Gaikai Demonstration Movie

DPerry.com, the homepage of Dave Perry, now features a video showing off Gaikai, the cloud-based gaming service announced earlier this year. The clip shows off Spore, Mario Kart, LEGO Star Wars II, Need for Speed ProStreet, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, as well as Photoshop (to show non-gaming applications for the service), all running in a browser with no client downloads. The clip is accompanied by more from Perry on the project's background and goals, word that those interested in beta testing should sign up at the Gaikai Website, and this overview: "We are not in competition with any other streaming company or technology, our business model is entirely different. I will be talking about it more during my up-coming speeches at video game conferences. (Develop this month, and GDC Europe are the next two.)." Here is a list of points he makes about the planned service and the video demonstration:
(1) No installing anything. (I'm running regular Windows Vista, with the latest Firefox and Flash is installed.)

(2) This is a low-spec server, it's a very custom configuration, fully virtualized. Why? To keep the costs to an absolute minimum. We had 7 Call of Duty games running on our E3 demo server recently.

(3) Data travel distance is around 800 miles (round trip) on this demo as that's where the server is. I get a 21 millisecond ping on that route. My final delay will be 10 milliseconds as I just added a server in Irvine California yesterday, but it's not added to our grid yet. (So this demo is twice the delay I personally would get, the good news is I don't notice it anyway.)

(4) This server is not hosted by a Tier 1 provider, just a regular Data Center in Freemont California. Also, I'm not cheating and using fiber connections for our demos. This is a home cable connection in a home.

(5) We don't claim to have 5,000 pages of patents, we didn't take 7 years, and we do not claim to have invented 1 millisecond encryption and custom chips. As you can see, we don't need them, and so our costs will be much less. ;)

(6) We designed this for the real internet. The codecs change based on the need of the application, and based on the hardware you have. (Like Photoshop must be pixel perfect.)

(7) Our bandwidth is mostly sub 1 megabit across all games. (Works with Wifi, works on netbooks with no 3D card etc.)

(8) If you hear any clicks, they are coming from my wireless headset microphone. I won't use that next time I promise. :)

(9) I made a few video cuts using Windows Movie maker to cut out dead air. Like Need for Speed has far to many menus with loads & delays between them. So I tried to keep the pace up so you see plenty of demos.
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22 Replies. 2 pages. Viewing page 1.
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22.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 2, 2009, 15:44
Dev
22.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 2, 2009, 15:44
Jul 2, 2009, 15:44
Dev
 
Creston:
I think I've played on a same state TF2 server that was that low (21). But the more normal amount for same state game server is more like 50 for me.
21.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 2, 2009, 10:15
21.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 2, 2009, 10:15
Jul 2, 2009, 10:15
 
take Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratories that is the second most powerful super-computer in the world and cost in the neighborhood of $100,000,000. It has about 40,000 or so quad-core 2.3ghz AMD Opterons, which would be a fine CPU to run the latest game. If we take that and, just to be sporting (extremely sporting), give each CPU the equivalent of an 8800, you'd be able to have 40,000 concurrent users.

Yeah, but at a cost of 2,500 bucks a user. Erm? How the hell would ever make that kind of money back?

As much as I don't like OnLive and think it's a scam to just get investor money, at least the OnLive guy doesn't just make miraculous bullshit statements about his numbers.

21 milliseconds for an 800 mile round trip, Dave? On your home's cable? Yeah, let's see you ping that a thousand times in a row, and what the average ping is. I'm going to guess it'll be more in the range of 60-70. (Can someone with cable test this? Go to speedtest.net and pick a server that's a few states away. It tells you your latency as well as your up/down pipes.)

Less than a megabit of bandwith for your games? I'm going to call five THOUSAND times bullshit on that, unless you're planning on having everyone play Zelda for the NES 8 bit on your technology.

At least Onlive realizes that in order to get at least a DECENT image up, they need 5Mbits of continuous streaming bandwith (which you can pretty much forget already anyways, unless you've got a high speed connection in a low use area.)

Less than a megabit is a joke. Perry is taking shots at his "competition", but the bullshit he's putting up is right about as big as theirs.

But, hey, sure thing Perry. I'm sure everyone will line up to play Call of Duty (I'm betting he was talking about the first Call of Duty) at 640*480 and low details. For RENT.

