Microsoft Cloud Gaming - coming to Samsung TVs

[dreamylittledream]

3 minutes ago, RJames said:

How can you tell if you're on a Series X or not?

Does it load quickly and not look like a blurry load of the rubbish?

 

If so you are on an Series X node

 

(it is game dependent but the difference is really night and day on say Outriders).

[ulala]

Can you use xcloud on a series x? 

[Paulando]

2 minutes ago, ulala said:

Can you use xcloud on a series x? 

No. But you can barely use it on anything else at the moment either.

[TehStu]

1 hour ago, ulala said:

Can you use xcloud on a series x? 

Using the Edge browser, presumably. A dedicated app is in the works, IIRC from E3.

[Simmy]

This works really well sideloaded on the Nvidia Shield..

[ulala]

9 hours ago, Paulando said:

No. But you can barely use it on anything else at the moment either.

please stop this.

[MattyP]

11 hours ago, Paulando said:

No. But you can barely use it on anything else at the moment either.

Well my phone, Edge browser and tablet says otherwise. And a great experience it is too. Of course YMMV. 

 

[Paulando]

18 minutes ago, MattyP said:

Well my phone, Edge browser and tablet says otherwise. And a great experience it is too. Of course YMMV. 

 

Lovely, which phone/computer/tablet are you using? And what are your network conditions (wired/wireless etc)?

 

I’ve signed up to this for 2 years and don’t have an Xbox (it was the gold sub > GPU trick, and ridiculously good value), and I really want it to work as moving forward it’s the only way I’ll get to play the first party exclusives. It’s certainly a great offering from a software point of view.

 

I’ve just tried Borderlands 3 on Stadia and it was perfect with no lag. Like it was running natively on my phone. Then I switched to Xbox Cloud Gaming and put Dirt 5 on: it stuttered every few seconds, and my inputs sometimes registered about half a second after I pressed them, so unplayable. It was the same with Wolfenstein and Streets of Rage 4.

[Rain Birds]

1 hour ago, Paulando said:

Lovely, which phone/computer/tablet are you using? And what are your network conditions (wired/wireless etc)?

 

I’ve signed up to this for 2 years and don’t have an Xbox (it was the gold sub > GPU trick, and ridiculously good value), and I really want it to work as moving forward it’s the only way I’ll get to play the first party exclusives. It’s certainly a great offering from a software point of view.

 

I’ve just tried Borderlands 3 on Stadia and it was perfect with no lag. Like it was running natively on my phone. Then I switched to Xbox Cloud Gaming and put Dirt 5 on: it stuttered every few seconds, and my inputs sometimes registered about half a second after I pressed them, so unplayable. It was the same with Wolfenstein and Streets of Rage 4.

 

Yeah, on an iPhone 12 Pro via both 4G and the WiFi network I’ve had the chance to try so far (and a 2021 iPad Pro 12.9” on WiFi), xCloud has been an abomination. Horrific, choppy sound and input lag so severe that it’s less Yakuza: Like a Dragon and more Dragon’s Lair…via dial-up. Calling it beta feels like it’s pushing it.

[Anne Summers]

I usually get good performance out of XCloud on my Pixel with Bluetooth controller. Played through Katana Zero on it, which is a very precise game. There were a couple of times I've started it up, though, and performance was quite laggy. This is actually true of every streaming service I've tried, it's probably down to my wi-fi but my wi-fi is no different in theory to anyone elses, so it's something they are going to need to fix. Consoles pretty much work the same every time you switch them on. I'm 100per cent sure they will get it right eventually. Remember when PS Now was the only streaming service? It was pretty much 50/50 whether you were going to get a good enough service that your game would be playable. Things have already improved a lot with XCloud and Stadia. 

[ZOK]

I do 95% of my gaming on Stadia + LG CX now, and if I was being particularly harsh I’d say you encounter streaming issues during 1% of play time, ie it’s indistinguishable from native console play 99% of the time. Although anecdotally it seems to vary depending on what game you play, but I’ve seemingly only experienced the good ones.

 

That level of performance has to be the minimum for this stuff to be viable now - if it can’t match that it’s pointless.

 

I’ll be bang up for this XCloud once they’ve ironed out these issues, they just need to do whatever Stadia is doing.

[TehStu]

3 hours ago, Paulando said:

Lovely, which phone/computer/tablet are you using? And what are your network conditions (wired/wireless etc)?

 

Not just that, but what is your ISP's routing to Microsoft like? How does Microsoft fix that, if it's less optimal than routing to Google? 

 

I play on my phone, 5ghz and line of site to mesh satellite, which is wired to router via switch (so there's a few internal hops) and then out to the internet. It does glitch, my ISP is crap, but it's generally fine minus the input lag you'll never get rid of.

[metallicfrodo]

I tried this earlier on my latop over 2.5ghz wireless on another floor from the router, and it was close to being playable (trying Outriders), which does make me wonder why the iPad over 5Ghz sat next to the router was a slide show that was utterly useless.

[Paulando]

1 hour ago, TehStu said:

Not just that, but what is your ISP's routing to Microsoft like? How does Microsoft fix that, if it's less optimal than routing to Google? 

 

I play on my phone, 5ghz and line of site to mesh satellite, which is wired to router via switch (so there's a few internal hops) and then out to the internet. It does glitch, my ISP is crap, but it's generally fine minus the input lag you'll never get rid of.

