Google Stadia Hardware Analysis

[DevTech]

Google Stadia Hardware Analysis

 

- Lag

- Latency

- LINUX - every game needs porting

- Vulkan ONLY, NOT OpenGL so even Linux games need porting

 

 

Given the inevitable lag, single player might devolve to casual and multiplayer might just be an endless horror show of Second Life clones...

 

 

 

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

Latency would be my concern. Even with the wifi controller and a decent connection, you will still be at a couple hundred ms. That works for many games, but is absolute murder.

 

What I'm not sure about is why they are leaping in at 4K, much less planning 8K. I would question this working at 1080p for most people.

[DevTech]

1 minute ago, Zagadka said:

Latency would be my concern. Even with the wifi controller and a decent connection, you will still be at a couple hundred ms. That works for many games, but is absolute murder.

 

What I'm not sure about is why they are leaping in at 4K, much less planning 8K. I would question this working at 1080p for most people.

Eventually, I will update the "Future thread" with whatever insights come out of the Stadia discussion.

 

I think a lot of Google stuff comes out looking a bit backwards/awkward like one of those demolition derby car races where everyone drives in reverse because somewhere at Google Headquarters there is a Master Playbook to drag the whole world into viewing their computers, gaming devices etc as just another bunch of pixels to pump through a stupid archaic Browser interface.

 

Their new system of First World Privilege is 4K because they know it is only going to work with Google Fiber and similar products in major First World cities. If it can "catch hold" as a "standard" then they can "patchwork it to success"

 

If it dies like Google Glass, they will just do it again and again - Google Glass 2 is coming...

 

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

We also haven't heard how Google will charge people for this service. A flat monthly fee for all games? Purchase of single titles? How much will those fees be? How much will publishers need to do to be on the platform?

 

Well, I frankly don't really care about this, partly for the reasons you mentioned; Google experiments sometimes.

 

What I am interested in seeing is MS's xCloud project, which should be presented at or around E3. That is probably a more "realistic" project, and we'll see how it compares to Stadia. It'll definitely be used in the next console generation, whereas Stadia might not even support enough games to work.

 

Ugh, Google is as bad as MS at naming products.

[DevTech]

7 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

We also haven't heard how Google will charge people for this service. A flat monthly fee for all games? Purchase of single titles? How much will those fees be? How much will publishers need to do to be on the platform?

 

Well, I frankly don't really care about this, partly for the reasons you mentioned; Google experiments sometimes.

 

What I am interested in seeing is MS's xCloud project, which should be presented at or around E3. That is probably a more "realistic" project, and we'll see how it compares to Stadia. It'll definitely be used in the next console generation, whereas Stadia might not even support enough games to work.

 

Ugh, Google is as bad as MS at naming products.

Well, one thing that caught me by surprise is the bog standard hardware configuration and Game Dev configuration on the server side.

 

Once Google is out of sight of the consumer, their "everything in a browser" BS goes away to be replaced with the same practical design anyone would use if they didn't have a PlayBook to ruin the O/S experience everywhere with "Browsers in Your Face"

 

The Dev Kit is a Linux powered AMD CPU/GPU with 16gig RAM running only Vulkan API to the GPU which means SPIR-V shader code and pure Native Game Coding via Unreal Engine or Unity Engine etc.

 

Missing entirely is the Google Party Line BS of WebGL and OpenGL and JavaScript.

 

Will be interesting to see if some corporate drone at Google tries to close up that BS gap by creating some fake WEB API stuff...

 

[Yogurth]

Here is a very good observational and hands on video on Stadia's curent pros and cons.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-hands-on-with-google-stream-gdc-2019

[+rdlenk Subscriber²]

Having been part of the Project Stream beta I can't say enough good things about it.  I was blown away with the quality and response of the game and platform. It was a pretty amazing experience and I can't wait to see where it goes. It could really be the start of a big shift in gaming that has a lot of potential ramifications. 

[DevTech]

18 minutes ago, Yogurth said:

Here is a very good observational and hands on video on Stadia's curent pros and cons.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-hands-on-with-google-stream-gdc-2019

Thanks for the link. I think he really "beats around the bush" on the latency issue which will force the platform into crappy casual games sooner or later...

 

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/20/what-latency-feels-like-on-googles-stadia-cloud-gaming-platform/

 

That experience seems more like what a real gamer will experience...

