Slashdot Mirror
Predictive Modeling To Increase Responsivity of Streamed Games
jones_supa (887896) writes Streaming game services always bump up against a hard latency limit based on the total round-trip time it takes to send user input to a remote server and receive a frame of game data from that server. To alleviate the situation, Microsoft Research has been developing a system called DeLorean (whitepaper) using predictive modeling to improve the experienced responsiveness of a game. By analyzing previous inputs in a Markov chain, DeLorean tries to predict the most likely choices for the user's next input and then generates speculative frames that fit those inputs and sends them back to the user. The caveat is that sending those extra predictive frames and information does add a bandwidth overhead of anywhere from 1.5 to 4 times that of a normal streaming game client. During testing the benefits were apparent, though. Even when the actual round-trip time between input and server response was 256 ms, double-blind testers reported both the gameplay responsiveness and graphical quality of the DeLorean system were comparable to a locally played version of the game.
Nobody can predict when I will suddenly chase a mammoth with a fork while buck naked.
Nobody.
Why on earth would you want to do this? Run the damned thing locally and be done with it. If it aint broke...
It can't predict all three at once, I'll grant. But if you've already given the commands to strip naked and wield a pitchfork, then of course it can speculatively run the choice for pushing the joystick toward the mammoth.
Yes Wii do.
So...branch prediction. Yea, that does seem like an interesting idea. Take it to the next step and you can render n-frames ahead based on all probable inputs and try your best to continuously pair down future paths as you get actual user input. But realistically that'd increase the bandwidth requirements 1000% or more which in most circumstances will make the situation worse. Not to mention the difficulty of actually writing games/environments to deal with these speculative paths or the generally choppiness whenever you diverge away from expectations--something which I've seen happen even on local games which were apparently profiled on set paths.
So, again, interesting. Now, if latency were closer to the 33ms range, bandwidth was plentiful, and this was trying to edge towards smooth 60fps playback...
EA better not make games streaming only as there simcity must be on line only not only was a lie the game also sucked big time.
1) How much more will this add to the servers processor overhead trying to predict that much for some many people?
2) How badly does it show when it predicts the wrong actions and notices after it all catches up? How will the game react? How well do you think they players will take it when they lose or win a game due to a miss-predict based on this?
3) If it bases its predictions on the players past actions (Haven't RTFA) wouldn't that fall apart for the times where you have 2 or 3 players who switch mid-game? I know me and a friend did that on the old Fight Night when playing on line as I was the one who was strategic and would sit on the outside and wear them out and frustrate them while my friend was the bulldog who just plowed in and we actually would trade off at times. Really throws the other guys expectations off and would do so for this as well.
"I have no clue what I'm reading about but am angry about it none the less!"
- Random internet commenter
Does this mean that Microsoft will assume responsibility for creating unresponsible persons?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakeworld :
"Player prediction allowed QuakeWorld clients to compensate for high latency, thus allowing dialup users to move around in the virtual world without being affected by the disorienting effects of latency."
Living in Seattle and being stuck on dial-up means I still play QuakeWorld every so often. It's the only multiplayer game I have that works well with the typical slow connections around here.
Now they want to make games essentially play themselves.
No, they don't. Read what this is about.
What happens when the player produces input the software does not expect?
If it matches none of the speculated actions then the speculative frames are discarded or it can use what they call a "misprediction compensation technique" to build the correct frame from the speculated frames. How about reading what this is about and then asking specific questions about it?
Few gamers want to play games any more, they just want instant gratification trophies. There's more focus in achievement trophies in modern games (especially AAA games) than there is on actual gameplay.
What is that based on? For years we had the promise that one day the level of immersion and the quality of the output would be such that it would be able to produce a sort of "interactive movie" experience, that is what you get from games like Call of Duty and while they are wildly popular they don't supplant more traditional games and those who enjoy one aren't excluded from enjoying the other.
Does this mean I can expect 88ms?
A video game publisher is likely to view people stuck on satellite as a rounding error. For one thing, satellite players are already locked out of online multiplayer due to latency. For another, a publisher might be under the impression that people who can afford to live in the city are likely to buy more games and/or subscribe to a game longer. It's the same reason that many apps hit iPhone and iPad before Android: studies show that iOS users tend to spend far more online per capita than Android users.
The customer WILL buy our car because otherwise, he won't be able to drive.
Video games are less substitutable than passenger cars. Someone who wants Super Smash Bros. 4 isn't going to be satisfied with Destiny nor vice versa.
The biggest problem for streaming games is going to be the ISP.
