polyh3dron
Banned
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NVIDIA unveils Cloud Based Indirect Lighting
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
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Unknown Soldier
Member
Holy, that is a LOT of hardware to invest for a single player. It'd almost be more practical just to give everyone Titan cards.
Free Titans for everyone! Where do i sign up??
Cloud-based rendering would be really amazing for offline applications though, like professional rendering tasks. You could rent the Nvidia Cloud for $X/hr and it would render your scene for you. Professional GPUs cost incredible amounts of money, like thousands of dollars, so this would be a great tool for people who do that kind of thing for a living.
Andronicus
Banned
HD-DVD HD-DVD HD-DVD
I don't think you understand how cloud based virtualization works..
Or even watched the video
Agreed, it'd make a ton of sense to have a Cloud based rendering farm you could rent out on an hourly basis. Part of me wouldn't be surprised to learn somebody was already doing it actually, it just makes that much sense!
I would love that.
phosphor112
Banned
ITT: people can't even read the OP.
PairOfFilthySocks
Member
Oh boy...if this cloud shit works there's gonna be a grand crow buffet for many gaffers. Including me :/
I watched about 2/3rds, the last third locked up on me for some reason.
Yes I know how Cloud based virtualization works. It still flipping costs money, even just to have Cloud Compute servers on standby.
RukusProvider
Banned
Going to be a low of crow eating in the next year or two when cloud computing becomes a differentiator.
Just as the platforms mature and get better year over year, so will the cloud impact as devs become more comfortable with the tech and process.
Just as the platforms mature and get better year over year, so will the cloud impact as devs become more comfortable with the tech and process.
Dictator93
Member
This is pretty delusional. Sorry to be so brunt... but just look at the costs (HW and bandwidth) and the practical applications. It is completely impractical right now... and will be for quire some time.
dragonelite
Member
Highest number was 1.7Mb/s.
They had difficulty to model the big scenes.
But as far as i can see halo 4 uses it with forge already.
Halo 4 players will know from the calculating light maps pop up on forge maps matches.
And from the paper it seems they could still easily process this for up to 50 people now i can't say if it was for the rack or only one titan.
Lifesontheline
Banned
Only saw a issue at 1000ms not sure what you're getting at
Nvidia can't do 60 FPS and that is with Titans helping out. I thought this was next-gen.
Derekloffin
Member
Except even if it did happen (which it probably still won't until internet gets a LOT better than it is currently), it wouldn't be a differentiator. The cloud is, unsurprisingly, not linked in any way to the local hardware, so PS4 can do it just as easily as X1, or a PC, or Steambox or whatever. In fact, a dev could in all likelihood use WindowsAzure in tandum PS4 if they wanted to, they just wouldn't get the break on server costs and X1 development apparently gets them.
Most cloud compute platforms only charge when instances are actually utilized. Developers spawn new instances as needed. They don't keep them idling on standby
RukusProvider
Banned
For nvidia and independent devs, sure but for someone like MS who already has a large cloud infrastructure established, not so much.
Latency was what I was told was the biggest problem with Cloud computing. Seems that was wrong. It was cost all along.
Dictator93
Member
Are you saying microsoft is going to invest 1,000 dollars plus per xb1 in server side support so 200ms lagging indirect lighting can be come a reality in a handful of games?
Yep... sounds very realistic
Do not forget that those Azure servers do not have Titans or equiv GPUs in them. Not at all.
no thanks
I understand nothing except those 30fps.
30FPS for pc? What kind of joke?
Arent we the master race? 120fps min.
phosphor112
Banned
Then again, it might be the same as voice input on current gen. Developers could do it on the PS4 as well, but if MS is building the structure and the APIs for it, it might change adoption rates between the platforms.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Seriously can someone rehost this video? I'm making like 15 seconds for every minute or so of buffering.
phosphor112
Banned
I dont understand at all, am I ready for the infinite power of the cloud?
That upload is trash, but I'm pretty jealous of that down.
Chobel
Member
I dont understand at all, am I ready for the infinite power of the cloud?
You lucky bastard!!!
I dont understand at all, am I ready for the infinite power of the cloud?
I hate you and your intrenets.
Backfoggen
Banned
I dont understand at all, am I ready for the infinite power of the cloud?
Nope too slow
velociraptor
Junior Member
This seems very, very expensive.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
That's not how it works. You don't have dedicated hardware for each user, not everyone is playing at the same time and the ones that are aren't all playing games that require cloud processing. That's the whole point of the cloud, having processing power available when needed for whatever application you need it for.
