Xbox One Cloud: Responsive Actions Are Still Going To Be Calculated Offline, Latency Could Limit It

"The Xbox One cloud has been subject to much controversy with Microsoft hyping it up in the past and simply not talking about it at their press conference during last week's E3."

[ats1992]

Im starting to think all gamingbolt does is email gaming companies about the resolution of their games when they are still in development and do interviews about the power of these consoles.

[MCTJim]

you and me both.

[MasterCornholio]

“But in platforms like the Xbox One where part of the processing is local and part is in the cloud, the most responsive actions will be the ones calculated locally. So the motions of the player’s character, and how the cloth reacts to them, will likely remain something that is calculated locally for a while,” he continued.
Read more at http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-...

Well it's still relevant information because it tells us that the cloud is limited by latency and isn't infinite like some people are saying.

http://www.totalxbox.com/56...

[ats1992]

This article is just from one persons point of view and he can be proven wrong. Wether the cloud works the way Microsoft says it will is remain to be seen so all we can do is wait.

[kneon]

He won't be proven wrong, latency is the limiting factor, there is no way around that.

And it will be a while before most people have a connection with sufficiently low and consistent latency to enable using the cloud for things like your characters animations.

[mhunterjr]

It was always known that the cloud is limited by latency... But it's also known that not all aspects of a game are latency dependent.

For the most part, if your data connection is good enough for you to compete in online multiplayer, then your latency must be low enough for servers to respond quickly to player inputs.

[Volkama]

No Mhunterjr, apparently "It’s indeed true that the average internet speeds are still below than what is required by cloud for enjoyable user experience, so Joe makes a pretty valid point."

Would love to see the author attempt try to justify that statement, or at least tell us what speed is required. Preferably before MS reveal the actual numbers.

[kneon]

@mhunterjr

Multiplayer requires a just a tiny fraction of the data required for offloading graphics tasks to the cloud, so multiplayer performance is not necessarily a good enough indicator that your connection is sufficient.

@Volkama

The required minimum throughput will depend on the game and what they have decided to push off to the cloud. The worst case example would be something like PS Now where everything is on the cloud.

So you need sufficient bandwidth to stream the entire screen faster than the time it takes to render each frame, otherwise you will just be falling further and further behind with each frame. At some point the system will just drop some frames to get caught up.

Microsoft approach will typically require less data, but it does include the extra step of having to incorperate assets rendered by the cloud with locally rendered frames. That probably introduces 1 further frame of latency.

[Volkama]

Kneon, there is no talk of the cloud actually rendering anything. In the case of destruction, physics calculations are crunched server side and all it sends back is simple data on the position, velocity and rotation of the resulting objects. Think small text files. Then compress them.

All of the rendering is client-side, so frame timing doesn't really come into it. It's just latency in the same vain as multiplayer. More objects though, but they are predictable objects so a much lower rate of polling/refreshing required.

As I say below, I reckon 4mb and 100ms latency will be the recommendation, and I'd stretch to say 2mb and 200ms will actually work pretty well in practice.

[kneon]

200ms would be unacceptable for most uses. Keep in mind that all the delay is cumulative. Anything that is occurring in response to player actions already has at least 100-200ms delay before the data is even sent to the cloud.

Then once you get the data to incorporate into the game you have up to another frame of delay, so 33ms for a 30fps game.

Add that all up and you're approaching half a second. So it's very noticeable for anything the user interacts with. So that would limit it's usage to less important tasks that aren't time critical.

But most such tasks can be scripted animation as there is no user interaction.

[Pogmathoin]

Beats the crap out of proper journalism ats1992.

[XiSasukeUchiha]

Ok then this is why I think Cloud is a interesting concept and not actual product ready for use, but Cloud when its actually ready can bring ultimated possibilities.

[NextLevel]

Latency will hinder the performance. Latency is the biggest enemy of the cloud, not the server side actions. Which why things like resolution, framerate, textures etc haven't be boosted by games using the cloud currently. In fact the flagship title of the cloud is Titanfall, which has one of the lowest resolution, most unstable framerate, some of worse textures and AI of all the Xbox One titles. Technological advancements are about baby steps, not huge instantaneous leaps and any corporation telling you otherwise is in PR mode. The cloud will have it's purpose, but it's not going to do anything major for the Xbox One, kind of like DirectX12.

