>> Consumer internet access is nowhere near capable enough for it to make sense.

> But the issue isn’t bandwidth, really, is it?

No, bandwidth isn't the issue, I believe the op was referring to Latency.

I have 75mbps DSL and the Latency is garbage with 29ms being best case. I get frequent periods of 90+ms latency.

These seem like pretty common latency numbers for online gaming. I guess it feels worse when there isn't the movement prediction and other techniques to make the latency feel better since the game isn't running locally.

Those latency numbers are just for the connection to a test endpoint optimized for low/zero latency.

My "ping" on games like Battlefield are in the 150+ms range and I frequently get high latency dropped from matches.

When I had Cable my latency was around 15ms and my ping times were 90-120ms in Battlefield.

Well the issue is that you have input lag on your controller inputs. When I move my crosshair it takes a long to actually show the crosshair moving on screen.

In normal online gaming you do not have that issue. When I move my crosshair in cs:go it moves instantly.

Right, yeah that's kind of what I was trying to suggest. Honestly, I don't really see how this can work in the general case all that well given exactly what you are saying. I have seen some examples of fighting games being played over stadia, but many fighting games rely on frame-perfect input (and purists in communities like melee dont even use certain monitors due to this...)

Some games can be far more demanding than video streaming. HDR content, 4k, >60fps, 4:4:4 chroma (text looks horrible on 4:2:0). The requirement for realtime encoding instead offline encoding also means the codecs get less lookahead (as few frames as possible) which results in higher bandwidth requirements for a certain quality level compared to VoD.

Absolutely. Doing realtime video encoding is costly as it is, and the kind of hardcore gamers Stadia seems to be marketing for are definitely going to notice this. Some games are absolute codec poison, too.

Check out some of the Games Done Quick runs from last summer on Youtube, for example. A lot of the FPS games especially look dreadful. I'm sure Stadia can do better, but there's only so much bandwidth you can throw at this problem before it becomes untenable: https://twitter.com/dada78641/status/1207751665752911872

To me, the main issue with Stadia is not the product itself but the massive amount of extra CO2 that's generated trying to solve all these issues that were already solved decades ago by having your own cpu in your own personal computer in your own house.

You hit the nail on the head. The distribution of local server farms in Google's network is much, much larger than people assume (has been for awhile).

There's also a chicken-egg effect that Google's still interested in for secondary reasons. Reverse the question: assume Stadia takes off and becomes the "killer app" of gaming (big assumption, but still). Will local municipalities continue to tolerate crap networks if it means they're left out in the cold on this thing? Google's still interested in improved network infrastructure and has the clout to play incentive games to make that scenario more likely.

Negative Latency

https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/10/google-stadia-negative-l...

it will be shocking if this actually works without being a glitchy mess. I think it’s mostly an excuse to get people to stop talking about it.

It exists. RetroArch has it in some cores, for example. It was originally conceived of and made by emulator developers.

Of course, it gets really hairy really quickly. Technically, a perfect runahead/negative latency requires ([all possible input states] to the power of [amount of frames of lookahead]) frames to be rendered.

A single player NES game has 8 binary state controller buttons, so 2 to the power of 8 input states. You need to render 256 frames for each frame of runahead.

Now surely you're thinking you'll just prune the set of possible input states through smart prediction of what the player will probably do next, but it doesn't matter. The number very quickly grows to ludicrous amounts of processing for anything that isn't an antiquated console. Let alone for 3D FPSes that use float values for e.g. mouse state.

Edit: and I should add that if they even try to do this, the amount of CO2 they'll waste is going to be horrifying.

They use it in games like thumper. Also, this same technique is already used in many street fighter style fighting games. Its not new - and it works.

GGPO (the fighting game rollback implementation) simply predicts that each player's inputs on frame N+1 is the same as frame N. This works well enough for fighting games but may not generalize, especially in games with precise analog inputs. Also, there's a hard requirement that in order to roll back 3 frames the engine has to be able to simulate re-running those 3 within the timespan of one frame, which is sometimes an issue when trying to patch this onto a finished game.

It's primarily latency but bandwidth can also be an issue. Assuming you have a fast enough Internet connection (possibly not a safe assumption here in the U.S.), imagine your PC or mobile device(s) decide to update themselves or just generally get 'chatty' while you're playing. I've had this create problems for relatively bandwidth-sipping VoIP sessions so I'd imagine it would be much worse for a game experience.

Yes, the problem is latency. Which is actually not that big of a problem in some parts of the world. Also, if you have a metered connection bandwidth can become a problem. I have tested stadia at family and I was really impressed how well it works. Personally I am not going to pay for it and will keep using my consoles, but Stadia certainly works.

True but because of bufferbloat[1], bandwidth problems often also materialize as latency problems unfortunately.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat