There’s been a lot of hype about OnLive – a gaming platform which is promising to revolutionise the gaming industry in much the same way as Spotify has done for music.
The technology behind it is pretty fascinating, so excuse my while I put my geek hat on and try not to drool too much.
The graphics are all rendered server side in five data centres located across North America. You need to live within 1,000 miles of one to receive optimal service to play several game titles that are released for gaming platforms.
Because the graphics are rendered on the server’s side (similar concept to Cloud Computing), it basically compresses, then streams that information to your computer in a sort of video feed, albeit one which responds to your controls. This means that high end games can be played on lower-end PCs and Macs, games consoles such as Xbox, Playstation and Wii, and even smartphones like the iPhone.
Which is all peachy and dandy for OnLive, which is due to launch this June, and all eyes will be on them to see if it works.
But guess who else has invested in this new, shiny (and freakin expensive) tech toy?
If all goes to Avatar Reality’s plan, soon the days of 1 gigabyte viewer downloads will be gone. And no more crippling performance as your computer struggles to render the high quality graphics. It’ll all be done on their end and then streamed into your browser, making the whole experience much, much more seamless, lag-free and pleasant than at the moment.
They’re not the only ones who are looking at AMD’s Fusion Render Cloud technology, but in the virtual worlds market, they seem to be the first major player who look set to make the leap.
Could Blue Mars’ foray into Cloud Computing technology allow them to take on Second Life? My gut tells me that this is their stage, and they need to make sure they play it right. Avatar Reality, the makers of Blue Mars, have already slashed the entry level “city” hosting plans for a limited time, and offering a 30 day free promotion.
On top of the fact that content in Blue Mars is encrypted throughout the distribution of assets, and that you can create complex and detailed structures thanks to integration with 3D software, it’s becoming a compelling platform.
Except for that snag where they take 25% of everything you make – that still bugs me. I guess, seeing as it’s a new virtual world, that that is incorporated into the price of everything right from the start?
It’s still a high figure, in my opinion. Nevertheless, things look like they might be coming together for Blue Mars, and they may be set to take on the virtual worlds market in the coming years.
Serene Fairey on April 10, 2010
*jaw drops*
HellSpawneD Xingjian on April 10, 2010
This is awesome Stuff! So long as this new technology could support rendering for a similar sized user-base comparable to any other major MMO, this could single handedly transform Blue Mars from pretender, to serious contender.
Kalel Mommsen on April 11, 2010
as long as users have creative control second life will still rule but this definitely will make blue mars looking good. second life could also use the technology tho.
Tateru Nino on April 12, 2010
That would pretty much kill Blue Mars for anyone with usage caps.
Thorgal on April 12, 2010
Interesting stuff.. as for the usage caps – I would expect more people to suffer from lower-end pc’s then from usage caps, so this might be a calculated trade-off?
What streaming “just” video mean to prevent content theft? is that relevant for that issue?
Dale Innis on April 12, 2010
I’m still puzzled about how the OnLive approach can scale. If you have (say) 20 people at a concert, all of them sitting or standing or dancing (naturally) in different places, that means that the server’s going to have to do real-time 3D rendering from 20 different points at once, and send out 20 different simultaneous real-time feeds to the 20 clients.
Given that it already strains the SL and BlueMars servers to send out just the event updates (which are much much smaller and much less position-dependent) for the events visible to 20 different AVs that are doing client-side rendering, the only way I can imagine being able to do the OnLive thing is by having much (much) more powerful server farms. And that means higher datacenter costs. And that means charging considerably more than your old-fashioned client-rendered competitors, and that probably means failure in the marketplace.
If anyone sees where I’ve gone wrong in my reasoning there, I’d love to hear about it…
Tycho Beresford on April 12, 2010
Sounds cool, but with wretched ping times from budget-concious ISPs killing the market for first-person shooter games I doubt that there is the bandwidth to support this.
Simon Newstead on April 14, 2010
Dale I’m with you, this sounds like an expensive workaround, although the geek in me loves the idea of high quality graphics on low end machines. I also wonder about lag when doing camera rotations around avatar, zooming etc..(but then again I was surprised how well I can play twitch games like SF4 against overseas opponents online) – will be interesting to see how it goes
Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds : The Metaverse Journal – Virtual World News on April 15, 2010
[...] There’s been quite a buzz about Blue Mars offering a cloud-based service. Here’s one of the better stories on it. AKPC_IDS += "2638,";Popularity: unranked [?]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Merged realities – [...]
MixedRealities :: Blue Mars in the Cloud on April 15, 2010
[...] also: Cloud Computing: Blue Mars Find Their Saving Grace on MetaversallySpeaking where Prad Prathivi broke the [...]
smiths on April 30, 2010
Dale, i’m from OnLive, this is pretty much a NEW TECHNOLOGY, we can not tell much about it yet, wait and you’ll see.