Even if this stuff isn't viable in the next couple of years people seem to forget how fast technology moves. When the 360 and PS3 were launched the iPhone didn't even exist yet.
what is this I don't even
no thanks
If I've read up on things correctly, while they don't keep servers idling, the servers still have to be ready to go. Which means that they either have to interrupt something else, or keep servers around unused. Either way, most contract would stipulate some sort of cost to the client for such a service, even when no computing is being done. Simply because keeping servers ready to go would be a cost to Microsoft, or Amazon, or any of the other companies that run Cloud Based virtualization services.
Even if that weren't the case, they'd still have to spend a fairly sizable amount of money on those 10K users, with no way to recoup it. So, no, without a subscription method of some sort, no game developer would do this.
I dont understand at all, am I ready for the infinite power of the cloud?
nope your upload is too slow
Okay guys. Deep breath. Stop and read.
We are in a climate where publishers are pulling down their multiplayer servers for games that still have active communities. The biggest, richest companies do this, even for games that aren't dedicated servers and are just matchmaking servers.
And you people think that publishers will run these servers?!?! Really???
Its absolutely delusional to think that the pubs would spend extra money for this stuff, that takes a lot more overhead then multiplayer servers and won't even work for their entire userbase.
That claim above that in the next year realtime cloud stuff like this is going to be a big deal is not correct.
The cloud is good at the stuff it is already used for. Save games and the like.
What happens on Halo launch day?
We are in a climate where publishers are pulling down their multiplayer servers for games that still have active communities. The biggest, richest companies do this, even for games that aren't dedicated servers and are just matchmaking servers.
And you people think that publishers will run these servers?!?! Really???
Its absolutely delusional to think that the pubs would spend extra money for this stuff, that takes a lot more overhead then multiplayer servers and won't even work for their entire userbase.
That claim above that in the next year realtime cloud stuff like this is going to be a big deal is not correct.
The cloud is good at the stuff it is already used for. Save games and the like.
What happens on Halo launch day?
iamshadowlark
Banned
You would have to have dedicated resources for each user, yes. For a game like CoD, that can average 10000+ players and peak at 20,000 or so, the investment would be gargantuan to support them.
GoofsterStud
Member
Lighting (remember this is indirect) is really the easiest think to do, from there it gets really hard.
Also it's glitchy as hell... 200ms problems... Only used on simple models.
All this with a system using many titans and basic geometry as a showcase.
It's not ready.
Also it's glitchy as hell... 200ms problems... Only used on simple models.
All this with a system using many titans and basic geometry as a showcase.
It's not ready.
who are you talking to? no one assumes this will be put to use anytime soon. and if they do you can ignore them, its ok.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
No, I mean if there are 50 millions consoles you don't need 50 million dedicated Titans in the cloud.
Gentleman Jack
Member
Rewatch it, at 200ms it becomes noticable. at 500ms it's distracting. at 1000ms it's immersion-breaking.
Bingo!
It'd be one thing if it was for a subscriber based MMO, or a F2P game that generates a lot of ongoing cash through ongoing transactions. These sorts of games are ongoing money makers, that more than pay for their server costs over time.
Even for these genres though, a lot of MMO's and F2P games fail. Adding this extra expense on top of things, just makes the failure all the more painful for the publisher. Conversely, with this added expense, the successes still wouldn't be nearly as sweet.
And for what? Most of these effects can be handled on PC's and the next gen consoles already. In 2-3 years, the hardware standards will be such that new GPU's will be able to handle these sorts of effects with tremendous ease.
So this is, what? A stop gap? A solution for casual gamers who don't want to invest in hardware? This does't seem like a particularly elegant solution in either case.
Liabe Brave
Member
But if you're only using GI for stationary lights, you might as well prebake them and avoid the cloud entirely. This is exactly the point: the cloud only helps if the lighting is dynamic, but this video shows some strong limitations (technical and economic) on that usage.
Of course cloud services are virtualized. But--at least currently--you need the equivalent of a Titan for each player. (Or a Titan and a Quadro, if you use the voxel solution!) So if you sell 1m copies of a game with this lighting, you'd need, say, the power of 750,000 Titans in the cloud; not everyone would play at once, but you have to prepare for a high-use scenario. Building this level of infrastructure quickly is very unlikely to happen. For consoles, why not just invest that money in making a more powerful local machine?
iamshadowlark
Banned
You're going to need them for every game that uses cloud processing though. CoD would be one game, think about how many people game on XBL at peak times. Currently it seems like MS is pimping its own Azure servers for this infinite power. Costs would be insane.
dragonelite
Member
What was i thinking
But from the sun alone should help with the lighting of the game.