
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.
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 …
... 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!
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...
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.
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.
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......
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/
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.