Crazy coders enable full-screen Crysis play on Eee PC

Think Asus' elfin Eee PC isn't up to a quick Crysis or Quake 4 session? Its meagre Intel integrated graphic chip could never deliver anything but sub-zero frame rates? Think again - it can. So claims website StreamMyGame, which uses web technology to deliver PC-hosted gameplay of these very high-end PC-oriented titles onto …

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it!

Now I can play WoW on my lunch brake! Woot! Take that N00bs!

Anon, because even I dont want to be that much of a geek.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh not that impressive really

Been able to do this with X for quite sometime now :)

[Adam Foxton]

Even better...

... Streammygame has a Linux client- so you can have a dedicated games machine running Windows sat in a cupboard somewhere and just use Streammygame to give you quick access to your favourite games.

It'll even run on a PS3- and it can't be that long until a Windows Mobile version comes out. Combine that with HSDPA and you've got Bioshock on the bus!

You do need a LAN or a decent internet connection, though, if you're wanting a decent resolution... the VGA-only version's free, though!

[Paolo]

Hmm, how about renting crysis appliance time?

Picture a server room full of giant PCs, each being remotely accessed for an hourly rate to play crysis on your local pauper-spec box, 60s mainframe stylee.

Or - seemless application hosting for Adobe Photoshop on Linux for all those "I'd move to linux if only this app was available" types?

Just a thought...

[Marc]

What a sh*te story

What a sh*te story. The Asus can run remote viewing software. Woopdy do da

[matt]

Bandwidth?

I wonder how it works

1024 x 600 resolution, 25 frames a second, 3 bytes per pixel

= 46080000 bytes per second = ~44MB/s

So with an amazing compression of 80% thats still 8.8MB/s. One of the variables has to give if its going to work over the net, maybe its not supposed to?

[Adam]

@ AC

"Been able to do this with X for quite sometime now :)"

Would you care to elaborate? Obviously you can run an x-server on your client pc to run GUI stuff from a remote server, but this system is doing the opposite.

[Dex]

Hmm

Now i could get the Asus Girl remotely on my PDA then that'd be something :P

[Joe Montana]

Nothing new

You can play X11 based games remotely like this, and have been able to for a while.. You can play video and such too.

I've certainly run quake3 remotely many years ago.

[bluesxman]

RE: I love it!

Did you mean "be" or "appear to be"?

Your level of geekness is what it is, presumably you just don't want your friends (?) and family to know how high that is.

[Steve]

lag free?

And how is that achieved then, if you're at work and the graphics info has to be squeezed up the upload channel on my broadband... I can't get remote desktop lag free, so why should crysis be better?

[Joe K]

Utter utter bollocks

Nothing more than a publicity stunt for a ridiculous service only an idiot would pay for.

I thought from the headline that someone had come up with a nifty config file to scale the graphics down to a playable level.

I'm very very disappointed in you, El Reg.

[Mage]

DSL?

Basically you need 1Mbps upload from your game server at home for 640x480 action.

Most DSL is 8:1

1M / 128k

2M/256k

4M/512k

8M/1M

are typical ratio.

Mobile Internet you may get 1Mbps. Anything from 70k to 3Mbps with no QOS or consistency.

Most people will be lucky to do 320x240 (256k needed)

I hope they do ARM linux soon.

[fluffy]

@ both Adams

First Adam: Funny, most people consider Linux to be the OS you want running in a cupboard.

Second Adam: This service is running an app on one system and displaying it remotely on the other. I fail to see how that's the other way around from running an app on one system and displaying it remotely on the other.

[Andrew Fenton]

@matt

Compressing down to 20% is easy - beefy systems can do live 1080p video (over 1000mbit) into 12mbit already, with almost no perceptible loss - about 1% the size of the original. Most games would be much more compressible than that too, due to the lack of film grain, clean edges to shapes etc. At 1024*600 25fps you'd be looking at approx 1.5mbit for pretty seamless quality, 1mbit for good enough.

Course, latency issues......

[Tim Bates]

@fluffy

My cupboard DOES run Linux....

Well, my server is in a room that's smaller than some pantries/wardrobes... I assume that counts :p

[Parax]

@Mage

If you have a BT line you might be able to get 2.3Mbit up from Be* on ADSL2.

I can up 200KByte/s most days. oh and down at 2MByte/s :) tis sweet I tell ya!

oh and 13ms Ping if your interested.

Otherwise most isp's limit to 128kbit or 250kbit up

[Jules]

T5 labs does this and actually has a proper business plan.

Another British company - T5 labs - does something very similar but is building it's business around partnerships with cable tv companies and game publishers.

At some point in the near future you'll be able to play games running on a remote server by just plugging a controller or a mouse and keyboard into your cable tv set top box. The stb tunes into a lag free mpeg2 stream of the game.

Check out their website: http://www.t5labs.com/

[Jules]

@lag free?

I'm no expert but I believe this is how these game streaming services encode lag free:

A standard video encoder does not know what is coming in the next frame - it could be a minor change or a cut to a new scene - so it must scan each frame and compare it to the previous frame to discover the differences. This scan for differences is the most time consuming part of the encoding process and introduces lag.

With a video game streaming service like the one above, a special encoder hooks into the game code and video driver so that it knows in advance what parts of a frame have changed from the previous frame. This dramatically reduces lag, allowing even fast action games to be played via a compressed video stream.