Cloud based rendering, is it possible?


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UPDATED: Melfster is my new hero, he provided this link as some help...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/how-the-xbox-one-draws-more-processing-power-from-cloud-computing/

Before the Xbox One or XBone is as it is being called I was thinking about this and trying to figure out if it was possible to do. I never posted this because I thought it would be extremely hard and probably impossible because of latency issues. We are talking cloud based rendering in real-time.

However, the reason Microsoft is redoing the controller is to get as low latency as possible and that is also yet another reason (besides the switching of the video games on the fly) that they would want you to install the game to the hard drive.

So I was thinking about something like this, part of the game would be rendered from the cloud and the other part locally on the console, the console would know what level you are in the game and buffer part of the screen or objects on that layer on the screen and render that part via the cloud. For example, the cloud could render a GTA city, and the farther objects are rendered from your console locally, while the objects closer are rendered from the cloud and have their own A.I. that is also from the cloud.

I know that latency is the killer, so you would have to have some form of sync and buffer system going to the hard drive for example. Microsoft has expanded their servers and all gaming is now server based and not peer-to-peer anymore. So, they would have to have extremely low latency so that means a server close to every large population. So, this might be only U.S. only at first (my speculation).

If you don't have access to the cloud servers, the console would take over the complete rendering of the game. So, no cloud service and the game looks average, a cloud based game would enhance the graphics and A.I.

The way that cloud services work now such as Onlive is that they stream the entire game screen down as a video and then you use your low latency game-pad and then they send the signals back to the server. So, this takes up more bandwidth in theory because the entire game is rendered as a movie and being streamed down, vs just one part of a screen which relieves you of the bandwidth issue, but can still deliver the goods of enhanced Artificial Intelligence and also higher in graphics.

Does anyone think this is possible or am I just talking from my behind? It was something I was thinking about how could it possibly work and this is what I suspect Microsoft might be talking about for E3, we shall see.

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