• she/they

pdx queer dev, now an Old


erica
@erica


xbox not-announced their lineup for next year as a part of a FTC lawsuit and I like Game Tube design as much as the next gal but bruhhhhhhhhhhh discless console

it's not even that i'm like "argh!! i only want physical media!!!" (i do) but just that it means that console is now no longer a bluray player. which sucks because it's better at playing blurays than the PS5 is.

they're definitely doubling down on game-streaming stuff, a technology that is acceptable at best and literally unplayable at worst, and that's from them with the best tech around. idk.

i want that new controller though.

Verge article


blazehedgehog
@blazehedgehog

Up top: I think streaming is dumb and wasteful but to some degree latency can be mostly solved, or at least heavily mitigated. And it's through a technology foolishly called "time traveling" -- but not in the way you might think.

It is, essentially, the same technology that powers emulators having a "zero latency" toggle. Rather than just "emulate better," what this actually does is simulate multiple instances of the same game, but in each instance, you're pushing one of the controller's buttons. Think of it like different timelines, with a dedicated timeline for each button (and button combination) on your controller.

Now let's say your emulator of choice has a delay of 2 frames. You push a button on your controller, and two frames later, the game executes its chosen action. With zero latency/time travel enabled, what actually happens is the emulator detects your button and switches you to the timeline where you already pushed that button two frames ago.

To your perception, the game is just functioning normally with no latency, but under the hood, massive CPU and RAM requirements are needed to generate what is effectively dozens of savestates every single frame -- one for each possible future. And the more frames you need to predict in advance, the higher the system requirements are, exponentially.

I think something like this is how these streaming services can even work at all. It is in theory possible to play a streamed game with little-to-no perceptible latency, but that will still require a constant connection of 50-100gb/s+ in addition some server data center somewhere burning massive wattage to power something that really doesn't need to be remote.

Again: functional, but an unnecessarily massive waste of resources, just because some suit somewhere doesn't like the concept of "ownership" and would rather bleed you for a subscription fee from birth to death.


DecayWTF
@DecayWTF

The only game streaming I can tolerate is Streaming from my bigass desktop to my laptop in the other room.


aune
@aune

God, I'm glad i got one before this refresh. Why the fucking circle?

Also just

this is so much nonsense based on the idea that 4k gaming is Doable right now and it's just... not


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in reply to @erica's post:

The controller looks cute.

In the Greater New Orleans Area where I live the mish mash of internet infrastructure can be iffy due to only upgrading when a hurricane destroys the old stuff. Like half a neighborhood could have fiber while the other half is dealing with copper lines and can only get 25 down. Its a nightmare, and I can't quite trust game streaming right now.

I mean I live in one of the most populous cities in the country with most residences having a gigabit fibre drop and even then it can be a spotty experience because it's subject to any kinds of problems in between here and their servers. It's just not conducive to a consistent experience and if I'm playing a videogame I at minimum want it to feel the same moment-to-moment.

I think the times where I didn't notice a notable lag in game streaming or particularly care if it happened was when I was playing a Turn Based RPG or a Point and Click Adventure that didn't really have much timing mechanics to them. I tried Halo once, and that really turned me off to the concept for now.

im not sure why they're adding it since no game supports it on xbox and with a generation of controllers without it there's not really any reason to but yeah, it says there that they're an accelerometer and the report says it's for motion support

i like gyro mostly when it comes to playing projectile characters/weapons in fps like the demoman in team fortress 2 or quake on nintendo switch. i still prefer mouse and keyboard when it comes to precision but i think gyro has the potential of becoming significantly more reliable than mouse and keyboard if they perfected it and made it universal rather than solely dependant on dev support.

either way, very happy theyre finally doing it

Looks like they're still pushing the "you'll own nothing and like it" philosophy they've been really pursuing with game pass huh. Hopefully they'll still have the earlier model of series x around, or at least some external blueray drive compatibility or something

actually curious if there's going to be a return of external optical disc drives1, because then they can cut the blu-ray royalty from the sticker price while still allowing people to play movies and load physical games on it


  1. almost certainly proprietary ones only, or QVLed ones + requiring you to buy an app from the microsoft store to play movies

quick q: How is it better at playing BluRay than the PS5? I don't have a PS5 yet but was looking forward to actually having HDMI CEC support that works, which it notably very much does not on the XBSX :[ (It barely works on the PS4 Pro, but it at least PARTIALLY works)

Mostly speaking from the interface. I don't mind using the Xbox controller to control my movies and the navigational shortcuts on the controller are a lot more hassle-free to use than the PS5's clumsy interface.

in reply to @blazehedgehog's post: