in the open so to speak.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Was about to respond here with my concerns over performance at a larger distance and with more interference between the router and the shield, not to mention sharing the bandwidth of a home wireless network with other users. For all we know the shield in the demo could be operating in its own 802.11n (300Mbps) isolated network.
Don't get me wrong, I am excited by this and I do hope the real world latency is just as impressive as in the demo, just saying the demo is not sufficient proof for me.
pretty much this
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
correct me if I'm wrong, but in this context 'latency' is dependent on the time it would take to transmit a frame of the videogame. And since we're not quite sure how big such a frame is, the time it would take may very well be dependent on the network's bandwidth.
Seems to me like most of the latency is going to come from the encoding and transmitting on the PC side. The latency the wireless network introduces is going to be negligible compared to that.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
this is far from my field of expertise, but all I'm saying is basically if a frame of compressed video is ~100kB, and you require it to take no longer than ~20ms to be transmitted from the PC to the device (with the rest of the time taken up by compression, decompression and some negligible amount, ~1ms, taken up by the network's latency for a total of 33ms) then that requires at least 40-50 Mbps of your local wireless network's bandwidth.
The 'latency' I'm referring to in my previous post is the total latency experienced by the user which is made up by all these different factors, with transmission time probably contributing the most. Hence, the more wireless bandwidth is freely available for the transmission, the less overall latency the user should experience.
Not really, if they are using hardware-assisted encoding. Encoding and transmission latency should be roughly equivalent, or the latter could even be slightly higher.
Anyway, if my home network is insufficient to provide performance equivalent to their demo, I'll upgrade my home network, not blame the device. Such is the way of the PC gamer. I'm already convinced by the fact that such performance is possible.
If you mean Android games (PC games are already using the controller anyway), that shouldn't be a big problem. Android has had a proper controller API for a while now, and most high-end games suitable for button control are starting to support it.
ThanksVision
Member
Beyond hideous.
TheFLYINGManga_Ka
Member
Pretty cool, I love handhelds.
But I don't know. History shows that it's not all about graphics with handhelds.
Depending on price and games, I'd love to get one though.
But I don't know. History shows that it's not all about graphics with handhelds.
Depending on price and games, I'd love to get one though.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
cool video!
Just started watching and already it looks like the Shield will be delivering more than I had expected from it.
I was contemplating whether or not we'd see support from developers in the form of actual PC games that also have an Android version so you could switch between the two seamlessly, using the same account/save data. I figured this wouldn't make enough business sense to be a wide phenomenon, but lo and behold, they're showing off a Tegra4 version of Hawken!
This means I can play Hawken on my PC, my TV, in bed streamed to the Shield when at home, and continue playing a comparable experience (from the looks of it) on the go!
Hopefully more games will follow suit. Looks like the near future of PC gaming is going to be about supporting all kinds of peripherals like this and the Occulus Rift. Exciting stuff.
edit: in the video they are claiming the bit rate for the stream is no more than 10Mbps, which from a quick google search is comparable to a regular HD video stream. I find this quite surprising! Either they are doing some fantastic optimization at the rendering/encoding level, or H.264 is far more versatile than I thought at handling less predictable streams.
To be more precise, this means that each frame of video is effectively less than half the size I had previously estimated! (~40kB vs. ~100kB), which means the loss in compressing a real time render vs. compressing a pre-recorded feed is only about a factor of 2-3 (based on Wikipedia's 1.5 Mbps for H.264 for SD TV which should mean about 16kB per frame of pre-recorded 720p video).
Other interesting tidbits are that apparently both Kepler and Tegra4 share similar encoding/decoding hardware, as well as a custom Broadcom chip in the Shield facilitating communications. For reference, Wii U's streaming tech is also based on custom Broadcom technology so this is encouraging.
edit2: just reached the disappointing part of the video. Latency according to Nvidia is reported to be 'about 100ms'. Not entirely sure why that is, though. It doesn't sound like the compression, streaming or decompression take up a significant portion of that number. Plus, the way they explain it ("100ms from button press to muzzle flash") sounds like this includes any latency created by the game engine as well as the rendering, which isn't considered part of the delay from playing on Shield vs. on PC.
This pic pretty much sums it up.
:lol Perfect
Yeah, I meant Android games.
