OnLive - it actually works!

Jerichoholic

I just signed up to see if it actually worked over here on this side of the world, and after a 1mb download and a 10 second signup I was playing a demo of Metro2033 in fullscreen HD(ish).

http://www.onlive.com/

I'm on a 20mb broadband connection so I'm sure it makes a good bit of difference, but my God I was impressed with what they've done. You just have to try it out.

AlmightyCushion

How do you play demos?

Jerichoholic

Just go to the marketplace and you'll see 'free trial available' beside the games with demos.

Tallon

Seriously thought this was gonna be some sort of Porn!

dkmedia

the onlive interface is very good, clean & snappy. I played a couple of trial games & the one thing I've noticed is that the graphics aren't great- bit blurry, looks like the games run on medium & lower resolution, but really thats expected.

I am impressed with it all the same, I played the games on my laptop & the games ran really smooth. I love the fact that you can Alt-O and jump out of the game instantly and into another.

Jerichoholic

It shouldn't work at all, but it does. Just played a bit of Splinter Cell Conviction there. Pretty smooth to be fair, had my 360 controller in and it just worked straight away, no setting up at all. I'll probably buy a few games off it soon. The home console is free if you buy the new Red Faction, pretty decent value.

ShadowHearth

dkmedia wrote: »

the onlive interface is very good, clean & snappy. I played a couple of trial games & the one thing I've noticed is that the graphics aren't great- bit blurry, looks like the games run on medium & lower resolution, but really thats expected.

I am impressed with it all the same, I played the games on my laptop & the games ran really smooth. I love the fact that you can Alt-O and jump out of the game instantly and into another.

Wait wait wait! Wasn't the main point of onlive that you could play such games like crysis on full Macedonia out settings without needing a cutting edge pc?!

If they are running those games on lowish settings then its completely useless in my case...

Somehow u have a feeling of sky player on xbox fail here... Which is only useful if you actuolly got sky already.

quarryman

gave it a shot there, very slick. as mentioned above though, graphics are slightly blurry, i wonder if that improves with a better internet connection.

Duggy747

Tried a few weeks back myself, was well impressed at how slick and well put together it is. It's a novelty watching others play games alright and vote on how well they're doing.

I tried Metro 2033 which ran perfectly (you adjust to the very small control lag) even if the graphics weren't top notch (while fairly high, it didn't look maxed out).

I'm on 20mb but the game was still a bit blurry, it is a streaming video after all.

Technologically, it works. Price-wise? No.

Their price plan is all over the place and the games are based on how consistent your internet connection is.

The promises of a huge library multi-platform games running at top spec hasn't come to light yet despite the company being in service for nearly a year. So far, they only have 30+ games at the moment.

cherryghost

Just had a shot of it there. UT3 reactions are fantastic! The ultimate test for it IMO. Very good. Price structure is stupid though.

ironictoaster

I tried it on a mac there, works pretty good. I remember hearing about this and thinking it looked like total bull**** but I am very impressed.

K.O.Kiki

While I admire the technology behind this --- I don't like the "renting" model.
Never have, never will.

Jerichoholic

You can buy the games if you want.

Duggy747

Jerichoholic wrote: »

You can buy the games if you want.

Yea, but you'll never truly own them.

For a casual gamer, I can see this working in a corner of the market. They need to sort out that price plan and get more games in. FEAR 3 and Homefront are the big ones that they're advertising.

Twilightning

Tried it out there for 15 minutes on Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. It plays well, and as other people have said it can appear a bit blurry but it's playable all the same. But as what's also been said, their prices need to be sorted out since I wouldn't bother paying for a lot of what they have on offer.

ShadowHearth

is it possible to try it ofr free on pc?

Jerichoholic

Yes sir, it's a 1.1mb download, sign up and away you go.

PogMoThoin

Just tried it there, first it told my connection wasn't great, where are the servers? There's nothing wrong with my connection, I can play on UK and German servers fine.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1284583353.png

C:\Users\XXXX>ping www.boards.ie

Pinging loadbalancer.boards.ie [89.234.66.108] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 89.234.66.108: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=56
Reply from 89.234.66.108: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=56
Reply from 89.234.66.108: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=56
Reply from 89.234.66.108: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 89.234.66.108:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 41ms, Maximum = 57ms, Average = 47ms

Tried Metro 2033, it looks absolutely terrible, I thought they said it would be pc quality? That people wouldn't need a pc or console in their homes. Would have Bill Gates himself quivering in his boots. Its like playing a PS2 game on a 10 year old TV.
Then theres the lag, playing with keyboard and mouse it felt like a second of two from mouse click to bullet leaving the weapon.
Then there's the pricing, WTF?

dkmedia

The only thing I think its handy for is playing demo's. Get a taste of the game without downloading a big file, if I like it then I'd go to Steam, play.com, Gamersgate or Direct2Drive & buy it.

