AirConsole – Your browser is the game console, your smartphone is the gamepad | Hacker News Reader

AirConsole – Your browser is the game console, your smartphone is the gamepad

airconsole.com

151 pointsmorgam63 comments

This is technically impressive, but as a game console falls flat for action games. The 3 NES games i tried did acknowledge my inputs, but were unplayable due to three factors:

    1. latency
    2. lack of tactile feedback from my phone
    3. the weird decision to have the d-pad work on a swipe
       basis instead of press&hold, which increases input
       latency even more and forbids quickly switching input direction

For RPGs and other turn-based games it would probably be fine.

Edit: Just remembered that not all games are action-oriented.

this could be pretty cool for multiplayer turn based games. especially if there was mobile app that could easily cast to a TV in the background.

I recommend trying the games that were specifically developed for AirConsole ;)

My first impression was the same as Mithaldu, but then I tried one of the other games and it was more responsive.

I think that the NES emulator is bad advertising for your (very nice) product.

I also didn't like the swiping, though had no problem with latency.

The swiping does make sense from one perspective - it's hard to hit an exact spot/region on your phone repeatedly without looking at it. Swiping removes the chance you're going to tap in the wrong place/wrong direction. It's a trade-off.

I assume the reason they went w/ swipe is to around the lack of multi-touch on a browser issue.

My first impression: Had my volume turned up and accidentally moved my cursor over the power button. Now I'm deaf and never coming back. I can't think of a recent example where playing sound effects when hovering over an element has been a good idea.

Yeah, except in games ...

Don't blame others for your fault.

Devices don't usually make a sound before you press the power button...

Is this ironic?

I have my sound at the volume level it always is: between 50% and 100%

Luckly the sound was going through the speakers. It was still very awkward to have the speakers produce one of the loudest sound they ever produced.

I wrote something similar to this for playing NES games, just start the server and navigate to it with a desktop and mobile and it should work out the box.

https://github.com/olahol/greasyphone

Me too. See Emotely/BrassMonkey products that came out of it: http://francoislaberge.com/blog/my-time-at-brass-monkey/

And me too :) Except that it's not a server that you have to run: it's a cloud application where you can host your games to play them later (using either your keyboard or your smartphone as controller)

Website: http://start9.io

Neat, gonna check this out later

I don't know if I'd agree with branding it as a "console". Platform might be a better word. Console implies it's a self-contained set of hardware, which this isn't.

Good proof of concept, probably not a good business though. What makes this different from something like Kongregate, where I don't have to use my phone as a controller?

What would be really cool is: your browser is the game console, your gamepad is the gamepad.

That should be possible soon. Chrome Canary has experimental support for the Web Bluetooth API.

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/07/interact-w...

https://webbluetoothcg.github.io/web-bluetooth/

Or you could always use the Gamepad API - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad

There is no QR code to connect the smartphone? I had to type the full URL and that code ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

I cannot test it now, how is the latency? It sounds like the biggest problem you could have with this kind of technology.

It works smoothly and without much lag. The phone GUI is well executed.

Our game servers are running on Google Cloud Compute Infrastructure. We are running in all available datacenters to be as close to the user as possible to reduce the latency. Sending all our commands through the cloud allows us to make everything browser based, without any setup required, like downloading apps, connecting bluetooth or joining specific WIFI networks. We'll try to improve it even further later this year by introducing WebRTC.

Many of our games try to make up for the controller latency by adjusting the position of the player to where they would have been without the lag (Quickminds, AirShields, Hitparade).

I'm on a 300mb fiber connection and there was zero noticeable latency, very impressive.

WebRTC is the way to go here. Is your code open-source? I have plans to build just such a library, but could add it to yours instead.

at the very least, you should double your latency... which is not good for 3dshooter games

why no support for firefox ?? A bit of a latency but could be a network problem. Kudos to the developers.

I once built firefox app, that works also on firefox browser.

https://github.com/tauho/pult

reminds me of the experiments from chrome a few years ago.

https://chrome.com/supersyncsports/

https://chrome.com/racer

None of the NES games seems to work for me they just show the first screen (not even completeting the shade-in animation) and freeze

edit: I'm on Opera 31 and Windows phone 8.1 (I know, weird)

Works for me... what browser are you using?

Tried and works for me too but not all of my custom roms

Couldn't get past Pak Pak first screen here.

