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Cloud Gaming Service OnLive Unofficially On Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Through some clever patching, OnLive community members have found a way to run OnLive on Linux using Wine. While the fix isn't perfect, this is a giant leap for Linux users wanting to play the latest games without the need for Windows. Linux users can now play several high quality games like the new Deus Ex with very few performance issues and on lower end hardware."
While a kind offer, I have to say no thanks. This kind of service goes against all my beliefs and every rule for Linux and open source. Not only you don't get source code with the game, you don't even get binaries and data! Once you stop paying, you stop playing. If we support development like this there will soon be nothing else. There are many great open source games for Linux, like Battle for Wesnoth, Freeciv and Nethack. Even ID open sources their engines so that people can create many new awesome games. Once OnLine and companies start doing that, don't include abusive DRM and provides source with the game boxes, we can start talking. Until that I rather support indie developers.
Well I suppose if you ignore:
1) Low resolution/detail. Onlive isn't streaming you a 25mbps 1080p AVCHD signal. They stream a low bitrate 720p signal. What this means is that not only are you dealing with a lower resolution but fine detail gets lost. That's how video compression works: Algorithms are used to simplify things which results in the loss of detail. The more you compress, the more you lose. So you aren't getting the full experience of a "high end system" like they want to pretend. You get something that is mid-low end at best.
2) Large amounts of interface lag. Since all the rendering is done remotely, there is lag on everything, even mouse cursor movements. The amount of lag is cumulative, so not only the lag from your monitor and mouse as you always get, but network as well. Even if you live real near a datacenter, it is going to be non-trivial and any further and it could be rather major. You can learn to adjust, to an extent, but it is amazing how much nicer a no-lag interface feels. If you have a monitor with, say, 30ms of lag, you won't notice it, it is below human perception. But add that to a 60ms network and encoding lag and you will notice.
3) It is 100% network dependent. Your Internet goes out? No games. Have a bandwidth cap? This uses heavily towards that. Someone else downloading something? You can get stuttering and dropouts. You take any problem you've ever had with streaming video and then add to the fact that there is no buffer and that's what you've got.
Now of course this is on top of the fact that you don't get to have the games. They are all "sold" on the service meaning if Onlive ever goes under, you are SOL. It isn't even something like with a DRM or download solution where you could crack it, or they could let you download before they go down for good, Onlive goes down, you are done.
Also it isn't as though you are "running" the games on Linux. You are just streaming the video to Linux. They are running on the Onlive servers.
Really, if you wish to play games a much better idea is to just get yourself a console, or mid-low end graphics card. Pick up a $80-100 graphics card and you'll get quality as good or better than what Onlive pulls, with none of the problems.
It is a service that really doesn't make any sense. Maybe back in the day when you had to have high end hardware to play games but these days not only are consoles a major option, but you don't need much computer to play games. You take a reasonable desktop computer, like a Core 2 and 2+GB of RAM, and toss in a reasonable video card and you can play what you want.
Much better idea than using Onlive.
Everytime you see something marketed as 'Cloud' based or 'Cloud' anything just mentally remove the word cloud from the product and add "For Suckers (TM)". You'll save yourself a lot of fuss, hassle and confusion.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It's probably the future for a few types of games, and will be popular with a segment of the market, but I'd say at the extreme low and high end it won't be popular.
Hand-held, mobile gaming isn't going to have the bandwidth, nor the always-online capability (I want to play Angry Birds on the subway).
At the other end, so long as home hardware (console and PC) can render better content faster than the network can stream good-quality video there will be a market for high-def gaming.
Then there's the extremely latency-sensitive games, which I can't see ever working. Traditional game engines can deal with network latency by calculating collisions and other things client-side, but they can't handle the interface lag that you're going to get with this type of system. Building out infrastructure to get good latency to all markets would be terribly expensive.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
. . . imagine if the Ubisoft always-on DRM were an inherent, unremoveable aspect of the game system rather than just something tacked on to a few individual games after the fact, such that Ubisoft couldn't even begrudgingly neuter it in a patch. Well, Onlive is even worse than that would be.
The game doesn't even run remotely. All you get is streaming video/audio and all the lag you'd expect (including controller lag), which is a recipe for disaster in North America.
Let's say you're lucky enough to have a 30mb/s connection. Why would you want to use it to transfer your game's video instead of, uh, a DVI cable, which is capable of 4 Gb/s? The people who developed DVI apparently understood that that 1920 x 1200 pixels w/ 24 bits/pixels @ 60Hz results in bandwidth well over 3 Gb/s. The people who developed Onlive seem very, very confused (at best).
Some people consider IPS monitors unsuitable for games requiring fast reflexes (i.e. FPSes) due to their double-digit response times. Internet latency is often worse and certainly more unpredictable than LCD monitor response time, and with Onlive it applies to audio and keyboard/controller/etc input too.
Those of us who know anything about bandwidth and compression and (especially) latency can see the enormous technical obstacles facing a service like this, and Onlive has never done anything to explain how they intend to solve them. Instead, they've done everything they can to lock out independent reviewers with NDAs and closed demonstrations. A friend of mine described it as the gaming equivalent of the perpetual motion scam, and IMO that's spot on (except that Onlive would still have the draconian DRM issues even if it worked perfectly)..
BTW, you pay a monthly fee for the service and then you STILL have to "buy" the games (which of course become useless if your subscription lapses, giving them another leash to choke you with). I'm not kidding.
Onlive appears designed from the ground up to benefit the game publishers and fuck the customers, exactly what you'd expect from any DRM system.
"with a low latency connection"
That's why. Basically, there is no such thing at the moment, especially in certain countries, and OnLive's techniques make the problem worse.
Rather than the display in front of me drawing the results of a (slightly) delayed and INCREDIBLY TINY message from elsewhere, OnLive has to receive your local controller data, draw the results, compress the output in realtime and then ship that image back to you using a relatively-high-bandwidth image.
That doubles latency you would expect from an online game (and even online games can be laggy, don't forget) and defeats a lot of things like client-side prediction (because the "client" is actually OnLive's datacenter, NOT you - you're just a remote viewer) or worse - my upload dies a death when a large download is in progress and this would pretty much kill my broadband connection.
Basically, you're VNC'ing into a games console somewhere else on the planet. And have you seen the quality of the compression they use? You basically lose most of the image of the game, especially on anything fast-moving.
Add to that all the problems with such online services - the games go away the second you stop paying, the games cost as much as normal, you're limited in the choice and configuration of games, bandwidth limits / costs etc. - and you have a substandard service.
In some European countries, it would end up costing you a LOT more than you think just to play a game you could get on Steam or from the local shop (in terms of time, effort, money and inconvenience) - you'd barely be able to play the damn thing before you got kicked off your ISP or put onto a "high-usage" tariff/QoS which would make continuing to play it impossible.
And all for an undemanding strategy game or two? Sure, if you could run the really high performance games at top-whack in perfect quality, the idea would work. But basically the games it works best on are the ones you wouldn't want to go through the hassle / expense to play and even the most basic laptop would handle it.
OnLive is the Internet cafe of the modern day - by the time you actually have enough people that know what it is and how it works, everyone has the capability to do it themselves for the same price by just buying their own computer / broadband.
Internet cafes died a death in my country because this was true - they only survive in countries where owning a computer / broadband connection is out of the reach of the common user. This will be true for OnLive - it will only really be used by people who can't afford a PC because of the local economy. Everyone else will just buy a PC and do it themselves because the costs and technical hassle of OnLive just don't make up for having to run your own, personal, general-purpose computer anyway.
To be honest, I'm shocked that this service still gets press at all. It should have collapsed under its own weight years ago. I can only assume they have a very good marketing team and are hoping to capitalise VERY quickly before their users start figuring it out.
A lot of the comments on here are pointing out that OnLive is a subscription service. This is not the only pricing plan they have available. Looking at their documentation on "Getting Games in the OnLive Game Service" you will notice their are multiple avenues to purchase a game.
The subscription service they offer is for a collection of ~80 titles. For most newer titles you purchase a pass to play the game. This allows access to the game for a timed interval (think multiple days like renting) or unlimited play. That is a one-time purchase just like if you purchased the title off of Steam or in a retail store. Does the full pass require a subscription? Nope. Please take a look at the documentation and pricing model before making your claims.