Another thing that makes this a less than great idea is that when your internet connection goes down (no matter how infrequently) you have 0 games that you can play.

Also can't imagine that the likes of EA would be too happy at the prospect of a lot of players renting their games rather than buying them at full retail price.

Jonny7

I cannot fathom how horribly expensive this whole thing was to setup

Anyway, for every person out there with a gaming pc, there must be 10 with old pc's and crappy laptops.. so there's possibly.. a service there, but I very much doubt they'll make their money back and the service will go bust - which means your 'bought' games will not be of much use

ride-the-spiral

You can play the latest games on a mac, an iphone, linux or even an ipad with this. Thats a huge market right there.

Stylesclash07

if i buy the onlive console will it work here

The Sparrow

I think it's pretty cool. I've a crappy dell laptop with a rubbish integrated graphics card so gaming on it was never a possibility. But I just signed up and played a trial of Metro 2033 and it looked great. Mayto be a tiny bit fuzzy in parts but really that was hardly noticeable.

Hopefully as it gets more widespread the price will come down and they will start to have sales like Steam. I'll definitely be following OnLive as it progresses.

Trevor451

ride-the-spiral wrote: »

You can play the latest games on a mac, an iphone, linux or even an ipad with this. Thats a huge market right there.

I can imagine playing games designed for PC would play horrible on the ipad/iphone...

Spunge

Onlive + eircom NGB = big ass bill.

:mad:

Wossack

well tickle me very impressed

thorbarry

Wossack wrote: »

well tickle me very impressed

Very impressive indeed. I though it was very very good.

Its not quite ready yet for some games. The slight time lag is too much for FPS games, but i am sure it is not too bad for other games.

The Sparrow

I played a bit of Arkham Asylum and DIRT with the wireless adapter for my 36o controller... both worked and looked really well. I tried Just Cause 2 as well but the picture got stuck on a load screen even though I could hear the audio.

I'm sure those little glitches will get ironed out.

Seriously impressed though.

quarryman

Gave DIRT a shot there. Framerate was HORRIBLE, unplay-ably bad.

I can see the merit in certain games but not FPSs or framerate-dependent driving games.

Spunge

Tried playing batman and metro 2033. Felt like playing on a 300 ping server online. Im assuming its coz i only got a 5 meg connection ?

corcaigh07

doesnt work for me, on a 3mb connection. feck it, my line is A1 for gaming with excellent ping

Cuddlesworth

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Just tried it there, first it told my connection wasn't great, where are the servers? There's nothing wrong with my connection, I can play on UK and German servers fine.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1284583353.png

Tried Metro 2033, it looks absolutely terrible, I thought they said it would be pc quality? That people wouldn't need a pc or console in their homes. Would have Bill Gates himself quivering in his boots. Its like playing a PS2 game on a 10 year old TV.
Then theres the lag, playing with keyboard and mouse it felt like a second of two from mouse click to bullet leaving the weapon.
Then there's the pricing, WTF?

Tbh, a six meg connection with a ping of 50ms to a server in the same small country is pretty bad and for the purpose of onlive unsuitable. Especially considering the closest datacentre is in DC.

cherryghost

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Tbh, a six meg connection with a ping of 50ms to a server in the same small country is pretty bad and for the purpose of onlive unsuitable. Especially considering the closest datacentre is in DC.

Aye, I get about 15ms myself

PogMoThoin

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Tbh, a six meg connection with a ping of 50ms to a server in the same small country is pretty bad and for the purpose of onlive unsuitable. Especially considering the closest datacentre is in DC.

Considering their server is in DC, why are they offering this to Europeans to say its terrible.
I thought they had a UK (or at least European) server

Wossack

Wossack wrote: »

well tickle me very impressed

to clarify, Im on 20mb upc

played metro, and darksiders - as I was considering purchasing them. found it fantastic for the instant on 'demo' - though yes, a little laggy at times

also enjoyed the 'brag video's or whatever they're called - some very funny just cause 2 ones :P

and found it fascinating watching other people play games

Stylesclash07

i just played the demo for assassins creed brotherhood and it was flawless i really want the micro console but dont know if that would work is it the pc verson works the console will work

cherryghost

I've just been testing it on various connection speeds on the same hardware.