(Edit : Actually, now that I think about it, this is probably aimed at the netbook market, since everyone and his dog seems convinced that THAT is where the real money is to be made. Since netbooks come with shitty screens anyways, nobody will notice the crappy resolution or details.)

Creston

This comment was edited on Jul 2, 2009, 10:23.
Avatar 15604
20.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 2, 2009, 07:59
Dev
20.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 2, 2009, 07:59
Jul 2, 2009, 07:59
Dev
 
space captain:

Its well known that graphics cards are optimized to do graphics and CPU's are general purpose. Like the 1000 stream processors in some of the nvidia graphics cards. That's why graphics cards came out in the first place, the CPU's were too slow. There are a few older games that are able to use software rendering and they are STILL slow on modern computers.

Here's another example, the arcade game Gauntlet Legends used an ancient 3dfx graphics accelerator, and ran smoothly in the arcade. You can download the same game and run it in mame to get it 100% software emulated (MAME doesn't contain any graphics card accelerations, the devs are only interested in getting games to run). The game came out in 1998 so its 11 years old. I've seen an 2.7ghz AMD64 run it and it render it at only about 3 frames per second which is unplayable.

My understanding is that some of the fastest core duo and later stuff from intel is able to run it barely playable.

Thats an example of the stark differance between software rendering and graphics card hardware rendering. You can do the same experiment yourself with any of the MAME games that used graphics accelerators (usually some of the CHD games).

Oh and the resolution of that gauntlet legends arcade game isn't that much, 336 x 240.

19.
 
Nice Demo... what about Fullscreen?
Jul 2, 2009, 04:37
19.
Nice Demo... what about Fullscreen? Jul 2, 2009, 04:37
Jul 2, 2009, 04:37
 
Well, leaving aside that NFS lagged noticable (not a beefy enough gpu at THAT low res?) what happens when you want to display the game at 1920x1200 in fullscreen? Or does the tech enforce one resolution for all, and if you got a bigger screen you are SOL ?

Somehow this streaming games thing sounds nice on paper, and for the web-browser tiny window experience with stereo.. nice.. but for an actual decent gaming experience, this has fail written all over it.

Maybe i am just too skeptical
Avatar 54727
18.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 2, 2009, 00:56
18.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 2, 2009, 00:56
Jul 2, 2009, 00:56
 

If something in my logic is faulty because I don't know enough about the underlying servers, why not point out that faulty logic instead of doing ad hominem attacks?

ad hominem attacks? that last comment was a joke, as in me busting yer balls a bit.. the other questions are actual questions, as in, if you have the data on this im interested in hearing it

well i dont know enough about servers and low-level coding either, so i cant argue against or for it.. however your theory did not seem to be based on anything beyond speculation derived from the logic behind personal computing, which is actually vastly different than running a monster server machine - especially one that is "a very custom configuration, fully virtualized."

so your idea of a low spec server may be way off, because retail servers are not "very custom configurations" (which makes me think of personally designed hardware tech). as well as your understanding of the software that could break something like DX10 or whatever down to pure binary data spinning in circles .. as you know, a graphics card is just another kind of cpu that is designed to execute instructions specific to gfx - so basically graphics are always "software rendering" its just that a graphics card gives you an extra cpu to process those instructions

the inability to render high quality graphics isnt a limitation of specific hardware.. at the core level, ALL software is nothing more than lots of little lights flashing on and off. no matter if its games, word processers, photoshop, etc. etc.

thats why it was called "hardware acceleration".. and its definitely not a "hardware requirement" when you are the kind of people that build the shit in the first place

im highly skeptical of the whole thing myself, but i want to hear actual details from someone who can provide them.. speculation is pointless imo
17.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 2, 2009, 00:16
17.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 2, 2009, 00:16
Jul 2, 2009, 00:16
 
The only way these things can work is locally, like a neighborhood video store.
"The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip." - Henny Youngman
16.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 23:37
16.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 23:37
Jul 1, 2009, 23:37
 
On the flip side, take that other game you bought, maybe Fallout 3 (but not for Jerykk.)

What? I bought FO3 when it went on sale for $30.

Wouldn't it be impressive if publishers\developers got paid for each hour played? It'd give developers incentive to really design a game that you keep coming back to, either because it's so replayable (puzzles, strategies) or so deep, rich and long (RPGs.) Sid Meier, PopCap and Valve would be rolling in cash.

