OnLive Gaming Service - My Impressions - Games

UPDATE: Service now supports Wi-Fi! you don't need to be hard wired anymore to play! Also, [URL="http://www.onlive.com/games/featuredgames"]new games added[/URL], most notably Mafia II. Hello, maybe last year you've heard of a service called "[URL="http://www.onlive.com/"]OnLive[/URL]". OnLive is a service that streams games using cloud computing. You subscribe to their service, and you play the game through their servers. You send control input to them and they send the graphical and video data to you. Well, last year at E3 when it was announced I signed up for their beta access. While I did not get accepted to their beta, they accepted me for a free year subscription and one free game, without any further obligation. So, I gave it a shot. When I first downloaded the client, it told me that I needed a wired connection; it would not launch using Wi-Fi, and told me to get a wired connection. So I took my laptop and sat next to my router and started to play. My first experience was a relatively bad one. The client simply would not accept my password. However, their website did, and the only way I could log in to launch the client was through the website. After I got around that roadblock I was greeted by the main menu. [img]http://www.cubeupload.com/files/e32400onlivemainmenu.png[/img] Note the fuzzy quality. You can tell, quite painfully, that it is filled with compression artifacts. This quality is present for every game I've played, as expected. However, the framerate is perfect and it never stutters. The audio also perfectly syncs. Sounds of random games are being played, and all video surrounding the menu is of players, players who are playing the games real time. You can just drop into the screens and watch random people as they play if you are inclined to do so. [img]http://www.cubeupload.com/files/c68400onlivemainmenu2.png[/img] This is the game select screen. Because of my password problem I can't actually redeem my free game of choice. However, I was free to try demos of the games, any game. I first tried Just Cause 2 (I will get a video up eventually for you guys.) In game the latency becomes apparent. You can notice a delay of about a quarter of a second or so from when you press a key to on screen action. This is alright for slow sequences, but when you are flying around with the parachute or in a vehicle it becomes painfully apparent. You will struggle to follow a target with the mouse when moving as it is so hard to compensate the mouse movement to the lag. The grainy quality persisted but the sound was crystal clear. The lag compensation can be gotten used to after a lot of practice but it's still noticeable even after you get used to it and it could potentially make some scenes much more trouble than it's worth. However, in it's defense, the lag is much better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a full second or even more between action and display. I went on to play games such as AAAaaAAAA or whatever it's called, Borderlands, DiRT 2, and F.E.A.R. 2. The best controlling were Red Faction: Guerrilla and Borderlands. The worst playing by far was F.E.A.R. 2, it was almost unplayable do to slowdowns on saving and terrible input delay. Video: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp4tuhvC5bY[/media] I would like to retract my statement on paying for it, but I'm not sure if I would recommend it yet. I will say that when i have more experience with it. [B]GAME LIST: These are the games that are available for play at the time of this writing:[/B] AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity Assassin's Creed 2 Batman: Arkham Asylum Borderlands Brain Challenge Defense Grid Gold DiRT 2 F.E.A.R. 2 Just Cause 2 Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days LEGO Batman LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 Madballs in Babo: Invasion Mafia II NBA 2K10 Major League Baseball 2K10 Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Puzzle Chronicles Red Faction: Guerrilla Shatter Saw The Maw Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction Trine Unreal Tournament III: Titan Pack Virtua Tennis 2009 World of Goo More info and experience provided by Shugo. [QUOTE=Shugo;22883592]I just got into OnLive and played a couple demos. My verdict? I'm personally extremely impressed. I played through the Just Cause 2 demo and the Borderlands demo. Both ran pretty great, which impresses me because my network connection is total shit (my router sucks). I don't own Just Cause 2, but I do own Borderlands and I can safely say that I'm disappointed that I didn't wait to buy it on OnLive instead. My computer isn't so hot with newly-released games, and Borderlands has some major problems, at least for me. If I don't run it at a very low resolution, it has some graphical issues that eventually result in crashing. Really sucks. Multiplayer is also an extreme lagfest for me, with large areas or intense battles dropping my FPS to extreme lows. I played through the General Knox DLC with friends and was barely able to do anything except stay behind the lines and offer support. My OnLive Borderlands experience was great. The game looked beautiful with full graphics and full 720p resolution coming cleanly and smoothly over the streamed video. Controls were perfect and 1:1; it kept up with my mouse flawlessly. If there was any latency, I certainly couldn't feel it. I rushed through the demo doing as much as I could before my half-an-hour was up and it kept up with everything I did. I was able to blast through groups of enemies just as quickly as I could on the regular version. Personally, I'm an OnLive believer. As long as your connection is decent, you can play PC games in high quality graphics. If they do this right, this could really catch on with people running low-end setups. The only thing I really don't like is their payment plan system. You don't buy a license to play the game forever like you would on a service like Steam. They only promise that the game will stay on the service for a certain amount of time, and then after that it may or may not stay. I hope they change their minds on that one.[/QUOTE]

