Google's Chrome OS revealed

[nw2001]

Under 60 FPS can NOT be gamed on. That's not even smooth. When you encoutner a smoke grenade, artillery or other sudden effect beleive me, you will suffer.

Im guessing you dont play games like crisis when they release do you.

60 FPS is kind of a ridiculous standard, I'm not even sure you'd tell the difference between 40 and 60, Perhaps I'm biased since I'm used to this crap computer of mine that gets 15 fps in WoW, All you've done with each post is look like you dont know what you are talking about.

[hdood]

Maybe his logic is that if you can get 60 FPS under average load, you might be able to get 25 under heavy load and thus the whole game would be playable.

Of course you could also just turn the quality settings down a little. As for HD video, I'm guessing that the ION has a dedicated video decoder/post-processor like most modern graphics cards do, and thus handles it just fine.

[PurePhoenix]

Mate i've administrated a gaming orientated internet cafe for 7 years.

Beleive me when i say 60 is unplayable on any decent difficulty setting and it majorly hampers your performance against human players.

No, the game really isn't playable in an enjoyable sense until you're getting at least 80 fps consistantly.

I'm guessing that the ION has a dedicated video decoder/post-processor

And like most modern graphics cards, it doesn't work properly. Meaning you can't USE hardware decoding on it unless you stick to h264 standards. Which most content does not adhere to.

[hdood]

And like most modern graphics cards, it doesn't work properly. Meaning you can't USE hardware decoding on it unless you stick to h264 standards. Which most content does not adhere to.

HD content is pretty much exclusively H.264 or VC1, both of which are supported by Nvidia and ATI's video decoders.

[Syanide]

One thing about this OS people seemed to be forgetting, it's open source, and I'm pretty sure, that just like with any other Linux distribution, there'll be customized forks out there. I was just checking out the Chromium web site, seems to me there are ways of adding your own packages (not sure if I understood this correctly) to the system.

Imagine a Chromium OS based fork with extended feature list (say off-line features). Basically that would fly on any machine considering the system is probably the lightest one out there (or at least that's what they're promising).

I guess only time will tell, though. Fun times ahead.

[PurePhoenix]

HD content is pretty much exclusively H.264 or VC1, both of which are supported by Nvidia and ATI's video decoders.

I'm not debating that. The codec is supported, but only at strict bitrate and resolution settings, otherwise known as h264 standards.

Most content doesn't conform to h264 standards and therefore is not playable using hardware decoding.

One thing about this OS people seemed to be forgetting....(etc)

And it's a nice thing to have an open-source OS. But it's still not a guarantee that 3rd party releases will be compatible with the cloud server.

It's also not guaranteed that once the project reaches fruition that it will still be open-source.

At the end of the day if i could run it on a laptop and customise it how i saw fit, then most of my worries are rather unfounded.

However after perusing the article here on neowin, that certainly isn't the impression i'm left with.

[hdood]

I'm not debating that. The codec is supported, but only at strict bitrate and resolution settings, otherwise known as h264 standards.

Most content doesn't conform to h264 standards and therefore is not playable using hardware decoding.

Which is plain wrong. H.264 does not define fixed bitrates and resolutions, and the video decoders have no such limitations (although they do have an upper one).

[sundayx Veteran]

Can someone simply explain to me why Google is restricting to only SSD, not very economical then if it's a lightweight OS?

[PurePhoenix]

Well, it's a linux flavour in essence, so it can.... can't it?

Which is plain wrong. H.264 does not define fixed bitrates and resolutions, and the video decoders have no such limitations (although they do have an upper one).

Prove it, or get out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC and various other resources show H264 profile standards must be applied or video playback will not be possible.

This is especially true of the PSP, Xbox360 and other consoles which only support a few of the profile standards.

Trying to play content via DXVA that doesn't match h264 profile standards, results in a non-active black screen when MPC is fullscreened.

That's easily the 7th time i've caught you fabricating information hdood. Quit it.

[hdood]

Prove it, or get out.

You want me to prove that it doesn't and that they don't? How about you instead prove that they do. Go on, direct quotes from the standards and Nvidia/ATI documentation/whitepapers.

and various other resources show H264 profile standards must be applied or video playback will not be possible.

Profiles do not define bitrates and resolutions. Not just that, but the modern video decoders support up to high profile, and while it is possible to create a file that doesn't fit a profile (and thus isn't H.264), "most content" does not do this, nor does it have anything to do with bitrates and resolutions (your claim).

It's funny that you claim I'm fabricating information when you've now started talking about something completely unrelated to your original claim. Also, I wonder if you're counting the thread where you didn't even know that codecs are transforms as one of your "seven times."

[hdood]

Can someone simply explain to me why Google is restricting to only SSD, not very economical then if it's a lightweight OS?

Because it's only intended for "instant-on" type applications I would imagine. Solid state storage can be cheap when you're talking about small sizes.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Can someone simply explain to me why Google is restricting to only SSD, not very economical then if it's a lightweight OS?

Because it is cheaper than using a hard disk? We don't need 160GB of SSD storage here.

[sundayx Veteran]

I was thinking expensive SSDs but I think we're thinking SD cards and such here.

[Udedenkz]

And like most modern graphics cards, it doesn't work properly. Meaning you can't USE hardware decoding on it unless you stick to h264 standards. Which most content does not adhere to.

I'm not debating that. The codec is supported, but only at strict bitrate and resolution settings, otherwise known as h264 standards.

Most content doesn't conform to h264 standards and therefore is not playable using hardware decoding.

