Review Google Stadia Review: Not Ready for Prime Time

[Admin]

Google Stadia has some good ideas, but its library is lacking and features are missing, so you should wait.

Google Stadia Review: Not Ready for Prime Time : Read more

 

[derekullo]

"It’s a promising technology in many ways, including the way it eliminates barriers to gaming with the lack of installation times."

Rather than focus on load times that could be solved by having an $80 dollar SSD, why not focus on the ability to play in 4k without a Geforce 2080Ti ?

I'm assuming FPS is still a thing even when streaming?

How does the fps @ 4k on Destiny 2 compare to an actual gaming desktop?

I could see games like Civilization 6 and similar playing really well due to their non-twitchy nature.

Is there tearing?

Does V-sync/free-sync/g-sync work in any way?

 

[chill1221]

"
For this review, I performed my testing in my small, New York City apartment, where I tend to get about 150 Mbps Internet speeds.
"
That is definitely not typical internet speeds for where I live...maybe a third of that if I'm lucky.

 

[TJ Hooker]

"It’s a promising technology in many ways, including the way it eliminates barriers to gaming with the lack of installation times."

Rather than focus on load times that could be solved by having an $80 dollar SSD, why not focus on the ability to play in 4k without a Geforce 2080Ti ?

Lol, did you not read the text you quoted? They're talking about install times, not load times. No matter how fast your SSD is, it's going to take a not-insignificant amount of time to download and install a modern AAA game.

 

[derekullo]

Lol, did you not read the text you quoted? They're talking about install times, not load times. No matter how fast your SSD is, it's going to take a not-insignificant amount of time to download and install a modern AAA game.

My apologies, I may have slightly misused the words "Load" and "Install".

When a game is streamed there no installation, just a time it takes to load, as I am sure you are well aware.

Load times and install times are also vastly speeded up with an SSD as I am sure you are also well aware.

Despite the slight mix-up of words I still stand by what I quoted.

The crux of the issue here is defining what a "not-insignificant amount of time" is.

As a test I decided to install Skyrim from Steam, a AAA game, that was about 11 gigabytes.
(I agree this may be the best case scenario of a AAA game versus something much larger like an 88 gigabyte Grand Theft Auto 5 install)

It took about 6 minutes on my Samsung 840 Evo with a download speed of about 40 megabytes a second.
(Taking off my VPN I would get closer to gigabit download speeds, but 40 megabytes a second is good enough and much closer to the norm)

3-6 minutes of download/install seems to be fairly insignificant when compared to paying $10 a month.

This is especially so when the initial download of a game to an SSD only has to happen once which would vastly erode the initial quickness of streaming.

Now in the grand scheme of things, $10 a month isn't significant either and the product may still have other more redeeming qualities.


This is why I was asked about graphics quality / FPS immediately after.

How the game looks and performs should matter more than saving 6 minutes is the point I am trying to stress.


Having said all that I am curious if a gigabit connection to Stadia would get you any improvement over the 150 megabit in a New York Apartment used in this test?

 

[Spaceghaze]

This is why I was asked about graphics quality / FPS immediately after.

How the game looks and performs should matter more than saving 6 minutes is the point I am trying to stress.


Having said all that I am curious if a gigabit connection to Stadia would get you any improvement over the 150 megabit in a New York Apartment used in this test?

Im guessing no, since you can only get max 4k 60 fps subscription now. I saw another test, and they where using an even less then a 150 mbit line, and it was playing fine.

I'm not sure how it would scale though if they would up it to, lets say 120 fps. Would it need twice as speedy connection?

 

[philip_austin]

I think The number of games and features will not impact on Stadia, the main things which will impact on stadia is pricing and latency.

 

[1_rick]

"Google is betting on a future where your games are in the cloud. "

Not just no, but hell no. Forget about all the issues around latency and whatnot. This means no more modding. This means "if Google deletes your account for putting too many emojis in the comments of a Youtube video[1] you lose all your games and your email and everything else tied to that account."

[1] Yes, this actually happened. Sure, many of the people later got their accounts restored, but still.

 

[Jake Hall]

Yeah... No
Thanks for delaying Doom

 

[Giroro]

I live a couple miles outside of downtown Seattle, so I don't have access to good enough internet service for game streaming though Stadia to be a viable option.
All I have are the same basic slow DSL/capped cable options that I had when I lived in suburban Utah.

Maybe Google should have waited to launch Stadia until after they followed through with some of the Google Fiber promises that they made like, 10 years ago. .. or at least shut the experiment down completely so Comcast can stop using the faux-competition as justification to continuously expand their monopoly.

...But even then, there would still be no way that I would pay a subscription fee for access to worse-versions of games I also have to buy.

 

[BeamrMark]

There is no doubt that bandwidth consumption must come down as even on a broadband connection, if during peak hours, the network is saturated with unicast sessions, video quality is going to suffer. (Even if the stream was originated in full 4K and not upscaled, when the network gets jammed up, and it will, resolution will drop to 1080p) I wrote a blog post about this and a solution that is possible with Intel to reduce 4K bandwidth by as much as 49%. If you are into video quality, this may be of interest: https://blog.beamr.com/2019/11/19/h...in-half-so-that-twice-as-many-users-can-play/

 

[philip_austin]

The google will come up with solutions for sure