Cool idea, but until everyone has lightning-fast internet connections, it's not really feasible as a solution to the constant demands of ever-more-demanding games.

I've just played a bit of Dirt 2 and FEAR 2. Dirt 2 was alright, but FEAR 2 was absolutely horrible to play. It was almost unplayable, the latency issues broke it and every time it auto saved it stuttered for about a second. Meleeing people was more efficient than trying to shoot them, that's how bad the aiming was thanks to the lag. The framerate was also shaky on both of these games, it wasn't as smooth as others I've tried.

No Wifi? Well fuck, there goes me playing it. And the latency issue has been pretty obvious from the start, there was no way they were gonna stream it without any lag.

From the videos I saw it looks like the games don't have anisotropic filtering? Or is that just the compression?

Sounded like shit since it was announced.

You are laggy, no beeg sewprise.

Onlive is alright. If you dont mind playing out a low resolution. But Just Cause 2 straight sucks on it!

On their defense, I think the whole concept of "cloud gaming" (if I can call it that) is pretty good and I'm sure this service will evolve very quickly. I still wonder why didn't they start testing OnLive in Japan or Scandinavia, where they have the fastest Internet connections in the world... :/ BTW, what about resolutions, OP? 720p? 1080p? Do they use any AA or AF settings??

Things like this, new technology, will take a while to develop. The only way they can develop this sort of thing is with money, money they won't have unless they get people subscribing. I see it as an investment in technological progression, more than anything.

[QUOTE=zombojoe;22809415]From the videos I saw it looks like the games don't have anisotropic filtering? Or is that just the compression?[/QUOTE] Probably the compression. Also Crysis wasn't a game in the listing yet they keep advertising it as being able to play Crysis on max on a POS computer. [editline]08:03PM[/editline] Also I want to point out: It really doesn't look that bad in motion. The graphics are actually pretty good when running and not paying too much attention to the artifacts.

Cloud gaming sounds horrible. I want to keep my games, and not have to worry about the company going belly-up.

[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;22809999]On their defense, I think the whole concept of "cloud gaming" (if I can call it that) is pretty good and I'm sure this service will evolve very quickly. I still wonder why didn't they start testing OnLive in Japan or Scandinavia, where they have the fastest Internet connections in the world... :/ BTW, what about resolutions, OP? 720p? 1080p? Do they use any AA or AF settings??[/QUOTE] The resolutions I'm not sure about. It was less than full screen on my computer. My monitor's resolution is 1280 x 800 and I would guess that it was about 1280 x 768. Also to me it did seem like AA and AF was on, and pretty well. The only graphical problems were a result of the compression. Also I would like to point out that the speed of light is finite and even with the most blazing internet connection there still will be a noticeable latency. That's nature.

I was in the beta,the quality is ok for my screen size (1024 x 768) but the compression is made to be used on video,not still images,so of course it'll look bad on a single frame. Honestly,I've been waiting on something like this for a while. I can't afford to upgrade my PC (I have a Pentium 4 in my current PC,its that old.) so something like this is great for me,even better when I'm getting a free game and free year,and only pay $4 a month after that. And you don't need a dual core CPU as the requirements says,runs fine on my PC. PlayerTag: coggy9

It's a good concept, but they shouldn't have even tried to execute it. Even if it worked perfectly you still can't modify your games at all.

[QUOTE=otto888;22811248]I was in the beta,the quality is ok for my screen size (1024 x 768) but the compression is made to be used on video,not still images,so of course it'll look bad on a single frame. Honestly,I've been waiting on something like this for a while. I can't afford to upgrade my PC (I have a Pentium 4 in my current PC,its that old.) so something like this is great for me,even better when I'm getting a free game and free year,and only pay $4 a month after that. And you don't need a dual core CPU as the requirements says,runs fine on my PC. PlayerTag: coggy9[/QUOTE] Yeah, like I said, the games actually look pretty good in motion. I'll add you. My tag is Cheesesteak [editline]09:33PM[/editline] I've just played Red Faction on OnLive. It ran really well, it was a blast to play.