That would certainly be ideal but I think most developers which just add more achievements and generic side missions. Hell, they'd probably just have randomly generated side missions. They'd also add leveling and/or loot to provide incentive to keep playing. This is what MMOs do and what a lot of other games are starting to do too (DoW2, TF2, etc).
Avatar 20715
15.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 22:32
Dev
15.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 22:32
Jul 1, 2009, 22:32
Dev
 
Aero:
Thats hardly "low-spec" though

However, thats the kinda stuff (in general, I wasn't thinking that specific, thanks for the specifics) I was thinking of when I wrote my earlier replues.
14.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 22:18
14.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 22:18
Jul 1, 2009, 22:18
 
Perhaps a better way to put the server size in perspective is to take Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratories that is the second most powerful super-computer in the world and cost in the neighborhood of $100,000,000. It has about 40,000 or so quad-core 2.3ghz AMD Opterons, which would be a fine CPU to run the latest game. If we take that and, just to be sporting (extremely sporting), give each CPU the equivalent of an 8800, you'd be able to have 40,000 concurrent users. Clearly this is a gross over-simplification and ignores a lot of technical and logistical details, and they would probably get clever with the software implementation--virtualization and what have you--but it gives a reasonable ballpark.

How many people do you suppose are playing GTA4 or whatever is the latest thing right now? I dunno, but 40,000 would probably be a very, very conservative guess. Now how about the number of people playing all video games combined?

It's clearly a future thing, at least on a large scale.

13.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 19:41
Dev
13.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 19:41
Jul 1, 2009, 19:41
Dev
 
I'll throw out a potential issue with my logic. And that is if this is running at 640x480 (netbooks often have low resolution screens) with reduced graphical details. I'll definately belive that its possible to software CPU render games like that on a server and then stream them. I personally wouldn't be satisfied with most games playing like that (and I imagine many hardcore gamers have the same feelings) unless they were casual games. But it would also be a huge potential market out there. Imagine being able to play any game on a netbook.

However, they are going to quickly run into issues with game companies. For instance, is that mario kart game running in an emulator? Legal problems with nintento. I doubt they are going to have each cd of 7 copies of hundreds of games physically in the CD drive, so there's DMCA issues.
Although it sounds like they are individually contacting publishers about this. They claim there's no work required for the publisher, which wouldn't be the case if the publisher needed to provide unprotected or specially protected executables.

This comment was edited on Jul 1, 2009, 20:32.
12.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 19:13
Dev
12.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 19:13
Jul 1, 2009, 19:13
Dev
 
space captain:
You quoted Dave Perry's statement not mine, but I think your reply is addressed it to me.
Let's say a low spec server is a xeon quad core 5520 (latest intel server CPU series). You can get one from dell in a server tower system with 12 gigs of memory for as low as $1600. Lets say that server can run the 7 call of duty games he claims can run on a low spec server. Are you saying that such a cpu (which is only $370 from newegg) is capable of SOFTWARE rendering all graphics in 7 games of CoD simultaneously? I mean if such a CPU is so all powerfull, why would people waste $1000+ graphics cards on SLI/crossfire systems if all you need is a $370 CPU?

Virtualizing servers doesn't automagically make thier rendering capabilities go up. They still either need graphics cards to render hardware, or lots of CPU power to render in software.

I do know a bit about servers, but its not nessasary to know the details of something to examine the broad overview of a subject logically. For instance, we may not know the exact details of every single aspect of the sun's internal processes, but we can still examine the overall average energy output of the sun and use that for further calculations.

If something in my logic is faulty because I don't know enough about the underlying servers, why not point out that faulty logic instead of doing ad hominem attacks?

And btw, I didn't say you need a graphics card to render graphics. I said the alternative was doing it with a CPU (aka software rendering). However, are you making the claim that you don't need a graphics card to play modern games in a playable fashion with decent resolutions and decent detail/graphics settings?

This comment was edited on Jul 1, 2009, 19:44.
11.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 18:56
11.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 18:56
Jul 1, 2009, 18:56
 
This is a low-spec server, it's a very custom configuration, fully virtualized.

sounds like you dont know enough about server technology to be logical about it in the first place.. do you know what "low-spec" means in terms of an industrial-level server? do you code in Unix? do you have some specific points of debate rather than statements like "you need gfx card to make gfx"
10.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 18:51
Dev
10.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 18:51
Jul 1, 2009, 18:51
Dev
 
There's something missing here. SOMETHING has to render the graphics (else why do games need a graphics card?). Either its the local computer or the server. Since he says you can do it on netbooks without 3d card that means it's the server. If the server is rendering all the graphics so it can send a flash picture to the client, then that contradicts his statement that you only need a low spec server. You'd need a server with incredible graphics power to render graphics for a bunch of clients. Or you'd need one with even more incredible CPU power to do software rendering.

