Google Stadia in desperate need of promised "negative latency" mode

[Sauron]

On 11/18/2019 at 8:17 PM, Princess Luna said:

So it's a problem regardless of your Internet connection latency? That looks pretty awful even to me who often do couch gaming on a TV with game pad.

The core problem is that you can't control your internet connection's latency. It works well enough for small packets when the game is being run locally and you only need to send or receive a minimal game state, it doesn't work nearly as well when you're streaming the entire game. It's like trying to stream a youtube video without caching, just downloading one frame at a time and expecting it to keep up with 60 frames per second... it just doesn't work, no connection is that reliable. Google is acting as though your internet connection were a long HDMI cable, which it just isn't.

On 11/19/2019 at 1:06 AM, Waffles13 said:

For all the people saying "just use ethernet", remember that Google advertised Stadia with a gamepad that itself connected direct to wifi, allegedly to combat lag. If the wifi experience is more or less universally bad, then that means that the official Google endorsed controller will be the worst way to use the service. 

More importantly, using ethernet kind of defeats the purpose or at least a large part of it. If I have to sit at a desk and connect with a cable then why bother with streaming outside of purely economical concerns?

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

The core problem is that you can't control your internet connection's latency. It works well enough for small packets when the game is being run locally and you only need to send or receive a minimal game state, it doesn't work nearly as well when you're streaming the entire game. It's like trying to stream a youtube video without caching, just downloading one frame at a time and expecting it to keep up with 60 frames per second... it just doesn't work, no connection is that reliable. Google is acting as though your internet connection were a long HDMI cable, which it just isn't.

More importantly, using ethernet kind of defeats the purpose or at least a large part of it. If I have to sit at a desk and connect with a cable then why bother with streaming outside of purely economical concerns?

There will be some buffering tho - otherwise this wouldn't work - like levels and such would at least be partly stored in this 'Stadia' device I suppose,  otherwise as you say,  I have no idea how this would work at all. 

 

 

Also Controller runs over WiFi?   Haha.  That's just awful (if true) xD. 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

like levels and such would at least be partly stored in this 'Stadia' device

Hmm, that doesn't sound right - the server is doing the rendering so there isn't really much point in sending asset data over to the client.

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

otherwise as you say,  I have no idea how this would work at all.

Exactly, it doesn't work. Or rather, it works but it introduces latency since the video needs to be buffered at least a little.

[Mark Kaine]

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Hmm, that doesn't sound right - the server is doing the rendering so there isn't really much point in sending asset data over to the client.

Exactly, it doesn't work. Or rather, it works but it introduces latency since the video needs to be buffered at least a little.

Oh yeah, I agree,  it doesn't sound right,  I still could imagine there's some kind of small video cache or something to at least help the buffering a little bit... 

 

I don't know,  just think there must be some tricks to get it to work at all?

[TechyBen]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Oh yeah, I agree,  it doesn't sound right,  I still could imagine there's some kind of small video cache or something to at least help the buffering a little bit... 

 

I don't know,  just think there must be some tricks to get it to work at all?

Wait... no. How would that even work on a live gaming streaming service? HUH?

[Mark Kaine]

3 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Wait... no. How would that even work on a live gaming streaming service? HUH?

Well that stadia thing has a CPU or whatever,  it needs something to display video,  and that most likely would have a cache. 

 

 

I really don't know haha,  tell me how it works if not like that... 

[TechyBen]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Well that stadia thing has a CPU or whatever,  it needs something to display video,  and that most likely would have a cache. 

 

 

I really don't know haha,  tell me how it works if not like that... 

Cache what? Where are these frames you are going to cache? The delta is at most 250ms, So you have 15 frames to work with... once you use those 15 frames, then what?

Do you know what a frame cache is in a video streamer?

[Bombastinator]

18 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Their review is now out.  I'd encourage anyone who's still interested in this topic to give it a watch, but I'll include a few clippings below.

 

Below you see a PC vs Stadia latency comparison in one of the four main games they tested.  Please note that in some cases, Stadia was far worse than this, scoring well past the unplayable line, but in some cases it was much closer to PC.

 

 

From this you can see two things though:

1. Their results are massively better than the WP
2. Despite this, they are still massively worse than native and definitely getting up into the range you would feel it and likely be annoyed.

Below are two short video clips from a different game.  The first is ripped directly from their review and shows the latency experienced (slowed for effect).  Below that is an edited version intended to give a sense of how this should look and feel if there was little to no latency, in case you have trouble imagining it.

 

 

 

In conclusion, they shared WPs concerns that the latency was an issue, and on top of that, reiterated that the business plan is simply not competitive or appealing.  If it was simply a subscription service for which you had access to a huge games library, perhaps it would make more sense, but as it stands, you have to buy the games anyway, same as you would on PC or console, but then also pay a subscription fee on top if that.  Bundle this to the very real risk that the service might just disappear overnight, along with the games you paid for, and it's clear we should be weary of the option at best for now.

GN is da bomb

[tankyx]

I dont understand how Google is having such latency problems.

 

I worked as a lead dev for a Cloudgaming company, even by using dumb Windows API to capture frames and unoptimized X264 to encode and webRTC we were getting a mere 30-ish ms latency (without counting the network latency). RTT latency was around 90ms with a 4G connexion. With a full hardware solution (novideo apis) we were able to go down to 40ms RTT latency, 1080p-60fps still on 4G.

