This is probably the most awesome thing i have ever seen!

[SFSxOI]

1. Within 1000 miles of server

2. 80 ms

3. Very tight bandwidth constraints.

4. The demo in the video (on the screen behind him) was with the players setting right there playing the games he demo'd. The other feeds were clips running and not actual players.

In short, a neat idea but the presentation was a little deceptive. Over 80% of the worlds internet users will not be able to use it. To maintain a constant 80 ms time frame window across the internet (on average) you need a broadband connection with a sustained speed of at least 10 MB/s, and that number is based upon a straight connection to the server like on a LAN system. The bandwidth constraints for this system are +/- 10 %. That means your connection speed has to be between 9 MB/s to 11 MB/s sustained. 80% of the worlds internet users might have broadband connections from ISP's that tell them they get "up to" 10 MB's, but, none of that is sustained speed and the average speed they get on a 10 MB/s connection is around half to possibly peaks (sometimes) of 3/4 of that, which means that 80% of the worlds internet users do not meet the bandwidth requirements to use such a system reliably and as smoothly as demostrated in the video. And that does not even account for the delays introduced by numerous hops just to get to and from the server. So unless your within 1000 miles of a server and ISP's and telcos will suddenly increase bandwidth for everyone to around 50 MB/s then 80% of the worlds internet users will not see the performance as demo'd in the video clip. Sure, people will buy it and try to use it, and the companies will be swamped with tech service requests, and everyone will tweak and do this and that, but in the end, they probably will not be able to use the system reliably and will be stuck with shelling out money for something based upon marketing hype that they really had no chance of using reliably in the first place.

[Foz]

At work we did actually experiment with this concept when developing our own VNC to be built into our software for support purposes (using games as a worst case scenario - rapidly changing screenfuls). At the end of it, we managed to get it working for games, but only on fast machines (using a server in ireland, and two clients in the uk to simulate distance). We realised that OnLive is quite feasible to get the high frame rates, it just requires hardware compression and decompression to get the performance required. And a decent line.

Once we did that all respect for VNC disappeared

[luis]

http://kotaku.com/5935767/onlive-filing ... -its-place

The source says that everyone at the company knew things were tight. This morning, an all-hands meeting was called at 10 a.m. this morning where CEO Steve Perlman said that OnLive would be filing for an alternative to bankruptcy called an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, or ABC, in the state of California—a status that affords financially troubled companies a level of protection from creditors. Perlman also said that the company as it stands now would cease to exist and that no one would be employed by OnLive. A subset of employees would be brought on to the company created from the remains of OnLive.

[Zach]

Old post but, since when is ping directly influenced by bandwidth?

Ping is a measure of latency. It doesn't matter how fast your internet is, if you are getting bounced halfway across the world before reaching your sever, your ping is going to suck regardless.

[moogle]

Old post but, since when is ping directly influenced by bandwidth?

Ping is a measure of latency. It doesn't matter how fast your internet is, if you are getting bounced halfway across the world before reaching your sever, your ping is going to suck regardless.

No, only the medium and path the packets take. Although some ISPs have better quality lines and give better pings to a majority of servers, they may have a lower contention ratio as well.

In the UK we have an ISP called Virgin Media which has 100Mbs broadband, but the pings and average latency on it is **** compared to slower 'up to' 24Mb ADSL2+ broadband packages.

[Nituvious]

Ah, that sucks. I've used this service on my really bad laptop to play Borderlands with friends. They had a great idea and a great service to boot. Sad to hear they've gone under, though.

[Zach]

Old post but, since when is ping directly influenced by bandwidth?

Ping is a measure of latency. It doesn't matter how fast your internet is, if you are getting bounced halfway across the world before reaching your sever, your ping is going to suck regardless.

No, only the medium and path the packets take. Although some ISPs have better quality lines and give better pings to a majority of servers, they may have a lower contention ratio as well.

In the UK we have an ISP called Virgin Media which has 100Mbs broadband, but the pings and average latency on it is **** compared to slower 'up to' 24Mb ADSL2+ broadband packages.

Didn't you just..... prove my point?