They don't like it when people use netflix, think about something like a game, where you are sending more stuff, not to mention upstream is being used more on these.
Streaming games would kill any download limits you have on your ISP and pretty much all of them have some sort of limit in place.
But what is the good of this if your ISP cuts your account, or nutters the connection so you can't play because you went over the 200-400gb limit for the month?
Be seeing you...
Such creativeness with the language.
just a ghost in the machine.
... this is just DRM bullshit, lets just call it what it is already. Even worse then always online where a small part of the game code is taken hostage like in diablo 3.
Its even easier to pull complete support for the game when it depends on their servers!!! This way they can sell Super Mega Game X+1 to those who used to play Super Mega Game X, forcing them to pay for the new shiny versions, which is really almost identical, with no compelling new features, except maybe slightly better graphics and a +1 to the title.
I now stay 100% away from any games which demand an internet connection to play. If a game is online only, but supports local server or can be emulated via Hamachi or something, then i'm cool with it. Otherwise no.
If this means i can't play game X, then i won't die from the lack of it. Plenty of other games out there which I can play, and play how i want.
You'd be amazed how many gamers have that primordial need while playing FarmVille.
Sorry to dissapoint you but you might not be that exceptional as you think...
When did they add pitchforks to Skyrim? Or is this in Elder Scrolls Online?
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
I thought Bioshock was bad when they made a game that you literally could not lose at. It was impossible to die or fail.
It worked out quite well for Ron Gilbert and Monkey Island in 1990.
The pleasures to be found in playing a game like The Dig or Grim Fandango lie in exploring the worlds their authors create.
If you begin with something as richly imagined as Rapture or the airship city Columbia the mistake is trying to shoehorn the game into the narrow confines of a first person shooter,
Hang on a minute:
"During testing the benefits were apparent, though. Even when the actual round-trip time between input and server response was 256 ms, double-blind testers reported both the gameplay responsiveness and graphical quality of the DeLorean system were comparable to a locally played version of the game."
Gameplay responsiveness, sure, but... graphical quality? If I was testing a system like this, I'd be asking about that as a way to identify people who were just agreeing it was better because they thought it was what I wanted to hear. Graphical quality should not be affected by how quickly the streamed game can respond. There's something fishy about this.
Fuck you. I like Windows 8. I had no problem adapting to the new Start Screen and now prefer it over the tired old Start Menu that people like you never even bothered to customize. The problem is you.
Back in the 1990s, Microsoft developed something similar. Their idea was to render frames in layers, with the more distant or less active layers rendered less often. if the viewpoint changed, the background layers were scrolled, rotated, or transformed to match, rather than being re-rendered immediately. It never caught on, because graphics hardware became fast enough to re-render everything on for each frame.
This new thing is similar. Mispredicted frames are viewpoint-warped as a temporary measure so the user sees something. The image is wrong, but close enough to look OK until a new rendered frame is sent. It looks OK for Doom, on which it was tested, because Doom is mostly about the shooter and the opponents moving; there's not much general activity in the background. GTA IV/V would probably look much worse than normal.
The whole concept represents a desperate attempt to make something "cloud-based" that shouldn't be.
I tried, but the giants doesn't take it lightly when you hurt their mammoths :-(
Lag never hurt anyone and 0,5fps should be enough for anyone!
they pretty much only need to guess what happens if you pressed lmb.
of course, if they were testing with something with only digital on/off inputs, the whole thing becomes much more easier than sending 100 different frames for 100 different possible mouse moves(and calculating those frames at the server end too! it doesn't only need more bandwidth it needs the game that is being streamed do a lot more.. and have it's engine rewritten too... which makes this a lot less appealing).
it's the analog inputs that make this a fubared concept... of course they can guess that if you're moving the mouse at one frame to one direction you might be doing the same thing the next frame.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Of course they can - you do it all the damn time!
Bioshock games are story-driven. You fight to bring a sense of immersion and interaction, but a fight on which the player can be stuck for hours would become a barrier to the story rather than a way to draw them in.
Girls, girls. You're both idiots.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So this is a Let's Play where you do the grunting noises yourself.
Assuming you can do just about anything in a game, yeah nobody can predict that.
On the other hand, in a game, with an "open world" design that actually has a corridor structure, yes they can predict a lot of movement, choices etc.
The system may backfire if you intentionally do things unrelated to game advancement but that's a different story.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
its like Amazon's predictive modelling, where based on your past purchasing behaviour and current page visits, a prediction is made on what item you are likely to purchase next. this item is then pre-shipped to a delivery centre near your location so that the delivery time to you is reduced. What's coming next? Restaurants predicting if you are going to visit them today and if yes what you might order?
Works fine when your going straight and likely to keep going straight or turning and you likely will keep turning like you are (and there is little difference/consequences gamewise to correct the game if the prediction proves wrong).. Its when you suddenly do something significant to the situation outcome that has results and major effects on other objects where it will ALWAYS fall down. Suddenly adding back the split second effects that are supposed to make it all more realistic just ARENT split second and it will be as it already is now -- very visible delays and unrealistic events.
Unless the game is some really dim simplistic mechanism with very few options given to the players, NO prediction will work sufficiently for what the hype in the article is implying. As games get more complicated/more varying interactions and effects it just gets that much harder.
Additionally, all the features that make the game "impossible to lose" can be disabled in the settings and by playing at the hardest difficulty.
Publishers treat the entire continent of Australia as a rounding error!
250ms ping to a US/EU server is about average since very few of the major titles have servers in Oz, SE Asia or Hawaii is normally is good as it gets from the arse end of the Earth. You know you have a really clean connection if it's under 200ms.
The lag from Oz to anywhere else on the planet is largely a true physical limit imposed by the speed of light, no amount of bandwidth will fix it. Anything that "tricks the users brain" into not perceiving that lag would be welcome, 4X the data for a game won't be noticed with the average data cap we have here these days. OTOH since the birth of online gaming I've been trained by experience to lead my shots, so it does mean I would have to significantly adjust my playing style to take advantage of a lower ping.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Apparently the authors of this research have never actually driven a DeLorean. It was stainless steel, weight 3000lbs, and only has 130hp.
So basically it's a car the weight of a Buick with the engine of a Geo Metro.
This has been around for a while now, the only difference here seems that is it's being applied to streaming games and done on the server side for the player, instead of the player side.
Twinstiq, game news
Quakeworld had limited prediction as an "improvement" over original Quake. It had a tough time with rocket jumping. More often than not the screen would freeze and a few seconds later, you'd find yourself running in a corner, the jump never having occurred, or missed badly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There are still people with [download] limits?
Yes. Comcast still has the 300 GB per month limit in many markets, and cellular has a cap two orders of magnitude smaller than even that.
Are you sure you don't live in the past?
For someone born in a country whose home Internet pricing expectation is stuck in the past, such as the United States, Canada, or especially Australia or New Zealand, it can be expensive and a pile of red tape to relocate to a country in the present.
I think the point was that additionally requiring "appropriate Internet connectivity" limits the market for the product too much compared to requiring only electricity and a computer. The same is true of requiring a bleeding edge computer instead of the computer one is more likely to already own.
If you've already pushed your joystick towards the mammoth AND are known to frequent slashdot, one could speculate that you will be crazy enough to strip down and wield a pitchfork.
Wait, you said fork. Hmmm..that's a tough one.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I would think one benefit would be that you can allow for a subscription service where people could try lots of different games or play portions of games without having to download hundreds of gigs of data for games they only play a few times or when they are only playing a specific mission and don't need all the maps or game modes available.
I'm not saying this is what everyone wants or that it works for all use cases, but I imagine this is one scenario.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
graphics hardware is so cheap these days. Even your $85 Amazon Fire TV can render some pretty awesome games...and it just keeps improving...so it seems like the real benefit isn't graphics per se but in AI and CPU processing, in maintaining massive worlds, and in enabling a uniform gaming experience across platforms/clients.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
even so you can download an game off peak when some ISP are cap free
If you plan to go this route, satellite is in my experience far more likely to include unmetered off-peak use than cellular.
and you can say download an game / parts of it at places with free WiFi.
If your computer happens not to be a laptop, which is likely for a gamer because laptop GPUs tend to be underpowered in both senses, watch people point and laugh at someone bringing in a desktop computer to download a game. That's the vibe I get from Not Always Right, Geekologie, and Paradoxoff.
I'm sure there's a pitchfork mod. If not now, within the next ten minutes at least.
you are chasing a wooly mammoth buck-naked with a fork. we determine you need titanium toe rings with 6-carat blue diamonds. why? hell, just because. your credit card on file has been decremented ten million dollars. now your avatar jingles as you run.
perhaps you want an elephant gun now? please enter a new valid credit card number...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Soon enough these streaming game services will be sending entire binaries to run on the client in order to render something quicker. First it will be the background binary, then pre-send all the textures. Soon enough the entire game will be running on the client.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I think they're moving the mouse a "typical" amount and rounding the predicted move command to either no motion or the predicted amount of motion. Besides, in first person games, screen motion due to mouse panning is easy to predict, as John Carmack pointed out.