OnLive Latency Tested

The Digital Foundry blog has done an analysis of recently launched cloud gaming service OnLive, measuring latency across several different games. Quoting: "In a best-case scenario, we counted 10 frames delay between button and response on-screen, giving a 150ms latency once the display's contribution to the measurement was removed. Unreal Tournament III worked pretty well in sustaining that response during gameplay. However, other tests were not so consistent, with DiRT 2 weighing in at 167ms-200ms while Assassin's Creed II operated at a wide range of between 150ms-216ms. ... OnLive says that the system works within 1000 miles of its datacenters on any broadband connection and recommends 5mbps or better. We gave OnLive the best possible ISP service we could find: Verizon FiOS, offering a direct fiber optic connection to the home. Latency was also reduced still further simply due to the masses of bandwidth FiOS offers compared to bog standard ADSL: in our case, 25mbps."

Comments

First post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only took 137 ms.

Re:And that means...?

[B1oodAnge1]

(Older) PC games can be run at higher framerates because the hardware can handle it, so that might potentially decrease that 8ms average, but 5ms is only achieved with a 100fps framerate (when you assume 5ms as average, if you assume it's the slowest it'll ever be then you need 200fps).

You don't seem to realize that if an average PC gamer is maxing out at 60 fps then he is complaining constantly about the lag and making plans to build a new system.

60fps is bare minimum for a decent experience in a non multiplayer game, and unplayable against other humans.