Red Faction Armageddon PC Demo

The video compression is pretty bad actually, and with either onlive or the game theres input lag. It's either a software mouse in online or the game itself (whichever the reason is pretty damn bad.)

I know I have a fast enough speed because I can download at 2MB/s

 

I tried playing the RF demo but the muddy almost none loaded textures and lag even on my wireless 360 controller just made it a not very enjoyable experience. I'm still impressed, still think it's a great idea but the execution needs a tad more work.

 

Well i was expecting much worse, something around the same quality as YouTube or Gametrailers HD quality.

Input lag is always going to be there, i tried it with mouse/kb, then wireless 360 pad, and the pad felt less laggy, either that or i just have different expectations.

Not really something any of us would use, but for those with old hardware and fast internet, or those with laptops, it could be pretty sweet, and will only get better as their hardware improves, and the average net sweet improves.

 

the graphics were terrible, the combat was pretty standard fare boring, but the rebulding and destruction was cool

 

I'm quite impressed and I can for sure see this being a great alternative to consoles. Graphics are about on par with consoles, control responsiveness too..

As a PC gamer who will do anything for uber graphics, locked high frame rates and super responsive controls it might not appeal a great deal... but on a ****ty laptop at work or on a train this would be great

Once we have super fast broadband and uncapped speeds I can see this really being successful.

 

Also had a look at what others are playing, joining to spectate in seconds. This is really cool. Can watch any game and see what you like and then buy.

Great idea, now once the connection improve and they get uber server to up the graphics this will be the future.

I can see the stemming the piracy problem if the price is right, online games without cheaters? Well I'm sure those tossers would always find a way but not as easy.

I'm just browsing through all the games I've never played and watching people play, beats searching and checking out gameplay vids on youtube. Awesome.

 

There's obviously a limited number of games present right now but I've literally spent the last few hours just watching other people play in an almost sat right with them POV. It's really cool. I can only imagine what it would be like to have masses of games and players.

 

Same here, been spectating most games and done free trials on a dozen.

I just hopes this stays alive until technology improves, would be a shame for this to fail.

 

Just had a thought about this when my TV asked me to update the software on it.

I have an internet TV, as do many these days, it also has USB inputs, and this could very easily be implemented into TV's either form scratch, or even an update, no hardware needed, just a TV, a fast connection and a USB pad, or mouse/kb.

I've actually been using it alot, the fact you can play a demo seconds after clicking on it is pretty sweet, no downloading or installing.

It certainly won't replace proper gaming, but its a very good alternative.

 

wow, that was weird. i played red faction, then quit and started to watch like 20 separate games of people playing, then jumped in and started on games i haven't played before.

amazing potential ! few things though:


CONS:

Wan Connection quality Dependant
Lan Connection quality Dependant (no slow wifi or latency)
Low audio quality
incredibly low visual quality (video wise not graphics)
Broadband usage allowance constantly eaten
more than one home user of the Internet will eat your bandwidth and make the video stutter.
graphics will be kept back another 20 years unless someone stupidly clever can get cloud computing alternative where we all share each other processors.
blatant mouse lag (not as bad as id expect though)
entire game catalog would be at BT`s mercy.

PROS:

feels weird like watching a movie on tv vs the same movie you own on a dvd/bd. where a dvd/bd is better quality but there is that 'live' collective feeling when watching the tv vs the im a bit sad and lonely sat watching a movie in isolation feeling i.e you feel connected better in some way.

slick interface
unusually and fantastically quick to view others games and jump in.
potential for owners of fast connections to play good quality games on low end hardware.
potential for easy voice communication between not just players but different games (live xbox live)
undefined specs means there is in future a chance that you could see great graphics that you haven't seen before.

other weird things..

if i played a lot i could put the money i save on my KW gaming system onto an improved broadband connection, im literally seeing hardly any cpu usage and the computer is stone cold with no disc activity.. very strange but i quite like it. It means my comp room also stays cool and i can play easier at night.


would be a shame if this dies out but the hardware required as people constantly sign up will end up being immense and im just not sure its sustainable. Sure you can spend £2k on a gaming system and download games cheaply and easy through steam and they look amazing but by the same token the 750kbps video quality still isn't up to a clean direct feed 720p Hdmi connection from a cheap £120 games console and how many times can network latency slow that down thus introducing huge clumps of pixelation ?