Perhaps we’ll see these disclaimers?:

*service entirely dependent on how optimal your ISP’s routing is to Microsoft’s servers.

 

Tried this wired on my MacBook with Outriders and the image quality was better and the stutters had gone, which is great, but there was a noticeable lag between pushing the stick and the camera moving. The input lag you’ll never get rid of isn’t noticeable on Stadia for me, even with mouse aiming (which is crazy), so it does give me some vague hope XCG will be as good as that at some point.

[ZOK]

Yes, I’ve never noticed input lag with Stadia - I guess a game like Destiny is where it would be particularly apparent, but didn’t seem to be any issues there either. I’ve not tried PubG though.

[shirubagan]

This isn't working for me at all right now. Does the rocket ship, the Xbox logo, then just black screen and an error message.

[TehStu]

10 minutes ago, Paulando said:

Perhaps we’ll see these disclaimers?:

*service entirely dependent on how optimal your ISP’s routing is to Microsoft’s servers.

Maybe? It's fine on a Zoom because we're like "... oh, did we lose Steve? Steve are you there?" and it's fine on Netflix because you buffer past the hiccups but this is the first application of very high bandwidth, low latency streaming that I can think of.

 

That said, I don't understand how Stadia removed the literal extra time it takes to process input vs a local box, so it does sound like their network code to give the perception of that is better. I'll try Outriders using my pad, perhaps touch controls introduce latency (I mean, every ms counts at this point, right?). 

[Jonny5]

The Stadia controller connects directly to the game in the cloud, rather than connecting to your device via bluetooth and then onto the game in the cloud.  But even using the xbox pad over bluetooth on my MacBook to play stadia games the lag is so much better than the same setup on xcloud.

 

 

[MattyP]

5 hours ago, Paulando said:

Lovely, which phone/computer/tablet are you using? And what are your network conditions (wired/wireless etc)?

 

I’ve signed up to this for 2 years and don’t have an Xbox (it was the gold sub > GPU trick, and ridiculously good value), and I really want it to work as moving forward it’s the only way I’ll get to play the first party exclusives. It’s certainly a great offering from a software point of view.

 

I’ve just tried Borderlands 3 on Stadia and it was perfect with no lag. Like it was running natively on my phone. Then I switched to Xbox Cloud Gaming and put Dirt 5 on: it stuttered every few seconds, and my inputs sometimes registered about half a second after I pressed them, so unplayable. It was the same with Wolfenstein and Streets of Rage 4.

5Ghz WiFi on a fibre based network. Tablet is a Surface 3 and phone a Nokia. Nothing special to be honest and I was playing Forza 7 though the Edge browser on the Surface. Phone again browser based using Vivaldi browser (Chromium API). 

[TehStu]

1 hour ago, Jonny5 said:

The Stadia controller connects directly to the game in the cloud, rather than connecting to your device via bluetooth and then onto the game in the cloud.  But even using the xbox pad over bluetooth on my MacBook to play stadia games the lag is so much better than the same setup on xcloud.

 

 

That sounds like a crucial few ms shaved off.

[ZOK]

I’m sure there was a paper someone linked to in the Stadia thread about how Google were also doing some clever predictions on the fly about potential inputs to further minimise / mask the issue - but I’m not technical so that could be completely wrong.

[yashiro]

Yes, they stated they would use AI to achieve 'negative latency' via input prediction. They claimed that Stadia response times could be even better than a local console.

[ZOK]

That’s right, here’s where I read it - they basically repeat Google’s claims as part of a wider discussion on latency, the paper is about Stadia’s web traffic: 

 

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.09786.pdf

 

All of the stuff in that paper goes well beyond my ken, but Microsoft should just copy it I guess. It seems a key factor is service load….Stadia could quite conceivably have massive scalability potential and relatively low usage, with XCloud being the other way around (especially in beta)…throwing money at it fixes it if that’s the case.

 

[peeveen]

18 hours ago, yashiro said:

Yes, they stated they would use AI to achieve 'negative latency' via input prediction. They claimed that Stadia response times could be even better than a local console.

I remember reading about an emulator (for NES maybe?) that generated the game state for a few frames in advance based on every possible input combination, and instantly served up the state when the actual input arrived, thus providing a gameplay experience with even less input lag than the original console.

However, that was for a very simple console with controllers that had about 64 possible combinations of input at any given time.

Not really sure how something like that can be done on a modern game with analogue controls where the possible input combinations must be in the millions or billions.

But I'd sure be interested to know!

[shirubagan]

Is this borked for anyone else? 

 

[Jonny5]

Working here through the browser.

[gooner4life]

This is a really good idea, but really poor in execution, i tried Gears of War 5 Hivebusters and Halo 2 multiplayer and it's unplayable, the input lag is terrible.

 

387mbits down 38mbits up connection wired, nobody else using it at the time.

[TehStu]

They should have an overlay with the input round-trip ping or something, rather then the generic quality icon. Whether you can stream 720p or not seems immaterial.

[ulala]

It’s an uneven experience for me at the moment, but when it works perfectly, which it has done, it’s fantastic 

[TehStu]

I just fired this up on my phone, with an XB1 pad wired, to do the MCC game pass quest. It's on my play list but I don't have spare data to grab it right now.

 

Anyway, I thought I'd experiment and it was just flawless. I tried to make the smallest movements and there was just no perceptible lag. I realize there literally was, and evidently there's no Stadia AI trickery that I'm aware of, but when it's good it's flawless. It makes me wonder why it's so variable for folks.