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Last week, I was at the first GPU developer's conference put on by Nvidia, along with around 1,500 people trying to change the future of computing. What was both troubling and amazing was the number of times people were telling me stories about things people had said were impossible that they were now doing as a matter of course all because of this change. Given that the technology industry came to be as a result of people trying and doing the impossible, you would think we would see more of this.
that people don't think things like OnLive will live up to their promise. Two of them specifically -
Eve Online
Second Life
The first one uses massive blade servers, to provide real time operation of a game world, and I do mean **one world**, unlike most MMORPGs, in which there can be as many as 45,000 simultaneous users. All of the power needed to do this is already being swallowed up in handling user data and processes, such that you "must" have a GPU on the client end, to handle the video. How exactly do you generate this stuff for 45,000+ people, on the server end?
Second Life is even scarier. I that you have custom script execution, possibly for every objects, physics calculations, possibly for every object, and millions of concurrent users, ***but*** you can't have more than like 10,000 objects in a sim, and maybe 30 people. In theory, you can have as many as 40 people in one, but the cost of running this is so high that it drags performance of all the stuff needed to make it work at all down to almost nothing. This might be closer to what cloud stuff can do, but how do you generate all the calculations for a 100% dynamic system, with user made content, for 40 people (50-60, if they ever got it running like it did before some of the newer updates), using this sort of thing?
Maybe its not impossible, but I would hate to be the guy trying to figure out how to manage it, or looking at the price tag for the number of separate servers needed to provide a smooth system, when single servers, and client end GPU for the video, currently runs fairly badly for things like Second Life, though pretty well for Eve (which has about 50 times less data processing to do, since all it cares about is "where" you are in the "region" you are in, and which region, and some general things like your inventory, skills and cash. The difference between these two types of games is **huge**, and neither of them are World of Warcraft, which doesn't care to even try to allow you to have more than 40-50 people in a single "region" at one time.
I will admit that, maybe, 60% of the games could do this. But, they are not the cutting edge games at all, and anyone trying to make the next greatest RPG or user content universe, or anything like these, is likely to find themselves relying on what hardware is on the user end, not the server end, since the server end will already be using every scrap of computing power it has, just handling the load of all the stuff happening on it, which doesn't in all those other games.
But, heh.. If you don't mind playing those 60% that do work via things like OnLive, while being clueless about why better stuff can't, or wait 10 years for someone to build GPU style processors for handling this, which are not actually GPUs like a home computer would have in them, then by all means, go with it. I just don't see how the innovation of the most bleeding edge games are actually met by the requirements of a cloud system that handles everything, including the video. If this was feasible for them, they would be doing it, especially SL, which, frankly, **badly** needs something to improve the situation (but where the problem is 90% server side, with data handling, not on the client end, with the graphics).
Eve Online
Second Life
The first one uses massive blade servers, to provide real time operation of a game world, and I do mean **one world**, unlike most MMORPGs, in which there can be as many as 45,000 simultaneous users. All of the power needed to do this is already being swallowed up in handling user data and processes, such that you "must" have a GPU on the client end, to handle the video. How exactly do you generate this stuff for 45,000+ people, on the server end?
Second Life is even scarier. I that you have custom script execution, possibly for every objects, physics calculations, possibly for every object, and millions of concurrent users, ***but*** you can't have more than like 10,000 objects in a sim, and maybe 30 people. In theory, you can have as many as 40 people in one, but the cost of running this is so high that it drags performance of all the stuff needed to make it work at all down to almost nothing. This might be closer to what cloud stuff can do, but how do you generate all the calculations for a 100% dynamic system, with user made content, for 40 people (50-60, if they ever got it running like it did before some of the newer updates), using this sort of thing?
Maybe its not impossible, but I would hate to be the guy trying to figure out how to manage it, or looking at the price tag for the number of separate servers needed to provide a smooth system, when single servers, and client end GPU for the video, currently runs fairly badly for things like Second Life, though pretty well for Eve (which has about 50 times less data processing to do, since all it cares about is "where" you are in the "region" you are in, and which region, and some general things like your inventory, skills and cash. The difference between these two types of games is **huge**, and neither of them are World of Warcraft, which doesn't care to even try to allow you to have more than 40-50 people in a single "region" at one time.
I will admit that, maybe, 60% of the games could do this. But, they are not the cutting edge games at all, and anyone trying to make the next greatest RPG or user content universe, or anything like these, is likely to find themselves relying on what hardware is on the user end, not the server end, since the server end will already be using every scrap of computing power it has, just handling the load of all the stuff happening on it, which doesn't in all those other games.
But, heh.. If you don't mind playing those 60% that do work via things like OnLive, while being clueless about why better stuff can't, or wait 10 years for someone to build GPU style processors for handling this, which are not actually GPUs like a home computer would have in them, then by all means, go with it. I just don't see how the innovation of the most bleeding edge games are actually met by the requirements of a cloud system that handles everything, including the video. If this was feasible for them, they would be doing it, especially SL, which, frankly, **badly** needs something to improve the situation (but where the problem is 90% server side, with data handling, not on the client end, with the graphics).
