At first glance, Nvidia's Project Shield seems like a nerd's dream come true: a handheld that can play Android games and stream PC games. After a bit of analysis, however, the very idea seems to be flawed. Here's why.
Nvidia DLSS 3.7 is the latest update to the long-running AI upscaling technology, and it further shows native performance doesn't matter.
I think hardware development is at a point where they need to figure out how to draw less power, These beefy high end cards eat wattage, and I'm curious if using DLSS & AI in general will lower the power draw. It would seem like the days of just adding more VRAM & horsepower is over. Law of diminishing returns. Pretty soon DLSS/FSR will be incorporated into everything, and eventually the tech will be good enough to hardly notice a difference if at all. AI is the future and it would be foolish to turn around and not incorporate it at all. Reliance on AI is only going to pick up more & more.
PS4 Pro had dedicated hardware in it for supporting checkerboard rendering that was used significantly in PS4 first party titles, so you don't need to look to PC or even modern PC gaming. The first RTX cards released nearly 6 years ago, so how many nails does this coffin need?
Almost deaf person:
- lightweight portable 5$, speakers of 0,5cm diameter are the final nail in coffin of Hi-Fi audio!
Some people in 2010:
- smartphones are the final nain in the console gaming's coffin!
This is just the same.
AI upscalling is complete dogshit in terms of motion quality. The fact that someone is not aware of it (look at the deaf guy example) doesn't mean the flaws are not there. They are. And all it takes to see them, is to use a display that handles motion well, so either gets true 500fps at 500Hz LCD TN or OLED (or faster tech) or uses low persistence mode (check blurbusters.com if you don't know what it means) also known as Black Frame Insertion or backlight strobing.
Also, image ruined by any type of TAA is just as "native image" as chineese 0,5$ screwdriver is "high quality, heavy duty, for professional use". It's nowhere near it. But if you're an ignorant "journalist", you will publish crap like this article, just to flow with the current.
There's no coffin to native res quality and there never will be. Eventually, we'll have enough performance in rasterization to drive 500fps, which will be a game changer for motion quality while also adding other benefit - lower latency.
And at 500fps, the amount of time required for upscalling makes it completely useless.
This crap is only usable for cinematic stuff, like cutscenes and such. Not for gaming. Beware of ignorants on the internet. The TAA is not "native" and the shitty look of the modern games when you disable any TAA, is not "native" either as it's ruined by the developer's design choice - you can cheat by rendering every 4th pixel when you plan to put a smeary TAA pass on it later on. When you disable it, you will see a ruined image, horrible pixellation and other visual "glitches" but it is NOT what native would've looked like if you'd like to honestly compare the two.
Stay informed.
How much VRAM is standard today? My laptop has a 1080p QLED display but only an Intel Iris Xe with 128MB of VRAM. I currently do all my gaming on it but certain titles do suffer because of it. I plan on getting a Steam Deck OLED soon to play the newer and more demanding titles.
Aleksha writes: "Nvidia has established itself as a dominant force in the world of AI, but I can't shake the worry of what this means for the RTX 50 series."
Echo sentiment here - I think the way GPUs are going, gaming could be secondary to deep learning. Wonder if the 40 series was the last true generation of GPUs?
You also need to consider that NVIDIA are heavily invested in cloud gaming. So they are likely going to make moves to push you into yet another life subscription service.
NVIDIA will never change their price point until AMD or intel makes a GPU that is comparable and cheaper than them .
it happend before in the days of gtx280 which they changed the price from 650$ to 450$ in a matter of 2 weeks because of rx4870 which is being sold at 380$.
Nvidia presented Covert Protocol, a tech demo aiming to showcase the "power" of the Nvidia Ace technology applied to video game characters.
I don’t know why people keep thinking of it as AI vs no AI.
A much more likely scenario is the use of AI alongside human work.
Eg. AI voices used during side quests or banter to boost the lines of dialog.
AI generating additional pre determined branches in dialog tree options for more freedom in conversations with NPCs
The biggest thing to talk about here is that every interaction requires communication to inworld servers so there's three big impacts here
1) games are always online no question about it
2) delays in processing on inworld servers, outages or unexpected load as a result of some astronomically popular game will cause real time game delays ever wait for a chat got response this will be similar as the context must be pulled via the llm.
Now as for the other impact the artistic one no I don't think writers can be replaced I've mentioned before often AI generated writing is word soup I still standby that it's also evident in the video to.
AI can not convery accurately human emotions and I don't think ever will.
I know publishers are looking to cut down on development costs but what happens when inworld decide to charge per interaction or update their pricing a year after your game goes live you have no choice but pay it or shutter it.
Ive felt for a while that we are heading towards this place of games being disposable entertainment and now it's feeling more and more accurate
It doesnt make sense, anyone wanting to play PC games will play them on the PC, no point streaming them.
Major handheld players like Nintendo and Sony are both having a tough time against smart phones which have infested the casuals.
Hence handhelds are a very tough market. I think Nvidia is running a fools errand.
They would be better of bringing their streaming tech to smart phones and providing bluetooth controller support for controllers like DS3.
Id bet many people would jump on board to buy such a software.
The possibility would be amazing if we could Stream games to our Smartphones then play them on a big TV via HDMI, play the game via controller.
My concern with Shield is its inherent necessity of a powerful Nvidia based platform. That's a subset of a subset of the market. Not exactly an explosive business proposition. I don't know what Shield will cost, but I have a ballpark of the cost of the machine needed to make best use of it. That's a ground-up investment I'm not personally willing to make and I haven't even considered Shield itself yet.
Still pretty cool, but of little use to me personally. Ultimately I think its most practical use will be a test bed for the Tegra 4, which I imagine will make its way into a broader selection of devices.
Tech savvy consumers knows easily how to use TV sets with their pc or other screens , even with the desktops hidden in another room without the next to use an inferior streaming technique .
And the android platform is mediocre for gaming however you look at it .
If you are into console gaming , it's abysmal and truly bad , touting ports , retro game ports and clones as their best games .
And if you are into pc gaming , the android platform is full of outdated retro games and clones .
If you are in both , then what use is Shield ?
To each their own obviously , but besides bragging , i dont see how it's a geek's dream machine .
It's a slightly cool idea for a select few people who want to keep playing Steam games when they go to the toilet, or sit in another room or something.
If you have to load the game up on the PC first, surely it'd be easier to just play on the damn PC?
As for Android gaming with controls, tablets with gaming controls are starting to appear all over the place. The Archos gamepad isn't a good example of what can be done, but several Chinese tabs offer that functionality and are pretty damn good.
If I had a GeForce GTX 600 series powering my PC's visuals, Project Shield will have been on my shopping list of devices to buy. I really do like it; unfortunately, all my PCs are AMD Radeon powered and I would not just buy the Shield for Android-only gaming... if I bought Shield, I would want to utilize its 'all' purpose.
I think of Project Shield more as a PC 'accessory' device than a truly standalone gaming device since all the heavy lifting is happening on the PC (when playing PC games).