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Starting a game in under a minute is a good sign in my opinion. 

 

But I have to wonder how it works in the background.  Obviously there is not much data traveling to the console in under a minute, so you would think that data size would increase as you actually play the game. 

 

Still, it sounds good so far. 

I think I've asked this before.  But are these games a straight stream (a-la Netflix) or is there a caching station somewhere in there?

 

Us here in the USofA are going through some net neutrality issue's right now :angry:, which won't help out a lot at all.

 

So if someone has a 150GB data cap and goes on a weekend gaming binge, they may not be in good standing with their isp, come 30days later

I think I've asked this before.  But are these games a straight stream (a-la Netflix) or is there a caching station somewhere in there?

 

Us here in the USofA are going through some net neutrality issue's right now :angry:, which won't help out a lot at all.

 

So if someone has a 150GB data cap and goes on a weekend gaming binge, they may not be in good standing with their isp, come 30days later

That's a good question, but I dont think anyone knows the exact details of Sony's service yet. If that info is out there, I'd love to hear it as well.

My first thought was that they are streaming data to you constantly as you play the game, with a small amount of data being cached, but there could be more to it.

The games are streamed to you, there is no download/install (at least in its current form).

 

The streaming doesn't start for 1-2 mins depending on the game, GAF has the numbers in the Playstation Now-ish :laugh: thread.

But there is caching of some sort.

 

Well that goes without saying really. Would be an absolute nightmare for games with heavy backtracking / MP maps. Plus a lot of games reuse textures throughout the SP and MP components. It would be nice to see them add a download option and use the timebomb they do on PS+ to prevent people playing indefinitely.

Well that goes without saying really. Would be an absolute nightmare for games with heavy backtracking / MP maps. Plus a lot of games reuse textures throughout the SP and MP components. It would be nice to see them add a download option and use the timebomb they do on PS+ to prevent people playing indefinitely.

Certain parts could be downloaded, that would be a good idea. It just depends how they're running things at their end though, probably PC dev builds or something? They're not going to have PS3 clusters.

Well that goes without saying really. Would be an absolute nightmare for games with heavy backtracking / MP maps. Plus a lot of games reuse textures throughout the SP and MP components. It would be nice to see them add a download option and use the timebomb they do on PS+ to prevent people playing indefinitely.

I guess that is only feasbile for games that the console can play locally though. Anything else must be rendered and streamed ondemand to the console.

A 2hr hi-def movie streamed from Netflix is about 4.5 - 5GB... Now imagine a high demanding game game being streamed.

Unless I'm crazy, the end user is going to need at least 12dwn/10up so that the game can look as close to a physical copy being played as it can...

I saw the requirements that Sony posted, for being able to play with little to no lag. But it's just not equating in my head.

If I were Sony, I would go with a PS+ (Galaxy Edition)... Charge $100-$150 a year and let people go nuts. Let them download to a physical box.

A 2hr hi-def movie streamed from Netflix is about 4.5 - 5GB... Now imagine a high demanding game game being streamed.

Unless I'm crazy, the end user is going to need at least 12dwn/10up so that the game can look as close to a physical copy being played as it can...

I saw the requirements that Sony posted, for being able to play with little to no lag. But it's just not equating in my head.

If I were Sony, I would go with a PS+ (Galaxy Edition)... Charge $100-$150 a year and let people go nuts. Let them download to a physical box.

Well remember that even Sony admitted that if you only meet the minimum requirements, the graphic fidelilty will vary. It seems clear that you will not get a 1:1 experience when streaming ps3 games if your hitting the minimums. They have not spelled out what it would take to be 1:!, but maybe the beta testing will give them the info they need to make recommendations.

Also, there is no option for Sony allowing you to download to another box like say a ps4 since the box does not have the hardware to play a ps3 (later to include ps1 and ps2) game. The game still has to be processed via a server and the data streamed to you.

Well that goes without saying really. Would be an absolute nightmare for games with heavy backtracking / MP maps. Plus a lot of games reuse textures throughout the SP and MP components. It would be nice to see them add a download option and use the timebomb they do on PS+ to prevent people playing indefinitely.

You mean like 24hr online check? HMMMMMmmmmmmm.

 

 

 

 

sorry, couldn't resist :p

Well remember that even Sony admitted that if you only meet the minimum requirements, the graphic fidelilty will vary. It seems clear that you will not get a 1:1 experience when streaming ps3 games if your hitting the minimums. They have not spelled out what it would take to be 1:!, but maybe the beta testing will give them the info they need to make recommendations.

Also, there is no option for Sony allowing you to download to another box like say a ps4 since the box does not have the hardware to play a ps3 (later to include ps1 and ps2) game. The game still has to be processed via a server and the data streamed to you.

 

 

Thanks for the info.  I think Sony should release a Roku sized box (priced at $20 or so) to be used as a Cache station to help with this.

A peer to peer solution would be quite nice IMO. Make the service free to those who opt in, and allow other PS4 consoles nearby with the game installed to handle the streaming etc whilst they're in standby.

 

It would take some effort, but would be a nice solution. Caching servers don't work. Anybody who regularly uses Netflix on Virgin Media will attest to that!

  • 3 weeks later...

Only rumour for now:

 

Gaikai site redesign reveals potential PS Now game prices

Monday, 10th March 2014 09:17 GMT By Dave Cook

 

PlayStation Now developers Gaikai has updated its official site, which now contains a UI concept for the service, along with some price-points for games such as Far Cry 3, Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us.

