[brundolf]

The issue isn't bandwidth; Netflix can stream HD video over a 5Mbps connection, and Stadia should require about the same bandwidth as video streaming because that's essentially what it's doing (and sending input signals back the other direction, but those should be negligible)

What's much harder is latency. Who cares if your interactions with Netflix have a 500ms delay? For a video game, even 50ms is a problem. And you can't improve latency just by adding bigger pipes: there are unshakeable physical limits around how long it takes an electrical signal to go to and from a data center X miles away, and on top of that there's the rat's nest of routing that the signal has to go through along the way. The former can't be solved except by building out more datacenters so that more people are closer to them. The latter can be solved, at great effort, but I don't see ISPs having much motivation to do so. This is why individual experiences with Stadia are so hit-or-miss: it mostly comes down to luck, in terms of a) how physically close you are to a datacenter and b) how streamlined the network infrastructure around you happens to be. And I don't see a clear path for Google to significantly improve this over time.

[jhbadger]

"For a video game, even 50ms is a problem" -- that rather depends on what kind of video game. For a first person shooter, yes. For a role playing or adventure game, not really.

[brundolf]

Anything with real-time continuous motion is going to feel fairly uncomfortable with that kind of latency, which includes the great majority of AAA games, including most roleplaying and adventure games

[nickthemagicman]

Numerous multibillion-dollar companies are creating game streaming services, think youre wrong...and I do too.

[thedrbrian]

No they’re doing it to stop piracy and to have even more control over when people stop playing game XXI and buy the sequel game XXII electric bugaloo. Don’t think they’re being altruistic.

[nickthemagicman]

Even if you're extremely cynical take is accurate people won't use it if performance is unsatisfactory.

[nickthemagicman]

Like I said, I've never noticed any significant latency playing multiplayer with friends.

It's seamless on a 150 meg connection.

Starlink has a 40 ms latency and that literally goes to SPACE and back THEN ALSO goes through all of the network routing issues that you're talking about.

So you may be overselling the latency problem.

You may have other issues going on? I don't know why you're getting 500 millisecond delays. I'm certainly not getting that.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsi...

[brundolf]

What I'm saying is that you must be one of the lucky ones who has a low-latency connection

(Whether or not you're playing multiplayer isn't really relevant, because those other people are talking to the datacenter, not your local client)

> You may have other issues going on? I don't know why you're getting 500 millisecond delays. I'm certainly not getting that.

I haven't personally tried Stadia, and 500ms wasn't intended as a representative example, it was just an extreme number for the sake of illustration.

I have, though, read reports from lots of people who have "good" internet connections, saying Stadia is noticeably laggy (just look at the top comment on this very post).

To get down to specifics, a latency of >16ms is a lagged frame at 60FPS (which is the standard expectation for the current gen of consoles, and has been the expectation on PC for many years). That time window also has to include actually processing and rendering the game state (you can throw hardware at this part, but only up to a point).

So, that Starlink figure of 40ms will still give you a pretty unideal experience.

[nickthemagicman]

Did you just compare Stadia to a console plugged directly into to your T.V. with a hardwired controller?

Your problem isn't with Stadia... your problem is with physics.

Yeah Stadia doesn't run with 16ms latency at 69fps.

But for casual gamers 30 to 60 fps and 40 milliseconds is perfectly adequate for a multiplayer game especially considering it's run in the browser...and what tons of people use all over the world everyday!

[brundolf]

> Did you just compare Stadia to a console plugged directly into to your T.V. with a hardwired controller?

I mean... yes. This is what Stadia is competing with. It's in their marketing materials.

> perfectly adequate for a multiplayer game

If you're referring to the latency that traditional gaming machines have to contend with during online multiplayer, there's still a difference here

For many years now, online multiplayer games have used a technique called Client-side prediction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_prediction) to deal with the fact that tens of milliseconds of latency in a game feels terrible. They can't fix the latency itself, but what they can do is apply short-term changes to things like character movement and camera rotation on the client side, with the assumption that those changes will happen regardless of what the server responds with after handling the multi-client inputs. They effectively front-load the little stuff where tiny differences in latency are noticeable, and leave the server to handle the longer-term stuff like collisions and scorekeeping. This keeps interactions instantaneous, even though the shared game state can't be, and maintains a smooth game-feel.

This is impossible to do for cloud gaming, because the "client" itself lives across the network. The actual client sitting in front of you in this case knows nothing about how to render any aspect of the game, it just mirrors a video feed.

It's great that Stadia is working well for you. It's working well for some people. Nothing wrong with enjoying it. I just remain highly skeptical that it's ever going to work well enough for a large enough number of people to be a long-term success.

[nickthemagicman]

You seem to think you know more than than Google and Nvidia and Steam and PlayStation and Microsoft about game streaming services, which is very shocking to me.

How preachy you are in these conversations ..it sounds like you may have a bit of an ego and possibly a little prince complex? You could look into that as being the root cause of the issue.

Millions of people happily play online games all over the world daily with way worse specs than you demand.

I think most people have more realistic requirements than you do to have fun with an online game.

Time will tell who is right! I'm betting on the multibillion dollar companies though!

I wish you the best and hope you never have play a game with less than 60 FPS and 16 millisecond latency ever again

[nickthemagicman]

Starlink has a 40 millisecond latency and it goes to space and back and then it goes through all of the additional routing issues you're talking about.

So I think you may be over estimating how much latency is inherent in the network.

It may not be that I have a low latency connection...maybe you have an exceptionally high latency connection.

Maybe your apartment building has issues with the wiring?

You should really call your landlord. You're really missing out on how cool Stadia is.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsi...

[issamehh]

In some cases Starlink can actually have less latency than wired connections. It's not so clear cut. Also not every internet problem is solved by calling the landlord. In fact, mine has basically nothing to do with my internet in the first place.

[nickthemagicman]

If you have 500ms ping on any sort of internet enabled software the problem is not the internet, it's something local to your building or computer.

100ms or less has been normal for over a decade on the most average connections. I have 60ms on my phone hot spot.

[brundolf]

Right. I'd bet Starlink actually gets to skip a lot of the routing and repeating that landlines have to go through

[nickthemagicman]

40-100ms is standard latency on any sort of internet enabled software even on the most average connection, and has been for a decade or more. I get 60ms latency on my phone hot spot.

If you have 500ms ping your problem is not the internet, it's something local to your building or computer, I hate to be the one to break it to you!