Game Streaming As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
1,062 words · ~5 min read
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you know it's funny we've collectively bought into the streaming on demand
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concept for movies and TV shows to the point where the idea of going to the
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video store to rent a DVD seems so crazy
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that South Park managed to turn it into The Shining parody so why then do we as
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Gamers have such reservations about letting go of our dedicated gaming box
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be it a PC or a console in favor of a
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streaming service well let's start with explanations of some of the way that
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games can be streamed first is local
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network streaming this has existed in the form of Sony's Remote Play for PS
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Vita and NVIDIA's game stream for PC for
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a couple of years the way it works is a powerful gaming device sits somewhere
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rendering your game frame by frame then turning the output frames into a
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compressed video stream nearly instantly
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before beaming them to a much less powerful and sometimes even portable and
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wirelessly connected device sounds like science fiction right
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well it's not it actually works I tested
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NVIDIA gam stream with a high-speed camera and found that it actually adds
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less latency than the image processor built into some televisions so from
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there then what if rendering could be done in a data center somewhere
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completely remote with the resulting gaming experience beamed to you over the
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Internet well that's where industry giants like Microsoft Sony and NVIDIA
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are directed in their attention now Microsoft's vision seems to be to use
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the cloud for heavy lifting and a less powerful client to do the basics
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delivering a bandwidth savings but also increasing the complexity of the process
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one reason why we haven't seen them do much with this yet while Sony ran out
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and purchased on live and NVIDIA is building out data centers full of
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Graphics processors around the world in an attempt to make the video beaming
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Paradigm viable now and there's a lot of
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cool stuff about this approach it replaces an upfront cost for a new box
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every few years with a monthly subscription that particularly for light
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users could actually end up being cheaper thanks to bulk licensing of
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games being done over by the service provider not to mention that paying only
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for the time that you spend with those games could be cheaper than going
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overkill on a GTX 15,000 TI Ultra or
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whatever just for the games that demand that kind of horsepower when you spend
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most of your time playing games that would run on your thermostat if you
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turned it down far enough but there are some challenges too for some people the
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future is now I mean I'm not a hardcore I'm a decent gamer but I can easily
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enjoy third person games and even Fighters with the nearest GeForce now
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data center 1500 km away but many people
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will need faster speeds lower latency and bigger data caps on their their
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internet connections to make this viable although services like Google Fiber are
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amazing for making that future scenario
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become a reality sooner and another consideration is that not every gaming
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experience is ideal for this V for
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example will likely need to run locally forever to keep users from becoming
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nauseated so as always it's going to be horses for courses which I guess is the
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conclusion that I came to when NVIDIA approached us about doing a fastest
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possible video about the shield Android TV and I countered with well I want to
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talk about game streaming in general with a sponsored bit at the end about
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how the shield Android TV occupies a unique position inside this rapidly
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changing ecosystem so that's what I did and here's the bit about the shield
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Android TV as a PC Gamer with a sick
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gaming rig but very little time to sit in front of it I've been an avid NVIDIA
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gamestream user since the launch of The Shield portable since I can take that
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experience with me to the other places that I need to be like the bedroom or
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the living room but that device lacks some of the newer features that this new
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gizmo has thanks to its Android TV integration and upgraded internals like
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4K 60fps Netflix and YouTube streaming
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as well as support for other streaming apps like sling Plex Cody and sports app
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with voice control with the included controller or optional remote and offers
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up all the advantages especially for more casual users or guests who come
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over that I just outlined before and it can handle it all at up to 1080p 60 FPS
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and the really unique thing is that thanks to its teger X1 processor it also
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delivers a surprisingly competent local gaming experience in the growing number
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of controller friendly Android games and other natively supported games like Doom
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3 Talos principal and War Thunder you can even stream straight to Twitch from
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the shield with a quick click of the controller so then lonus how much will
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one of these set me back well if you're looking at the shield Android TV you're
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looking at 199 bucks for the 16 gig flash-based model and 299 for the 500
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gig model and then you can beef up the gaming experience with GeForce now for
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only eight bucks a month after a 3mon free trial so it's kind of an exciting
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time then to be any type of gamer isn't it I hope if nothing else this episode
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of fast as possible has given you some food for thought about where the
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technolog is heading and what the limitations are thanks for watching guys
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if you like the video hit the like button if you disliked it well hit that other button I guess if you have
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