 

It follows Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter calling PlayStation Now ?a joke.?

 

We?ve also got a full report on what PlayStation Now is and how it works here.

 

These are possibly place-holder RRPs, but here?s the concept image, as found in GaiKai?s history section.

PS_now.jpg

As you can see; there are options to stream Far Cry 3 and Uncharted 3 in their entirety using PS Now in for $5.99 and $4.99 each, while The Last of Us is priced $49.99 to buy outright. They each say ?Full Game? next to them.

 

Over on Gaikai?s About section, the company writes

 

?At Gaikai, we believe in solving difficult problems to create exceptional experiences. People said it was impossible to stream video games at high quality with low latency. We did it anyway. They said there was no way for a small company to build the world?s fastest interactive entertainment network. So we did that too. We even won a Guinness World Record for it.

 

?It isn?t easy. It requires custom hardware. Dozens of software systems. And a world-class team to put it all together. But you know what? It?s worth it. Because, when you find yourself playing a PlayStation game within seconds of pressing a button, without downloading or installing anything, on a device that was never designed to do that, it?s nothing short of magical.?

 

We?ve contacted Sony to see if these prices are in the right ballpark, and our local rep replied, ?we don?t comment on rumour speculation. ?

 

http://www.vg247.com/2014/03/10/ps-now-gaikai-site-redesign-reveals-potential-game-prices-report/

Hmm, so I wonder what the details are on what 'buy' and 'stream' mean.

Does paying $5-$6 mean I must stream the game within 24hrs, several days?

Does buying mean that I own a digital copy that I download to my device, or is that just owning the rights to stream the game indefinitely?

I too would want to see a service that I could just pay a monthly fee and get access to it all. A nice bonus would be a way to 'match' games I already own to the cloud for streaming as I would with music.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

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Because CR3 contains so few of these heavier elements, researchers say it closely resembles what scientists expect the earliest galaxies in the universe may have looked like. The discovery is significant because it could offer clues about Population III (Pop III) stars, the first generation of stars thought to have formed after the Big Bang. These stars are believed to have formed from gas made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, before heavier elements were created inside stars and spread across the universe through supernova explosions. Hence this is why CR3 has been referred to as a "living fossil." Scientists have long believed that Population III stars existed only in the very early universe. As more generations of stars formed and died, they enriched surrounding gas with heavier elements, making the conditions needed for metal-free star formation increasingly rare. Because of this, researchers expected the formation of such stars to have largely ended after the epoch of reionization, a period when radiation from the first stars and galaxies transformed the neutral hydrogen filling the universe and made it largely transparent to ultraviolet light. CR3 appears to challenge that idea. The galaxy was observed at a redshift of z = 3.193 ± 0.016. Redshift measures how much light from a distant object has been stretched as the universe expands and helps astronomers determine how far back in time they are looking. In this case, the redshift corresponds to roughly 11.5 billion years ago during cosmic noon. Although the universe was already several billion years old by that point, CR3 shows characteristics more commonly associated with much earlier galaxies. Observations revealed exceptionally strong emissions from hydrogen and helium, including Lyα, Hα, and He I λ10830. Lyα, or Lyman-alpha emission, is a specific wavelength of light produced by hydrogen and is widely used to study distant galaxies. Hα emission is another hydrogen signature commonly used to trace active star formation, while He I λ10830 is produced by helium and can indicate the presence of very hot, young stars. The measured equivalent widths of EW₀(Lyα) = 822 ± 101 Å and EW₀(Hα) = 2814 ± 327 Å are among the highest ever observed in star-forming galaxies. Equivalent width is a measure of the strength of an emission line relative to the surrounding light, and such large values are typically associated with intense and very recent star formation. At the same time, researchers found no statistically significant detections of metal emission lines, including [O III] λλ4959, 5007 and C IV λλ1548, 1550. Emission lines act as chemical fingerprints that reveal which elements are present in a galaxy. Oxygen and carbon lines are commonly seen in galaxies that have already undergone significant chemical enrichment. Their absence in CR3 suggests an unusually pristine environment. Using abundance calibration methods developed with JWST observations, the team placed a 2σ upper limit on the galaxy's gas-phase metallicity of 12+log(O/H)<6.52, corresponding to less than 0.7% of the Sun's metallicity (Z < 7 × 10⁻³ Z⊙). Gas-phase metallicity measures the abundance of heavy elements in a galaxy's gas. A 2σ upper limit indicates that the true value is very unlikely to be higher than the quoted threshold. Even when accounting for uncertainties in the calibration methods, the most conservative limit remains 12+log(O/H)<6.95, making CR3 the most metal-poor galaxy identified at cosmic noon. The galaxy also appears to contain very little dust. 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To investigate this, the researchers examined CR3's surroundings. Their analysis suggests the galaxy may lie in a slightly underdense environment, with a density contrast of roughly δ ≈ −0.12. An underdense region contains less matter and fewer galaxies than average. The team suggests that this relative isolation may have helped preserve pockets of pristine gas. Metal-rich material expelled from nearby galaxies may never have reached CR3, while the lower rate of galaxy mergers and interactions could have slowed the mixing of enriched gas into the system. If future observations confirm these findings, CR3 could provide some of the strongest evidence yet that first-generation star formation continued well after the epoch of reionization. Such a result would challenge the conventional view that pristine star formation ended by z ≳ 6 and suggest that small pockets of metal-free gas survived much longer than previously thought. 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