I just think that VM or cloud stuff works good its a technical impressive. but its almost a reversal of power as at the moment everyone already has basic supercomputer power on their pc or games console @ the network Edge, surely we are in the ideal situation now?

as mentioned if there was a way of sharing PC/console and even phone CPU / GPU power to make one centralized gaming core then it might work out pretty good if people left their consoles and pc`s on all the time but again this method is also not friendly.

the only other way i can see it being a real alternative is if the program downloads smaller program / render systems for games that share the same render platform then you can contribute to the central core partially?


ultimately its just never going to work for me. i want to see 3d avatar style graphics and multi monitor at insane res, frame rate and quality

 

Wow...despite the obvious issues, this Onlive thing is pretty amazing! Holy cow. I did not know this existed. I'm going to be showing everyone now.

I have a 10mb cable connection and lag-wise it was pretty much perfect, but the framerate was fairly poor when things got busy in-game. Graphics look about as good as PS3 version of RF:G. I'd never actually pay for a game on Onlive the way things are now but it'd be great if you couldn't afford a PC/console or whatever.

 

Kinda deserves to be posted here too just because it's so weird, trailer for the in-game "sketch" mode with sketch music to match.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdQ2b1JOpRc&feature=player_embedded

 

wtf is this sh!t!!
am i the only one that thinks this cloud bullcrap is not the way!?:3eyes:
give us the .exe, bastards.

 

Well, it'd certainly make piracy alot more difficult if this type of service caught on.

But just imagine, in the future, you buy a game, only to be able to play it across something like onLive. The people who complain about Steam and whatnot would probably flip out even further.

 

I installed this Onlive last night to try the RFA demo.

While the tech is undoubtedly impressive, being able to dip in and out of games within seconds as well as spectate others playing them, I was appalled at the image quality which might be fine from the other side of the room but doesn't make for pleasant viewing up close on a 24" PC screen. I didn't encounter any stuttering or pauses but occasionally the quality of the image would drop drastically and suffer from macro-blocking akin to that of your average (poor quality) GameTrailers.com video. Perhaps, in the future when 1080p streaming is perfected this will be terrific but for now it's a flawed curiousity, a taster of what's to come as technology undoubtedly improves.

As for the demo itself, I enjoyed it even if it seemed to be running on medium settings at 720p; it's kind of like playing the Xbox 360 version minus the horrific screen tearing that version has but with much worst image quality. Personally, I would have preferred it if I could have ran it on my own machine to see it at its best but I have the game pre-ordered anyway.

 

P.S. I liked the way the Onlive menus are perfectly suited to the Xbox 360 controller with the Guide button bringing up their menu in-game, effectively acting like the Guide does on an actual Xbox 360. It was very slick. Shame about the image quality and the fact that we cannot customise the graphics settings ourselves though.

I was actually totally opposed to OnLive when I first read about it but now I can see that it has potential. While it won't replace installed games IMO, it could act as a great way for those to rent them as it seems hassle-free and perfectly suited for such things. They could add movie (and music) streaming too at a later date once they've worked out how to stream 1080p content without it degrading into blocks from time to time.

 

Don't think so, hackers will hack their server and download the game for the crackers.
Plus ATI/Nvidia and AMD/Intel will loose huge, cause people won't upgrade anymore..so i doubt this will become something mandatory.

 

i think you can even play it on a phone.

 

I'm sure someone hell bent enough could hack into their servers a few times till they have it sorted but who cares, I doubt that will happen.

As for ATI and Nvidia they can piss of to the server arena and make their money there as well as selling hardware for consoles or even merge. Either way they wont disappear and new GPU's will always be around.

A huge uptake in such a server for casual noobers would mean much bigger PC game sales and hopefully much bigger PC game investment from publishers.