 

LAN latency was down to 5ms.

 

WTF Google ?!

[Thaldor]

On 11/25/2019 at 5:11 PM, Mark Kaine said:

Well that stadia thing has a CPU or whatever,  it needs something to display video,  and that most likely would have a cache. 

 

 

I really don't know haha,  tell me how it works if not like that... 

No, it's not like watching a YT video which you can cache up and make the latency even worse. You can get better image of things by using Nvidia NOW as example: When you start a game from the client device, Nvidia NOW allocates and boots you a virtual PC in their server to run the game, you need to login to your Steam/Origin/Whatever service on that virtual PC for it to start running the game you want, this is done so that the app on your device sends input data (M/K, controller or whatever) and the server streams the display of that virtual PC to your device. If you add cache anywhere in the middle of that (except the normal running caches in the virtual machine or what would be used when running the game locally), it's going to add latency and that is going to multiply and fast depending on where you add a cache. The optimal situation would be that there isn't any latency and it would feel like running the game locally, but as that is impossible with current technology, they just need ti minimize the latency as much as possible and the first thing is to remove all and any cache and serve the input to the server ASAP and serve the output to the client ASAP.

 

TL;DR: Think it as a PC running in a server which mouse and keyboard or controller is the ones in your hands and which monitor is the device before you. You don't want any cache in there or it's going to be really bad experience.

[Derangel]

23 hours ago, tankyx said:

I dont understand how Google is having such latency problems.

 

I worked as a lead dev for a Cloudgaming company, even by using dumb Windows API to capture frames and unoptimized X264 to encode and webRTC we were getting a mere 30-ish ms latency (without counting the network latency). RTT latency was around 90ms with a 4G connexion. With a full hardware solution (novideo apis) we were able to go down to 40ms RTT latency, 1080p-60fps still on 4G.

 

LAN latency was down to 5ms.

 

WTF Google ?!

It's pretty clear things on their side simply weren't ready for this launch. They're having problems because they rushed to launch to try and beat their competitors. They're trying to claim this clearly still early beta product as something ready for release.

[TechyBen]

On 11/25/2019 at 6:09 PM, tankyx said:

I dont understand how Google is having such latency problems.

 

I worked as a lead dev for a Cloudgaming company, even by using dumb Windows API to capture frames and unoptimized X264 to encode and webRTC we were getting a mere 30-ish ms latency (without counting the network latency). RTT latency was around 90ms with a 4G connexion. With a full hardware solution (novideo apis) we were able to go down to 40ms RTT latency, 1080p-60fps still on 4G.

 

LAN latency was down to 5ms.

 

WTF Google ?!

But was it cheaaaaap?

[tankyx]

58 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

But was it cheaaaaap?

$15 a month soooo, i dont know hehe

[kittykat-dev]

On 11/18/2019 at 11:21 AM, Kid.Lazer said:

I only have one question to ask:

Who exactly is surprised that a fully online game has this problem?

People who don't know how the speed of light works 

[TehPlayer14]

This is honestly terrible.... Nvidia does better with Geforce now...

 

Not to mention how insanely good is steam remote play on LTE network 22ping here in Europe games are very playable, and close to playable for precision/fast reaction games, even managed to play CSGO

[Bombastinator]

27 minutes ago, TehPlayer14 said:

This is honestly terrible.... Nvidia does better with Geforce now...

 

Not to mention how insanely good is steam remote play on LTE network 22ping here in Europe games are very playable, and close to playable for precision/fast reaction games, even managed to play CSGO

Became interested in steam remote play due to this comment so I downloaded it. Steam remote play seems from what I am looking at to work differently though.  You need a running host computer and it apparently only works on LAN.  You are saying it works on LTE as well?

[RejZoR]

Stop with this negative latency bullshit. It can't be done even if you're a multibillion dollar multinational mega corporation. You can't bend or disobey laws of physics.

[amdorintel]

On 11/26/2019 at 11:33 PM, kittykat-dev said:

People who don't know how the speed of light works 

thats only if your lucky enough, because not all have access to the speed of light

 

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, amdorintel said:

thats only if your lucky enough, because not all have access to the speed of light

 

Games and video encoding and decoding doesn't work at speed of light even if internet does.

[amdorintel]

Just now, RejZoR said:

Games and video encoding and decoding doesn't work at speed of light even if internet does.

transmission lines

 

across the seaboard, but if your in a 3rd world, then its even sketchier

[TehPlayer14]

On 12/1/2019 at 8:38 PM, Bombastinator said:

Became interested in steam remote play due to this comment so I downloaded it. Steam remote play seems from what I am looking at to work differently though.  You need a running host computer and it apparently only works on LAN.  You are saying it works on LTE as well?

Yes it works on LTE, as long as you have internet you can play on your PC from anywhere

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, TehPlayer14 said:

Yes it works on LTE, as long as you have internet you can play on your PC from anywhere

Gonna have to try that

[piemadd]

Geforce now which is free, can play on almost any device, can use your steam library, and has been out for years?

 

Neeevvveerrr heard of that one.....

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, pierom_qwerty said:

Geforce now which is free, can play on almost any device, can use your steam library, and has been out for years?

 

Neeevvveerrr heard of that one.....

Cool.  Where can I download this Geforce now thing? 

[TehPlayer14]

On 12/3/2019 at 5:59 PM, Mark Kaine said:

Cool.  Where can I download this Geforce now thing? 

You need to sign up for Beta