I got an email about a free trial to OnLive and I decided to give it an honest shot. I have a decent computer for gaming even though the parts are getting old, but I also have a decent connection for what's recommended for OnLive. I have 12Mb down/768Kb up which normally realistically sits at 10Mb down/512Kb up which is what it was at according to speedtest.net when I started OnLive. I went in not really sure what to expect, but prepared to expect the best or worst. First test was a simple game World of Goo Visuals looked perfectly fine compared to when I normally play it. Occasionally there was what looked like compression artifacts around text. Lag: God awful. Mouse movements seemed to lag behind at least half a second if not more. It made this type of game really hard to play. Second test was Assassins Creed II Visuals: At first it looked decent. It was obviously not running at high quality settings because textures on many things looked terrible, but then this happened. http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2969/aconlive.png The thing is what network problem? I ran speed test again and they were still at their norm, and I did not have anything downloading or uploading in the background. It eventually just kept getting worse until it kicked me out of OnLive. Lag: Not really as noticeable in this. Third and Final test, Unreal Tournament III I wanted to test a game I actually had installed to compare things visually to see how they looked. Unfortunately for OnLive I think the local game won.. by far. First of all let me say something I'm not one of those people with an insanely overpriced computer my video card is a Geforce 7900 GTO which came out almost exactly 4 years ago. I have an older AMD X2 2.8GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM. On my monitor at max resolution (1920x1080) I can run UT3 at low-medium settings and maintain a respectable framerate. Well here's what the game looks like actually running on my computer.. http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/5086/ut3local.png And this... is OnLive... http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/749/ut3onlive.png Honestly I was almost thrown off playing UT3 physically on my system due to OnLive's slight lag. The only way I would recommend this service to someone is if they honestly have a really crappy video card and an incredibly good connection.
As expected, these cloud based gaming services are all talk. By the way, that Assassins Creed II image looks as if he's about to lick someone out :lol: Yakumo
Yep. Quite disappointing too. I don't know how they can ever make these work better in the near future. And the way I see it, If my PSP can't remote play over an ADhoc connection sitting 3 feet from the console well. Then I doubt any of this "Game over the net" shit can ever work
Just like XBAND (is the same guys) this thing is way too early for today's tech. Now TBH the idea is great: the other day I was about to get a 5870 card and fuck, now only I've to pay $400 for it but another $100 for a proper PSU, because that GPU needs as much power as the rest of my rig. With every next gen (which is once per year more or less) GPUs get more power hungry, and therefore more expensive to maintain. In the long run remote play like OnLive will make sense for most, but thats only when we get 1Gbps lines and quantum servers.
Thanks for the review! I was forwarded an email to try it out, too. However, I passed and it doesn't look like I'm missing out on much.
True, yet I need at least a 600W PSU for a midend system, and highends are already using 1400W PSUs. It's like cars: ICEs are much more efficient now than 30 years ago, yet any shitbox compact in the 70s had an efficiency of 60-50MPG, while today most gas compacts struggle to get pass 36MPG. Why? because cars are also more complex and heavy than back then, same with computers. About OnLive, as I said it will only become an option once it actually works and the complexity of PC gaming becomes too much for most consumers.
http://kotaku.com/5655455/onlive-monthly-subscription-fees-are-dead following your review the service is now entirely free. And free beats good quality for most folks;P
Sorry for the bump but I just installed this on my Macbook, as I did I got a notification informing me that as a BT customer I get every game free for 3 months with no bandwidth charges!! Have to say, it's bloody impressive, I'm on a max 2mbps line and I've just made my way through the first few levels of DNF and it's almost like running it natively, I thought there was mouse lag but in fact it was just my Magic Mouse which is awful for games. Whatever they've changed in the last year has made one hell of a difference.