[gamerfan0909]

If they can provide level destruction on crackdown like that build demo with the frame rate never dropping, then that's a major technological improvement. I'll wait until I see from REAL engineers, with REAL demos before I assume anything.

[mhunterjr]

TitanFall didn't use the cloud for any graphical processes what so ever..

[Volkama]

My latency is good enough to shoot other players or crash into their cars in near enough real time. And that's other remote players, so you have to add their own latency into the equation. That isn't the case for server-side calculations.

So does anyone really think latency is low enough for player vs player interactions, but too high to handle a collapsing building in the background?

[mhunterjr]

Volkama, you hit the nail on the head. The skeptism isn't really grounded in reality. If I can play a 32v32 shooter on a p2p network, with all the physics handled by a single local machine, why would my latency be too high for a more powerful remote machine to do the work?

It would actually shorten the data path, improving latency while providing more horse power.

[truefan1]

Here we go again, I can already see the ps4 fans starting to come in and get worked up about the cloud, because of a quote from another non MSFT developer. Is it really that hard to just wait for Crackdown to be demoed, the same guys are always trying to prove why something won't work, when in reality they have no freaking clue if it will or not.

[Dread]

Dude, even if it worked perfectly, which I have my doubts, the sony extremists will still find a way to hate on it, or simply move the goal post as they always do.

At the end they just hate MS.

[soandsoz]

@Dread & truefan

Quit caring so much about what others say and think. If something really is a good product/service it'll sell itself. To this non fanboy, (IMO) you come across as doing more harm than good as far as the Microsoft brand is concerned

[ziggurcat]

@truefan:

this is the third massively hypocritical statement you've made in two days. PS fans have never made a big deal or have gotten worked up over the cloud. you have been one of the ones getting worked up over it, thinking that it's going to do more than what it's actually going to do.

[corvusmd]

Uh, how is this even news? Basically they asked a dev a question so simple that anyone who has even remotely been paying attention could tell you the answer to. IN FACT, MS said this when they announced cloud computing...not only that...it's pretty much the PURPOSE of it. It's goal is to handle features that are NOT the primary focus of the game so that the local system could concentrate on those, then take the burden of things that are secondary type things.

Of course latency is THE issue...it's always THE issue whenever any game is connected to the internet...which brings me to my next point. How can he say "It’s indeed true that the average internet speeds are still below than what is required by cloud for enjoyable user experience, so Joe makes a pretty valid point."? Uh, how much is required? Esp in the beginning I can't see it taking much better latency than a MP game....so Player shoots rocket at a building...that message gets sent to a cloud compute center...compute center destroys building using a full physics breakdown....sends back rendered image at 60 fps...X1 gets it and includes rendered image in game....are we pretending now that we can't see other players running around the battlefield in MP games now? (Esp on games that actually have dedicated servers). Player actions are unpredictable, building destruction or the like coming from a compute center aren't.

This argument is more for why things like PS Now or OnLive would suffer. Not only was this known for cloud compute...it's actually the goal.

[Volkama]

I would like to start a game of numbers.

Reply with the latency and bandwidth you think MS are going to state as a minimum for Crackdown, and we can all refer back to it for a chuckle or brag when we get the facts :)

Elaborate on your comment if you like.

Corv you would have to edit in if quick enough I guess, since you gots no bubbles

I'll start!

4mb download, 100ms latency.

[uth11]

There's two problems. Some people can get great internet speeds, some can't because it just isn't available in their area.

The other one is even if you have decent speeds. Too often it just isn't consistent. Sometimes connections are fast, sometimes slow or they time out. Sometimes download speeds are fast, sometimes not because there's other things going on on your network, or their network, or some point in between.

This is the kind of thing that can wreck a game play experience. You can only really put non-essential computations on the cloud because there's no guarantee they will complete in time (or at all).

In the case of PS NOW, this will be its Achilles heel

[KinjoTakemura]

In a perfect world every gamer would be able to afford internet speeds of 25Mbps Upload/download or higher, but in the real world, that simply isn't the case. Dedicated servers used as a "crutch" is an interesting idea. The problem is, not everyone has access to 25mbps or higher types of internet speeds.

[kingPoS]

For the things it can used for, cloud computing has potential. From streaming entire games to offloading processes. It's a gamble to be sure, hopefully within a few years time the average US isp can fully support such ventures.

Gateway MT6706 2008