Xbox One cloud graphics rendering: SA gamers' bane?

[Ike_009]

I honestly can't believe you are actually supporting this. No way will you even able to utilize this feature once it gets released.

Agreed and its not just SA, its most the world. Plus I can't see many people paying a grand a month for a line that let's them use that feature.

 

[jasong]

You sound like a sales rep... We won't be able to utilize this cloud shit. So yes we're complaining about it. Its a stupid feature to have at this point in time where most people don't even have a physical line and make due with speed sticks and dial up nonsense.

I have a 1mb line and that is low by US and European standards. I would upgrade it if I could get seriously enhanced graphics without changing my hardware. By most people I guess you mean yourself and your 3rd world social group. I plan on being able to use it. As for what kind of line you will need, I can't begin to guess. I would say 5mb would be unfeasible for most.

Also games looking better on a Xbone compared to a pc? You must be joking... In 5 years time its going to be 5x better than the current Graphics. That still puts the Xbone at a disadvantage.

Maybe 5 years is a stretch. But it will give it huge longevity compared to normal consoles.

I honestly can't believe you are actually supporting this. No way will you even able to utilize this feature once it gets released.

Even if I didn't use it, it's an awesome feature. It's one of the best things microsoft's done in a while.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...s-more-processing-power-from-cloud-computing/
That article explains a bit how it would work. Some aspects of rendering need to happen in real time and get processed directly. Other aspects can load once at the beginning of a scene like the physics engine or lighting, that would be loaded in the cloud and aren't impacted by line latency in gameplay. It is highly elegant.

 

[Ike_009]

I'm out, this is like trying to explain that the sky is blue after Microsoft announced the XFail has turned the sky Red with pretty rainbows and flying unicorns.

 

[jasong]

I'm out, this is like trying to explain that the sky is blue after Microsoft announced the XFail has turned the sky Red with pretty rainbows and flying unicorns.

Your point is what exactly? You won't use it so it's a fail? It's there for you if one day you get yourself a decent line going. If not, you can just use the XFail (larfs!!) hardware capabilities and not worry about it. For me, I'd be willing to spend the money on a line upgrade - to a point - if it means I'm getting 4x the graphics power of the stock console.

 

[S1ght]

After rethinking this a bit, it might not be so bad. Try think of it as being similar to being able to turn the graphics down on PC. So imagine they make a game that uses all the Xbox One's processing power. Then for arguments sake lets say you want to enable tessellation, you enable it in the options and then it tries to offload that processing to the cloud?

My point is as long as they still make the games to use all the power of the console and then this cloud processing is nothing more than an extra that just adds to it. So as long as it's not reliant on the cloud in other words.

 

[jasong]

After rethinking this a bit, it might not be so bad. Try think of it as being similar to being able to turn the graphics down on PC. So imagine they make a game that uses all the Xbox One's processing power. Then for arguments sake lets say you want to enable tessellation, you enable it in the options and then it tries to offload that processing to the cloud?

My point is as long as they still make the games to use all the power of the console and then this cloud processing is nothing more than an extra that just adds to it. So as long as it's not reliant on the cloud in other words.

That's exactly it. Read the Ars feature on it, they explain it out nicely. There's a scenario for unconnected devices where it scales down the graphics - there HAS to be one. And the kinds of processing it will do aren't the sorts of real-time interactions that need an extremely low-latency connection; they get loaded at the beginning of a level around things like tessellation and volumetric lighting. Whereas previous solutions like Onlive tried to just load the whole game on the internet which is insanely difficult to do because if you get any latency at all the gameplay stutters.

 

[czc]

If it's an addition and all the graphics necessary to run the game are included on the disk then this would just be an enhancement. That should be fine for us then, we'll just have uglier games.

 

[jasong]

If it's an addition and all the graphics necessary to run the game are included on the disk then this would just be an enhancement. That should be fine for us then, we'll just have uglier games.

Right. Imagine if they built a ray-tracing engine, or cloth physics, or whatever; and if you have access to the service you can see it; if not, the gameplay isn't affected. There's so much potential here. There are a lot of things that could ruin this concept but you can't say it isn't promising.

 

[Avatar]

After rethinking this a bit, it might not be so bad. Try think of it as being similar to being able to turn the graphics down on PC. So imagine they make a game that uses all the Xbox One's processing power. Then for arguments sake lets say you want to enable tessellation, you enable it in the options and then it tries to offload that processing to the cloud?

My point is as long as they still make the games to use all the power of the console and then this cloud processing is nothing more than an extra that just adds to it. So as long as it's not reliant on the cloud in other words.

The way the Ars Technica article explains it reminds me a lot of the Unreal3 engine method of loading textures. It pulls up a grainy, low res one first, and then gradually replaces all textures in sight with high res ones, as computational time allows. The big issue to me is, where does the cost come it.. It's similar to the required Kinect, in that now I'm paying for something that I don't want or are going to use.

 

[jasong]

The way the Ars Technica article explains it reminds me a lot of the Unreal3 engine method of loading textures. It pulls up a grainy, low res one first, and then gradually replaces all textures in sight with high res ones, as computational time allows. The big issue to me is, where does the cost come it.. It's similar to the required Kinect, in that now I'm paying for something that I don't want or are going to use.

I guess. It depends how they price it. If it's premium pricing because of the nonoptional add-ons, then yeah you've got a point. If it's in the $400 mark and those things come bundled with it's pretty great value from where I stand. I would imagine the cloud thing would be subscription with XBLA.