Otherwise, if this was all correct, and if no rendering was needed, then any game would get faster by funneling its graphics through flash locally (like running spore through flash to get faster graphics), and I'm pretty thats not the case. If it was the case, than that means everyone who purchased a graphics card got scammed out of money, and there's no need for graphics card companies since flash (which means CPU) can do all the work for you magically.

So something doesn't add up logically here.

This comment was edited on Jul 1, 2009, 18:58.
9.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 18:41
9.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 18:41
Jul 1, 2009, 18:41
 
The way to think about it is like cable - instead of owning you get a whole bunch of options for a monthly fee.

In many ways this isn't bad. For one, if the service is a success then the games aren't going anywhere. For another, how often do you boot up most of your old games (we all have a few exceptions that we've taken with us for a half-dozen PCs.)

If the price is right it'll be interesting:
Say it's $60 a month, or the cost of one full game. If you buy a game a month anyway this is a good deal. In fact, it can be better than a good deal. Take that FPS you bought and only got 5-10 hours out of, maybe FEAR. You beat it in a week. With this you can move to the next game without paying more. Great win!
On the flip side, take that other game you bought, maybe Fallout 3 (but not for Jerykk.) You spent two months playing that game and just that game. Well, now it cost you $120.

So it'll be great for games you blow through, bad for ones that eat your life (RPGs and online games mostly.) It still might work out.



I'd be more interested in how they pay royalties. They have a lot of metrics to grab here, most interestingly they can monitor total hours played. Wouldn't it be impressive if publishers\developers got paid for each hour played? It'd give developers incentive to really design a game that you keep coming back to, either because it's so replayable (puzzles, strategies) or so deep, rich and long (RPGs.) Sid Meier, PopCap and Valve would be rolling in cash. Well, I guess they already are, but it'd be more tangible.
There'd be less incentive to create short, forgettable games, or maybe just more incentive to genericize them down so they get the widest reach...
8.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 16:57
8.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 16:57
Jul 1, 2009, 16:57
 
wow so does this mean software makers never have to give us a real copy/download of their program, therefore being able to nickle and dime customers for every single little thing.

Boy I cant wait..
7.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 15:35
7.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 15:35
Jul 1, 2009, 15:35
 
Imagine never having to spend $800 on upgrades every year or so

Good thing you don't actually need to do that.

Game technology would improve without us having to do anything and the companies could compete on what sort of hardware they have, rather than fitting their games to what we have.

Except that loses the big appeal of PC gaming: flexibility. I like being able to choose my resolution and detail settings. I like being able to set my priorities between framerate and visual quality. You also lose the ability to mod/use mods.

I don't see this ever catching on with hardcore gamers. I do see it being successful with casual gamers, though.

This comment was edited on Jul 1, 2009, 16:18.
Avatar 20715
6.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 15:22
6.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 15:22
Jul 1, 2009, 15:22
 
That was a pretty cool demo. I could really dig this for trying out demos. I hate downloading a couple gigs, installing it, playing it, uninstalling it and then finding crap directories and registry entries still there 6 months later.

Also it won't be long before someone writes a free client/server to do a similar thing for personal use. Say your friend goes on vacation and leaves Fallout3 running and gives you the password so you can play it streamed off his box...
5.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 15:12
5.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 15:12
Jul 1, 2009, 15:12
 
I'm not sure what Dave means by "full resolution", but it isn't even a full browser window in his demo.
4.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 14:50
nin
4.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 14:50
Jul 1, 2009, 14:50
nin
 

What happened to Dave's DANCE mmo? How did that work out? <snicker>

3.
 
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie
Jul 1, 2009, 14:35
3.
Re: Gaikai Demonstration Movie Jul 1, 2009, 14:35
Jul 1, 2009, 14:35
 
And this wouldn't be good for an artist that uses Photoshop on a deadline when a storm takes out the network/ISP. Can't see this as being a logical solution at all.
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