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WoW On an iPad Via Gaikai
Gametap writes "If cloud gaming works for enough genres, it can't help but find popularity. Even just a game like WoW might be enough to make it happen, and Gaikai's Dave Perry posted a picture of doing just that on an iPad. So is it the future or not? Could somebody make a tablet with nothing more than a screen, battery, network port, and video decoder, and have it be a good gaming platform? Will it change the mobile, PC, console, and TV world as we know it? Lots of questions, lots of skepticism, lots of players and money being invested — but one thing is for sure: it will be very interesting to see how this evolves."
Is ever the problem with such systems, the only two mmog I have ever been able to play reasonably well with just touch pad is EVE-Online and City of Heroes/Villains (and that in a limited capacity, requiring a lot of macros).
Without commenting on the whole "which MMOG is bigger/better" thing, I would hazard to guess that for this to work, the games would HAVE to be built for it.
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I can't even get a good framerate with Quake 3 on my netbook. Gaming requires powerful video hardware which requires bigger power supplies than tiny mobile devices can deliver; at least, that's the explanation I accepted.
For optimal comment enjoyment, take red pill now.
Could somebody make a tablet with nothing more than a screen, battery, network port, and video decoder, and have it be a good gaming platform?
It depends on your definition of "Good gaming platform".
From the top of my head, I could certainly play Go, Civ, Galciv, BB, and just about anything that's turn based.
I wouldn't try playing anything with direct action, to avoid the frustration of high ping and lag spikes.
Wouldn't any Tablet PC with a Windows OS installed on it just run WoW for years already? Am I missing something here?
Does no one else get offended at the suggestion of real-time cloud gaming due to obvious latency issues? It's bad enough having my network ping at 100ms, I don't need it to take 100ms for a screen refresh. Or is there something about the implementation I'm missing?
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
So we have a picture, and we can see that it works. Heck it may even be playable to some extent but that is hardly the point. We're at a stage where gamers will spend $100+ on a cabled mouse and buy the most perfect friction free mousepad they can find to go with it to reduce lag in their gameplay. Here we have exactly the opposite. The game may have been "pictured" but did the guy manage to get anywhere in a team raid?
Yes, you're missing a mouse. Applications (games specifically) need to be modified to make use of accelerometer and touch input to be useful on a tablet device. The better games exploit this by adding gestures and multi-touch input to enhance game interaction. You can see this for yourself: there's a 1:28 demo of the iPad version of N.O.V.A where they show all this stuff off.
I had WoW playable on my T-Mobile G1 (an Android phone) via VNC over a year ago. With the added bonus of a hardware keyboard for text input..
That a more modern device with a better processor and bigger screen can also do something like this isn't a surprise at all.
For me the form factor of the iPad precludes its use for serious online interactive gaming. It's a sleek elegant device with diabolical gaming inputs. Why bother?
Now, getting WoW to run natively on my n900.. that's a fun and worthy achievement. It still wont be a viable replacement for a 1920x1200 screen with full sized keyboard attached.
But surely the title should be: Fully Featured MacOS Computer Runs Game That Already Runs on MacOS Computers
No, wait, I have a better one: Expensive Fully Featured MacOS Computer Runs Game That Already Runs on Any Cheap-Ass Commodity Windows Computer
A little verbose, but I think accuracy is important in journalism.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
That is not WOW running on an iPhone, it's someone remoting into a PC running WoW.
WoW does not run on the iPhone. If it was, you wouldn't be able to zoom the UI; It would be running at the native resolution (and horribly blocky). This is a VNC connection to another computer running WoW.
Hell, you can see the tessellation when he scrolls around the login screen. You get that from breaking down the screen into quarters and transporting these sections separately to reduce apparent lag (compared to rendering the whole scene at once, as running WoW directly on the iPhone would do).
In short, FAKE.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The whole I'm a PC I'm a Mac thing is BS. My understanding of the term PC is Personal Computer. That definition should be OS agnostic.
I can't see how this streaming service could be practical for any game with action in it.
Anyone remember playing the original Quake online (not Quake World)? It didn't have motion prediction so before your player reacted to controls it needed a complete server round trip. That means there would be lag between when you pressed a key and your player react.
All network games these days move your player in real time then compensate on the server, but if the server is handling the display this becomes impossible. Sure internet connections have got much faster since then but extra delay would be introduced with the video encoding / decoding.
We put up with network lag back in the day but I can't imagine anyone putting up with it these days. It's a nice idea but I wouldn't put much hope in it catching on.
Maybe it is - I don't think they specifically refer to what the "other" OS is (although it's pretty clearly meant to be Windows), but maybe it's the equivalent of "I'm a car", "I'm a Ferrari" - indicating that they realise of course that the Ferrari is also a car, but it's of a higher pedigree than average, in which case there's nothing wrong with their usage of the term (although their interpretation is open to debate).
"Damn raid wiped repeatedly because main raid healer was running WoW through his iPad. So we kicked him out of the guild."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
From http://www.gaikai.com/streaming-worlds/:
"All you need is a broadband internet connection, a web browser, and the latest Adobe Flash player (which you almost certainly already have)."
TFA describes WoW as "PC-only". I think he might have meant "PC hardware-only", since the game's been available for Macintosh since launch.