30mb - flawless
15mb - flawless
5mb - almost flawless, slight lag in some areas
3mb - jerky gameplay, a bit of lag on control input, otherwise playable
2mb + 1mb - unplayable, constant stuttering and no games playable

Interestingly enough I tested and recorded with Fraps. The FPS display changed with accordance to connection speed. Metro was about 50fps on high speed connections, 3mb and down ran between 15-30fps, varied.

DiRT2 ran at 50-60 on 30mb, 40-50 on 15 and 5mb about 35fps on 3mb and about 8-10fps on 1/2mb.

Cuddlesworth

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Considering their server is in DC, why are they offering this to Europeans to say its terrible.
I thought they had a UK (or at least European) server

I looked and apparently they have one in Wales and the Netherlands and possibly Germany and Romania. Which is interesting.

Still 50ms to a connection on the same peering network in the same small country is crap. I get 10-12ms in Dublin to boards, 15-20ms to servers in Galway and 30-40ms to servers in London. This would be on a variety of connections in Dublin that are not eircom or eircom resellers. From my old days as a avid online gamer I know that anything above 60ms can produce noticeable lag. And with a two way system that online uses you can effectively double your latency as commands have to be sent and video received.

The Sparrow

I think I'll sign up for their 50 game unlimited play monthly offer. First month is free apparently and then it is $9.99 so about €7 per month. Some decent games like Just Cause 2, FEAR 2, Tomb Raider Underworld and Legend that I haven't played. So for basically 7 euros I can play them for two months and then decide if I want to add another month.

Tusky

wow, impressive. I have a high spec pc so I probably wouldnt use it as graphics seem to be set to medium but definitely useful for those on lower spec machines/laptops.

Nollog

Just tried it there.
Assasins creed looks horrible, but might just have been that it was old.
It was only blurry while "network error" was on my screen, jumpy and jittery too while that was there.
It went away after I went to the menu thing then back into the game and looked like it was installed.
Not bad, but I still want to physically own my games.

quarryman

cherryghost wrote: »

I've just been testing it on various connection speeds on the same hardware.

30mb - flawless
15mb - flawless
5mb - almost flawless, slight lag in some areas
3mb - jerky gameplay, a bit of lag on control input, otherwise playable
2mb + 1mb - unplayable, constant stuttering and no games playable

Interestingly enough I tested and recorded with Fraps. The FPS display changed with accordance to connection speed. Metro was about 50fps on high speed connections, 3mb and down ran between 15-30fps, varied.

DiRT2 ran at 50-60 on 30mb, 40-50 on 15 and 5mb about 35fps on 3mb and about 8-10fps on 1/2mb.

Wired or wireless?

cherryghost

All wired tests. Will be trying it out on the wife's laptop later

Genghiz Cohen

MacBook on a 7Mb wireless connection.
AC:B was pretty good, got used to the latency after a few mins playing.

Krieg

Well **** me, im impressed!
Like so many others I was skeptical, but this is very good. Obviously the odd latency issue here and there and graphics dont look fantastic but it is a great piece of tech.


edit:

Ouch... 20mins of mucking about cost me 400mb of bandwith

The Sparrow

Anyone know how much bandwith OnLive would use? It seems really cool but I wouldn't want it guzzling up my download cap.

cherryghost

About 1.5gb an hour, 800mb an hour if on standard definition (you can tell by the quality)

Sarky

That was damned impressive, I have to admit. Video quality's a bit fuzzy at times, especially when a lot was happening (The AVP demo was not good with fine detail, particularly with the predator's thermal vision), and as others have said there's a bit of lag (although I was too lazy to hook up a non-wireless connection) but it seems to work, and work pretty damn well at that. It'll be very interesting to see where this goes.

Dublin_Gunner

I think I've now found the site to kill the odd bit of time in work :D

On my Mac of course....

Wouldn't have it at home (GTX570 etc) - though maybe to try out demo's without having to d/l and install lots of crap.

Mighty impressive all the same.

ShadowHearth

cherryghost wrote: »

About 1.5gb an hour, 800mb an hour if on standard definition (you can tell by the quality)

Holy ****!

Krieg

I was reading that onlive have partnered up with a number of isp's including BT for UK distribution. Would I be right in assuming that these isp's provide a specific package including no download cap?

I shudder at the thought of Eircom being nominated as the provider of the service to Ireland