I don't think it's ready to really take over normal PC gaming, not to mention the fact that I don't really support the idea. I like to know that once I purchase a game it's [B]mine[/B] and that all the files used are mine to do whatever I like to, it seems stupid to hand over your rightfully gotten property to a server that you never have direct contact with.

It's a retarded idea in my opinion for the obvious reasons of lag, quality and what kurry said.

I figured out the password problem. It turns out that if your password is more than 16 characters long, you have to enter in only the first 16. [editline]10:43PM[/editline] So yeah, I just redeemed Just Cause 2 as my free game. I will get back to you once I've played for a meaningful length of time with it.

They just need to get more servers scattered around and it should work then.

I'd really rather have the ability to play mods and process everything from my computer.

[QUOTE=that1dude24;22810475]Cloud gaming sounds horrible. I want to keep my games, and not have to worry about the company going belly-up.[/QUOTE] My guess is that if they ever DO go out of business, they will reimburse you.

It would never work for modern multiplayer games because the current way they work (at least in source) the client is constantly making predictions on the movements of models while the server updates the hitboxes. With Onlive that wouldn't work due to it being a glorified movie stream.

After about an hour and a half or so with Just Cause 2, as far as I can see, the game is very playable. I've gotten used to the lag and now I'm not having much trouble playing, if it's shooting, driving, flying, or doing stunts. You just get used to it. I'm actually having a pretty good time. However, that's not a good thing, I shouldn't [i]have[/i] to get used to anything. The graphics are cranked to 11, with full AA and all that jazz, but the compression is very noticeable, especially in the dark areas. The resolution is alright but in motion the game looks good enough and it's pretty smooth. If you don't think about it and just get into the game the graphics will be amazing for you. Tomorrow I will reinstall FRAPS for you guys and get a gameplay video going. I will upload to Youtube and upload the raw file so you guys can see what it looks like. [editline]12:27AM[/editline] One suggestion I have for the service, though. There's an arena mode, and thats where you spectate other players who are playing the games. there's a little display in the top corner that shows how many people are watching the gameplay, and there's a rating system. I wish there was a comment feature, like a live stream, where the people who are watching together can chat and talk about the game being played. That would add a sense of community as that's supposed to be a main way to get friends on the service. As it stands just watching the person play isn't enough for that. Also, when you are playing a game, occasionally a pop up will come up and say "So and so is watching". That's nice to have. [editline]01:53AM[/editline] An interesting note: Just Cause 2 comes with both DLCs by default.

[QUOTE=Fish_poke;22815141]My guess is that if they ever DO go out of business, they will reimburse you.[/QUOTE] Where would they get the money for that if they went out of business? :\

here are some screens i took from when i played the other night (playing fullscreen (1440x900) borderlands) [url]http://i.imgur.com/8HzTb.jpg[/url] [url]http://i.imgur.com/cdJ7L.jpg[/url] [url]http://i.imgur.com/EAgQl.jpg[/url] like OP said, when you're actually playing you don't really notice the artifacts and such. the only problem I had was input lag, but after playing the demo for 30 minutes I got used to it. also note: playing the borderlands demo for 30 minutes downloaded a little over 1GB. it was downloading at about 600KB/s (min) and 750KB/s (max), uploading at 10KB/s those of you with weak internets should be careful

[QUOTE=kurry;22812467]I don't think it's ready to really take over normal PC gaming, not to mention the fact that I don't really support the idea. I like to know that once I purchase a game it's [B]mine[/B] and that all the files used are mine to do whatever I like to, it seems stupid to hand over your rightfully gotten property to a server that you never have direct contact with.[/QUOTE] You don't have that right when you purchase most games. Read the licenses.

So it's a bit shit. Can't say I'm surprised.

[QUOTE=Xera;22819254]You don't have that right when you purchase most games. Read the licenses.[/QUOTE] No need to get into semantics. You know what he meant, and always having a physical copy to hand is indeed a valuable asset.

Hello. I just created a video for you guys. I'm uploading it to Youtube. Also, if you wish, I could upload the file again so you can see the raw video, and I also have the uncompressed 3 GB file from Fraps. [editline]11:37AM[/editline] Processing... [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp4tuhvC5bY[/media]