I'm especially interested in Square Enix titles, since it's their most supported platform with iOS nowadays. If they leave the dedicated handheld market, I'll have to choose their new main platform. But I hate virtual controls.
Well Razer has indeed a similar concept but with some important differences. They want to use Windows 8 as the OS, it's more of a tablet PC with a controller attached, the specs are an i7 Intel cpu, and bigger screen, and there's no streaming feature as the Shield has.
http://www.razerzone.com/projectfiona
100 ms latency from streaming can't really be the case, since the demo showed 33 ms (or less). Unless the monitor they used had 70 ms latency -- which seems very doubtful.
"100ms from button press to muzzle flash" is entirely possible depending on the game, and on par with most of the console measurements done by people who actually look into this stuff.
"100ms from button press to muzzle flash" is entirely possible depending on the game, and on par with most of the console measurements done by people who actually look into this stuff.
dancrane212
Member
I was surprised to see the Conduit listed under the tegrazone games in one of the videos demoing the Shield. Wasn't High Voltage saying they had an announcement coming up?
I was surprised to see the Conduit listed under the tegrazone games in one of the videos demoing the Shield. Wasn't High Voltage saying they had an announcement coming up?
That looks pretty heavy to hold !
GreggTheGrimReaper
Member
The more interesting news is that Tegra 4 seems to be a real graphical powerhouse. I wonder how it compares to Vita or even Wii U. I will probably just get a normal Tegra4-equipped smartphone this year and pair it with an iControlPad 2 or something similar since I don't need another dedicated handheld but this could still be interesting for asymmetrical gameplay concepts and it could be the perfect dedicated emulation handheld.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
The problem is that there is still no standard for how controller input should be mapped, as far as I know. Pressing A on controller X might not mean the same thing as pressing A on controller Y. Not sure how existing controller-supporting games handle that issue. I guess they could just let the user configure each button before playing, and that's fine I guess, but a standard akin to how 360 controllers work in Windows would still be very nice.
Chuckpebble
Member
FastRedPonyCar
Banned
Not gonna lie... the capabilities of the device have my attention. If it's under $300, I will probably buy regardless.
Still going to wait and see what real world testing from users shows in terms of how well it streams from Steam.
Nothing really on android market impresses me. I'm using my android devices (as far as gaming goes) just to play emulators and my nexus 7 and Minix Neo X5 do that very well as it is so if the steam streaming thing turns out to be flaky, I'll pass.
Still going to wait and see what real world testing from users shows in terms of how well it streams from Steam.
Nothing really on android market impresses me. I'm using my android devices (as far as gaming goes) just to play emulators and my nexus 7 and Minix Neo X5 do that very well as it is so if the steam streaming thing turns out to be flaky, I'll pass.
This is weird.... really weird...
Oh god, companies, what are you doing, stahpWell Razer has indeed a similar concept but with some important differences. They want to use Windows 8 as the OS, it's more of a tablet PC with a controller attached, the specs are an i7 Intel cpu, and bigger screen, and there's no streaming feature as the Shield has.
http://www.razerzone.com/projectfiona
That tablet is meant to be a desktop replacement so I wouldn't put it in the same category.
opticalmace
Member
Definitely a nice video. Not real worried about the 100ms comment, cause like you said, it's button to muzzle. It looked like it was synced up with the monitor very closely. And he even goes on to talk about how it's better than some consoles, since some tvs alone can add 60ms of lag. So they have to be including everything if they're singling that point out.
Took the words out of my mouth.
They won't.
This company does not know anything about launching a console.
And they have already proved it by stating that won't take losses on it and that they're targeting tech enthusiasts.
Basically they want people buying their 680GTX cards to buy this too
I wouldn't expect anything less than 400$, it will be a niche product.
I was surprised to see the Conduit listed under the tegrazone games in one of the videos demoing the Shield. Wasn't High Voltage saying they had an announcement coming up?
Megaton!?
Well Razer has indeed a similar concept but with some important differences. They want to use Windows 8 as the OS, it's more of a tablet PC with a controller attached, the specs are an i7 Intel cpu, and bigger screen, and there's no streaming feature as the Shield has.
http://www.razerzone.com/projectfiona
This is horrible, looks like a tablet with two PS Move attached to it.