It's not perfect but just had a quick multiplayer sesh on Homefront. Really good fun, well until my dad started his nightly torrent session of stuff he already has on DVD on the shelf above his PC
I remember being interested in OnLive since I first heard about it. I was also desperate to play Deus Ex Human Revolution but not really got the money to spend £35 on it. I noticed OnLive has games for £1 for new customers and so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and chose Deus Ex Human Revolution as my £1 OnLive game. I'm incredibly busy at the moment so I don't really have the time to do a thorough test, but the service is quite easy to use. The level of graphical detail was sufficient enough, though some of the artifacts and jaggies in game were quite annoying, as was the minor input lag and relatively long loading times. Prerendered Cut scenes etc were typically fine though. It has to be said that even though my PC can provide me with better visuals, even with the image compression the OnLive service provides a visual experience at a constant framerate which is vastly superior to my aging laptop. In fact if I had known this service had actually launched properly this year I wouldn't have even bothered building my new PC this summer as OnLive + my old laptop essentially makes my rather costly new PC somewhat redundant and it would save me a small fortune in electricity bills to boot! Ultimately my PC can give me a better gaming experience and the minor input lag may make gamplay on the hardest difficulties almost impossible, but for easy to normal difficulties or the casual gamer this service in its current form is definitely the future. The major issue I have at present is paying £35 per game. I've only really been shopping in the Steam sales lately and to pay £35 to then have the possibility of OnLive going bankrupt taking my digital rights with them isn't very inviting. A cross platform (Steam/GFWL/OnLive) serial key would alleviate this concern, as would some more major players getting involved and the death of rival services. I also sort of dislike that they changed the in-game colour of my Xbox 360 wired controller buttons to match their service branding, though thankfully that is all they changed and the button layout remains the same. From what I've seen so far I would at least reccomend people that are eligible pick up a game they desire for £1 and give it a twirl. If you can't even manage that they have 30 minute trials of many games. I had a blast on Duke Nukem Forever, didn't really get anywhere, tried Batman Arkham Asylum but the compression was noticeable because of the heavy use of darkness and DiRT 3 which looked good but I just plain sucked at. I'm quite tempted to pick up their £7 monthly subscription, though I'm incredibly busy at present and when I have gaming time I'd really like to plough through Deus Ex Human Revolution first. Most of the games in the bundle look pretty shitty or uninteresting to be honest but there are enough gems in there to potentially make it worth the money, especially if the software library changes occasionally. Either way the least you could do is check it out and given that OnLive supports both Windows 32, 64, Mac OS X, Apple iOS and even some Android gadgets you more than likely have a device capable of using the service and if your budget is tight or your equipment is old you could potentially put off making your next major hardware purchase for several more years! Likewise if you have more money than sense and own gadgets running some or all of the above OS then you can pretty much continue your game savewherever you are, provided of course you have a decent internet connection. OnLive in its current form is a good 4/5. Reduce artifacts, jaggies, input lag and price of games and this would be a real 5/5 service.
Yeah, just tried Arkham Asylum and Dirt 3 and they were both really laggy and looked like shit. Plus there's a really weak selection of games. This has potential, but the execution sucks.
Arkham Asylum running on my system. Smooth as silk. Guess it just comes down to luck as to how overloaded the servers are etc. I still think it's an amazing piece of tech. Considering my laptop will buffer HD video regularly and yet I can stream a whole game with inputs and outputs on top. Without a next gen console or a powerful laptop this has really made my day.
The one time I tried OnLive, I was surprised at how smooth the video was - it seemingly ran at 60fps in HD, which is unlike any other video streaming service I've seen on the web - but I found it to be pretty much unplayable due to about a second delay between the input and what was happening on screen. It's a promising technology, but I don't think it's quite reached its full potential yet.
I'm running the OnLive micro console from Japan on ~72Mb down/~45Mb up connection and even though everytime I start it up, it gives me a potential lag notice, it works better than when I tried it at my parents' place in the States. Compared to the real deal, OnLive just won't be able to compare from a visual/audio standpoint. Even though it does support 1080p, you can see the compression artifacts very clearly on a large monitor (mine is 65"). Audio is Pro Logic II so no lossless quality there but what it does do, I think is done very well. The average consumer is no AV geek and it performs fine for them. Quite frankly, with the evolution of their tech, I can see someone buying them out or partnering with them in the future especially once the service is usable from tablets. Doing a side by side comparison of my gaming PC, i7 960 + 8 GB DDR3 + Radeon 5870 2GB, running Metro 2033 vs OnLive Metro 2033 is pretty telling.
It worked really well for playing Deus Ex. Although playing with a mouse is hit or miss, playing with the controller was a ton better. It wont be replacing dedicated setups, but if I can get a game on sale for OnLive, Ill pick it up like that. The fact of the matter is that I love being able to play in bed, on my Macbook Air, something that just wont happen otherwise, so for the 12.50 I paid for Deus Ex, I loved it.