 

[DevTech]

3 minutes ago, rdlenk said:

Having been part of the Project Stream beta I can't say enough good things about it.  I was blown away with the quality and response of the game and platform. It was a pretty amazing experience and I can't wait to see where it goes. It could really be the start of a big shift in gaming that has a lot of potential ramifications. 

One ramification is the total destruction of personal computing power in favor of the Evil Empire. With governments starting to look intently at Google and Facebook and Twitter, this kind of "NO Power To The People" device is very disturbing.

 

Please oh please give me TITAN RTX power in every PC and eventually in every cellphone!

 

[+rdlenk Subscriber²]

5 minutes ago, DevTech said:

One ramification is the total destruction of personal computing power in favor of the Evil Empire. With governments starting to look intently at Google and Facebook and Twitter, this kind of "NO Power To The People" device is very disturbing.

 

Please oh please give me TITAN RTX power in every PC and eventually in every cellphone!

 

That's a little more doom and gloom than I think is necessary. I am no fan of Google but they aren't the only ones entering the market with this kind of tech. Competition will help keep things somewhat equalized.

 

Personal computing power has been pretty stagnate or even on the decline for a while as more and more mainstream users depend on their phones. There is a good chance that tech like this could even revitalize the PC gaming market as the barrier of entry will be significantly reduced.

[DevTech]

https://www.stadia.dev/about/

 

Hardware Stack

 

• Custom 2.7 GHz hyperthreaded x86 CPU with AVX2 SIMD and 9.5 MB L2+L3 cache
• Custom AMD GPU with HBM2 memory and 56 compute units capable of 10.7 teraflops
• 16 GB of RAM with up to 484 GB/s of performance
• SSD cloud storage

 

Software Stack

 

• Linux - Debian version of the world’s most popular open-source OS
• Vulkan - Next-gen cross-platform graphics and computing API with custom layers optimized for cloud-native gaming
• Platform - Our SDK provides robust APIs for managing games, like saves, multiplayer modes, suspend/resume gameplay and more

 

Developer Tools

 

• Unreal Engine - Epic Games' official support for Stadia means you’ll have access to the latest technology and features of the world’s most powerful creation engine.
• Unity - Unity is the world’s most widely used real-time 3D development platform, enabling developers to create rich, interactive experiences.
• Custom tools - A suite of debugging and tuning tools help you get the most out of our platform, from fine-tuning streaming performance to diagnosing GPU crashes
• Industry tools - Current dev tools include Havok®, RenderDoc, Visual Studio, LLVM, AMD RadeonTM2 GPU Profiler, IncrediBuild, UmbraTM 3, FaceFX and Intelligent Music Systems, plus we’re constantly expanding to deliver a familiar development experience

 

Can I port an existing Unity game to Stadia? (--Nick Rapp, Lead Engineer, Unity)

 

• Yes, like all new platforms, Stadia will have the same Unity features and support developers are used to today. That means existing projects can be ported; however they’ll need to be updated to use the correct version of Unity.
• Stadia will use Vulkan, so for developers that have written (or will write) custom rendering plugins and shaders that target Vulkan, please keep this in mind.
• Stadia will also use a Linux-based operating system, meaning any native plugins must be compatible with Stadia's OS. For development, you’ll be able to use the editor on the Windows PC you’re using today - simply target Stadia as the platform to build.
• Finally, Stadia will be an IL2CPP platform, so runtime game code must be compatible with IL2CPP in order to work on Stadia.
• We’re excited at the huge potential of the Stadia platform. Follow us on Twitter as more details on Stadia development for Unity become available later in 2019.

 

[DevTech]

And then Stadia comes with built-in LSD:

 

Behind the Scenes with Stadia’s Style Transfer ML

 

https://www.stadia.dev/blog/behind-the-scenes-with-stadias-style-transfer-ml/

 

I can't upload the GIF since it is 27 megs and man, oh boy, wow, a file that huge can break the internet!

(Yeah rockin' it like it's 1998 here at Neowin!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Yogurth]

Id Software is convinced Stadia is the real deal. Here is an Ars article on it...

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/googles-multiyear-quest-to-overcome-ids-stadia-streaming-skepticism/

[Daniel F. Administrators]

The lag issue should be solve able. Nvidia has cracked it with the shield and its Geforce Now Cloud service...