I'm interested in a key for this!

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As it seems, the VHS style effects are visible the whole time. For me that's distracting and kinda infuriating.

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Quoting: GuestWhat I don't understand is how displacing that GPU footprint from one location to the other and squeezing the same end-user result through the friction-filled internet reduces resource consumption.

For example, it is correct to say that regardless of transportation method, one passenger still weighs 70kg and has the same inertia. A car needs to overcome that inertia to transport 4 passengers. A bus needs to overcome ten times the inertia to transport 40 passengers. But it can achieve that with less air drag, less friction and less material (engine, chassis, etc..). On top of that comes the fact that people who only use public transport don't need to buy a car, so the energy and resources for the car are saved.

It's similar with centralized game processing. You don't need a power supply/hard drive/disc drive/case/etc for every system. They can be shared. This kind of hardware can be built differently, just as the engine of the bus can be built differently. The cooling of all the system can be designed bigger and differently and maybe even used for warm water in the region.

Things like that. I think there's a lot of overhead for producing and running single game systems in every house hold in comparison to a centralized system. As I said, as soon as the centralized systems are being built all over the country in order to reduce latency, the network load would be reduced and with it the necessary energy used.

It really is a bit like with public transport. If more people would use it, the system can be enhanced and structered differently and would work way better.

Edit: Maybe... those processing centers could be used for scientific calculations. Researching new drugs, calculating other important science stuff... that could run on the systems while its not being used fully. That would be nice. But you don't have to wait for that: There's Boinc and World Community Grid [External Link]. You can install that on your system right now and start helping scientists with their work. Just thought to throw that in. :)

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Doc AngeloI don't need beefy hardware with costly cooling equipment directly beneath my desk. Most of what I do with my PC can be done with a way worse computer. The only thing I need a big computer for is gaming (and video compression a little bit... and Boinc...) But... honestly? I think it would a good thing if you don't need to replace your system every few years. Saves money and resources.

Okay, this fallacy needs to stop.

Just because you don't consume the energy locally does not mean that the energy isn't being consumed at your request. Pushing movies and games from massive data centers through the internet is vastly more energy exhaustive than having a disc at your disposal.

You're right that the energy a GPU uses stays the same. What I mean with resources are for example cooling for multiple GPUs and CPUs - that would save resources. You can use a big power supply unit for all systems.

Buying a new computer every 2-3 years is just a big waste of energy on its own. New mainboard, new CPU, new GPU, many people buy new cases and so on. Producing those does use a lot of resources. You don't have to use the same components in game streaming data centers. I think Nvidia already produces hardware that is meant for such cases which differs from end customer hardware.

100 players would need 100 system in order to play. 100 streamplayers wouldn't need 100 systems, it would be lower... just a guess: maybe 60 systems? There are of course people who game every single day, but not all do.

I think overall it would lead to less waste. Such calculations are of course tricky because there are a lot of things to consider, and also a bit of looking ahead of what's available right now, but I think centralizing such processing power while stopping the upgrade cycle at home can be quite effective.

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I'm interested in the experience of playing a game. I'm not interested in owning either a physical box with a DVD or a digital license in a digital library. I want to experience the game itself.

It's pretty much the same with music. I'm not interested in owning the physical media. I want to listen to the music. With all the music streaming services I can do that. I can listen to everything. I don't have to choose or sample a bit before buying an album. I just listen to it. When I like it, I listen to it more, or more of the same artist, or more of the same genre... regarding music, it's just awesome that these borders are not there anymore. You don't have to think about which album to buy - you can just listen to and experience ever more and new music.

I'd honestly love that for games. Of course, I wouldn't want for games to appear and disappear from being playable. Video game conservation is also an important topic. For titles with tight controls, the technology needs to be stepped up quite a bit. Counter Strike over streaming for example isn't possible - at least right now. But when game streaming becomes more common, I think it might be possible that the dedicated hardware gets more evenly distributed and will therefor be nearer to the gamer, and the latency will decrease. I've used Playstation Now for a bit, and for some games the latency right now is OK. Not impressive, but usable.

I don't need beefy hardware with costly cooling equipment directly beneath my desk. Most of what I do with my PC can be done with a way worse computer. The only thing I need a big computer for is gaming (and video compression a little bit... and Boinc...) But... honestly? I think it would a good thing if you don't need to replace your system every few years. Saves money and resources.

If the problems above are fixed, I' welcome a well made game streaming system. Absolutely.

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Immediately reminded me of Megalomania on the Amiga 500. Going to take a look at this game.

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"Open Source Computer" is a problematic thing to say. If you say "Open Source Operating System", people will think that the OS is 100% FOSS (at least in the basic functionality), because that is how it actually is. Saying "Open Source Computer" will lead people to think the same... but this is far from how it actually is. "Computer with additional FOSS Hardware" would be more fitting.

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Robots drink water, eat meat and build wooden houses? Hm. Isn't that a little bit odd?

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Quoting: 14If your friends are Linux admins by day, then guilt tripping is OK.

Indeed! :D

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Quoting: 14Linux to Linux works. I wouldn't say that's broken.

There are a lot of games where this isn't a problem, because the devs took care of it while developing the game. It was just ignored in this case, and now they realized they can't easily fix that - so they decided they don't.

Quoting: 14Sure, if your friends wouldn't ever consider doing you a favor and booting to a system they didn't prefer, then don't waste your money. My idea could work in other circles.

Most Linux gamers also have their old Windows partition. I would just boot into that. Sounds way faster than multiple other people installing Linux for just one game.

It would be awesome if they want to try out Linux, but guilt tripping them into doing that doesn't sound like a good first time experience to me.

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