In the Spring of 2009, an announcement went out about a new gaming startup — not really news on it’s own, as there are gaming startups popping in and out of existence all the time. This one, however, was different. OnLive announced that they were going to bring a console-like gaming experience to any computer that could handle streaming HD video.
Tuesday, I was able to spend some time at the booth and take a look at how OnLive works, as well as get some insight about how things are handled on the back-end to address network lag and other potential issues.
First, though, the game play.
I played a few minutes each of DiRT2 and Borderlands. Since I’m primarily a PC gamer, I wanted to make sure I checked out the experience from both the keyboard/mouse and the game pad.
DiRT2 played great. Inputs from the game pad were exactly as you would expect playing locally on a PC or console. Since a racing game is entirely dependent on reflexes and reactions, any kind of lag in controller or network response would have you smashing into a wall before you knew what happened. Once I got a feel for the controller, everything was dead on. Clean, smooth movements, and no perceptible time between making an input on the controller to the car reacting on screen.
I switched to the keyboard/mouse setup to check out Borderlands. FPS games have the same concerns as racing games: Any lag in input or network means you’re dead. Since the keyboard/mouse is where I live when it comes to gaming, there was no adjustment curve at all, and I was able to jump right in and play. Aiming, shooting, and dodging enemies all worked just as you would expect.
The thing that impressed me the most about the OnLive experience was the feel of instant gratification. The menu system loads and reacts just like a console system, popping up instantly when requested. Choosing another game is as simple as scrolling down to look for the one you like. Click on the game you want to play, and it begins loading instantly. It’s overall a great improvement on existing gaming systems, but where I think OnLive is going to be changing the game the most is in their rental system.
Currently, the only way to try out a new game for PC is to either download a demo (if it’s available), or buy it outright and hope you don’t hate it. Demos are fine to a point, but most of them have a limited gaming experience, and don’t necessarily give you a feel for the experience. Buying the game gives you the entire experience, but if you don’t like it, you’re essentially out of luck.
OnLive’s rental system allows you to check out the full experience of a game on your PC (Mac and their Micro Console are currently in beta testing) for just a few dollars, just like renting a console game at your local vendor. If you don’t like it, you’re out just a few bucks, and if you do like it, you can ‘buy’ the game for unlimited play time. When I pull together more details about the OnLive rental and purchasing experience, I’ll be sure to lay them out for everyone.
Overall, I think OnLive is going to be a real game-changer when it comes to home gaming. Clients for both PC and Mac, as well as the MicroConsole mean that OnLive is something that should appeal to everyone. My experience here at the E3 demo booth was just as good as playing the games on a moderately spec’d PC, more than enough for my “Just this side of casual” gaming habits. The MicroConsole was at least as responsive as an even higher spec PC or a current-gen console. The menu system is lightning fast, and rivals or even surpasses the responsiveness of the menus on current-gen systems.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should remind our readers that I am what is known as “A huge geek”. Whether the word ‘huge’ is referring to the amount of atmosphere I displace or the magnitude of my geekness is irrelevant, as it pretty much works either way. The last section of this article will detail some of the technical information about how the system works.
The first concern that anyone has when they are presented with the idea of OnLive is: What about lag?
As I mentioned above, when you’re playing games, lag is a killer. OnLive has done a great amount of work with hardware vendors to address lag on the home side of the connection (controllers, video hardware, and monitors are all sources of delays between input and display), and has put together peering agreements with major Internet backbone providers to ensure that the traffic from OnLive to your house traverses as little of the public Internet as possible. In order to preserve the experience, OnLive has set 2 strong restrictions for the client: You must be within 1,000 miles of one of their data centers (covers most of the U.S. at this point) to use the client, and you must have a ping lower than 80 before the client will even allow you to sign on. These two restrictions ensure that every time you sign in to OnLive, you get the best experience possible.
OnLive even addressed the issue of video decoding lag. Once the data is streamed to your device (whether it be a PC or the MicroConsole), it needs to be uncompressed and decoded so that it can be presented to you in an image that makes sense. The uncompression and decoding of a video stream is a time-consuming task in computer terms. Every millisecond the system spends on that process directly affects the overall lag in the system.
In order to fix this potential issue, OnLive created a custom codec that they have complete control over. They also implemented the codec in the hardware of the MicroConsole, making the uncompressing and decoding process lightning fast. This, I think, is where the additional quality feel comes about when using the MicroConsole versus the PC.
Next, I had a question about the versions of the games that are playable with OnLive.
OnLive has worked with publishers to create very lightly-modified versions of their available games from the PC versions that are available to everyone. Small modifications like restricting the available resolution and detail levels to those supported by their encoding system are about it.
Finally, we talked a little bit about hardware and OS compatibility.
I have a relatively medium-spec business laptop by today’s standards. OnLive noticed this while we were talking and mentioned that this particular model (a Dell Latitude D830, specifically) was the most tested laptop in their beta runs. As for hardware requirements, OnLive would be an ideal addition to a home theater PC (HTPC) system in the living room, as even relatively low-spec’d PCs are able to handle streaming 720p these days.
OnLive is also currently beta testing the Mac version of their client. Feedback so far has been pretty positive, and a launch is due pretty soon, though no date has been announced.
The purpose-built MicroConsole is also in testing and ready for launch as soon as manufacturing is able to ramp up to an acceptable rate to satisfy demand.
I also asked if there were any plans to have a Linux client, as many of the underpinnings of MacOS’s BSD system can be ported pretty easily to a Linux environment. Currently, OnLive has no plans to launch a Linux-based client, but they did note that it wasn’t a ridiculous idea, since the MicroConsole is running on an embedded Linux already.
Finally, I asked about importing existing games that players already own. Particularly, I mentioned content purchased through Steam. While nothing is confirmed at this time, they assured me that they are working with publishers on all aspects of the gaming experience. While this does not say they have plans for Steam in the future, it tells me that they have at least breached the idea with Valve at some point.
OnLive officially launches here at E3 today, June 17. Keep an eye out for a follow-up in the next few weeks as I try and put down some serious play time. At launch, they will have 23 games available from most of the different genres. They are continually working with publishers to grow their library.
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