What kind of BS have you been reading?

I have recently made a bunch of research into this,

NVIDIA is the de-facto leader for video decoding. The Nvidia 8400M GS is the first GPU capable of HD h264 decode. ION's selling point is HD video offloading, so Nvidia will support the ION with quality drivers, etc.

ATi seems to lagg behind and has problems with certain standards and higher reference frames. Its HD series laptop GPUs are not all capable of matching the 8400M GS. It did support some formats that the NV 8x series did not though, ION is 9x series. I though about buying a latop with 3x series, but turns out it would have trouble with 1080p video...

Even Intel is capable of decoding video. I would avoid them as I do not think that Windows Media Player can use it. I would avoid them still because there is not way to game on one of those.

I had an 8600M GT and it played anything h264 I threw at it - I never looked at the bitrate, r. frames, etc. Never once did I find a file that didn't play.

Your statement " like most modern graphics cards, it doesn't work properly" might just translate to "like many computer users, I do not know what I am doing"

[pdmcmahon]

Loaded it up on vmWare Fusion last night. It is pretty clean and simple, surprisingly stable for an Alpha. Plus, it boots in 4 seconds, literally!

[FloatingFatMan]

Nice job shattering the forum borders there.

Now, want to try editing your post and putting those pics vertically instead of horizontally?

[pdmcmahon]

Nice job shattering the forum borders there.

Now, want to try editing your post and putting those pics vertically instead of horizontally?

Wow, maybe try decaf for a while. They look fine on my browser, dude.

I added the attachments via the browse/upload option, so tough breaks if it doesn't render properly on your layout.

[Dark_ph0enix]

Can someone simply explain to me why Google is restricting to only SSD, not very economical then if it's a lightweight OS?

That's my main gripe with this - for all the talk about "it does this / it doesn't do that", based on Googles own conference, unless you buy one of their "Pre-Configured" machines, you're not really gonna know all that much about it, as they're not, at least from what I've read, planning on offering it up "to everyone" - i.e., you can't just download an iso, burn it, and install it on an old laptop, (I know there's the VM route, but that's a different matter).

The other problem - SSD HDDs. Unless I misread the info coming out of Google, they're not suggesting Netbooks with SD cards, they're suggesting that their "Preferred" Hardware model, would be a Netbook with an SSD HDD. Last time I checked, those things weren't exactly cheap.

The arguments about Netbooks not being able to encode Video / HD content are slowly becoming old and outdated. I'm typing this from an ION powered machine, that can output to a monitor at 1920x1080, and which handles 1080p content without a hitch. What it can't do, however, is handle Flash HD, due to the lack of GPU support in Flash.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Again, while a 160GB SSD may not be cheap, the amount of flash memory required to boot this OS is quite small and thus the costs of that storage will actually be less than a 160GB HDD (nevermind the costs of a 160GB SSD). The reason why we don't need a 160GB SSD is because your data is stored on Google's online cloud. People don't really seem to get that this is a cloud computing project and they want it to work just like every other desktop OS. It isn't and it won't.

[Rudy]

Again, while a 160GB SSD may not be cheap, the amount of flash memory required to boot this OS is quite small and thus the costs of that storage will actually be less than a 160GB HDD (nevermind the costs of a 160GB SSD). The reason why we don't need a 160GB SSD is because your data is stored on Google's online cloud. People don't really seem to get that this is a cloud computing project and they want it to work just like every other desktop OS. It isn't and it won't.

Exactly, I wouldn't be surprised if it sat on 1-2gb of SSD (depending if they want to do lots of caching or not)

[Fluxii Media]

Again, while a 160GB SSD may not be cheap, the amount of flash memory required to boot this OS is quite small and thus the costs of that storage will actually be less than a 160GB HDD (nevermind the costs of a 160GB SSD). The reason why we don't need a 160GB SSD is because your data is stored on Google's online cloud. People don't really seem to get that this is a cloud computing project and they want it to work just like every other desktop OS. It isn't and it won't.

+1! Too correct.

[+Elі Subscriber²]

So Chrome OS is just a browser, hmmm I really dislike the idea and I don't think it will go anywhere other than netbooks and notebooks perhaps, it actually reminds me of the mid 90s WebTV/MSNTV set top boxes, basically you could access the internet via your TV, this case your PC becomes useless and becomes a web browser, what I have seen so far does not impress me really.

[Rudy]

So Chrome OS is just a browser, hmmm I really dislike the idea and I don't think it will go anywhere other than netbooks and notebooks perhaps, it actually reminds me of the mid 90s WebTV/MSNTV set top boxes, basically you could access the internet via your TV, this case your PC becomes useless and becomes a web browser, what I have seen so far does not impress me really.

Yea but WebTV was a crippled browser (it didn't even support everything the crappy browsers from the 90s supported). I know a lot of people would benefit from having a computer that only runs a web browser and nothing else (my grand-parents for one). Some people do buy computers just to browse the net and nothing else, these "computers" would allow them to do that without having a computer that has a chance of turning into a botnet node ;)

[Livin in a box]

I don't have an SSD hard drive or anything so if I try to use this dev build in a VM, will it not work?

[hdood]

I don't have an SSD hard drive or anything so if I try to use this dev build in a VM, will it not work?

It will work fine, although it doesn't do much useful.

They're talking about what they intend to run the finished product on. It isn't a standalone OS designed to be run on any machine, it's intended to be run on special lightweight machines with solid state memory (ie flash, which could be as little as 1GB for all we know), and no other products will be sold with it (assuming anything ever makes it to market at all).