It wouldn't even let me open the page on my WP8.1 phone.

The Jackbox Party Pack on Xbone uses the same concept. It works well since all of the games are trivia/word games so latency doesn't affect gameplay much.

It also makes it easy to write a bot for it: https://github.com/smoak/jackbox-bot

A touchscreen as an NES controller? Forget the latency and touch issues. NES controllers and game controllers generally are built like rocks compared to touchscreens. I see fields of cracked screens. A new controller is far cheaper than a new smartphone, making this concept a financial nightmare for users.

I have to ask - what on earth would you do with a virtual d-pad and two buttons that would cause your screen to crack?

Bossfights.

If you have two thumbs, two hands, wrapped around a device it doesn't take much to break things. Phone touchscreens are built on the assumption the user is looking at the screen, targeting an icon of some sort. I think people will use much more force when the aren't looking at the screen, when they are jabbing at a stationary icon/button hundreds of times during a play session.

I don't think very many people will be able to exert enough force to crack a screen with their thumbs unless they're holding it like an idiot.

If you manage to crack your screen by jabbing it with your thumb, I would expect the ghost of Bruce Lee to appear and ask you to teach him your way of kung fu. The PSI required would liquefy your thumb.

I could maybe see accidentally bending your phone with a death grip. But, even that requires a serious strain: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FwM4ypi3at0/maxresdefault.jpg

Here's several more

HappyFunTimes http://docs.happyfuntimes.net

Open Source. Unlike AirConsole it requires installing on a Mac/PC/Linux but conversely it doesn't require internet at a museum/installation

Idibex http://www.ibidex.com/ Unlike both HappyFunTimes and AirConsole requires you to install an app on the phone

Eddie Social Committee http://eddiessocial.com/

I like it, and it works for now, but there's definitely a latency issue for some of the games. Looks like the phone and browser are connected to the server through web sockets. I've tried something similar and I don't know if it'll scale. Why is phone input mandatory? I get the novelty of holding a controller but then this appeals only to console gamers.

As a side note, Apple's new Apple TV may pack enough hardware to run its own games, w/ the phone as a potential medium for a controller, so it'll be a tough space!

This worked pretty well, and good to see an API is available. I work for a company called Kahoot!, and we have a very similar approach for our learning games (https://getkahoot.com/).

I've noticed the company behind this is called n-dream - it looks like there's no relation to the games company nDreams, though a very similar name.

Are all development-positions for Kahoot based in Norway, or am I misinformed on this?

We're also hiring in London, and for a few roles in Austin.

This is awesome, had the same idea not too long ago. Was about to start a kickstarter campaign based on it, until life got in the way. Here's the prototype we built if anyone wants to mess around with it: https://github.com/SCastaneda/swipe-prototype

Nicely done! I wrote a small app to connect phone <-> computer and use it to control your mouse and keyboard. I've been having an extremely hard time getting users. It might be asking too much, but I would really love if you guys could share some numbers :)

Great work!

Would really love it if it has some single player games. Currently, I start a game and wait for minutes for other players to join but never find them.

Couldn't play a single game in the past 30 minutes

Was able to pair fine but when the game started my phone went to the lock screen, then the screen went want and only way for it to respond was to reset.

Impressively smooth. I'll spend more time messing around with it. One more reason to plug a Raspberry Pi to your TV!

I've seen Google do this a year or 2 ago... don't have the link handy though

this works impressively well

Are you guys hiring in Zurich? Sounds like an amazing project.

the sudden fullscreen on pressing the button can be a bit terrifying for entry level users...

neat though.

Really a very cool idea

Your browser is the game console. Your smartphone is the gamepad. AirConsole is FREE!

It's time to round up your friends for the latest multiplayer action. We're launching AirConsole with six awesome games: Hit Parade, Tic Tac Boom, PolyRacer, AirShields, QuickMinds and PadPoker. Check it out!

Love the idea! Been thinking about this myself for a while. Not having tested this fully, how well does this work in a chromecasted tab?

Just tested it, I see no difference. I agree a very good integration of technologies.

Similarly, my LG TV is using my smartphone touch screen as the smart remote control.

Slowly, we will be able to control/play everything from our smartphones or smart watches. My pet peeve: remote controlled washing machine.

You should learn that on HN you don't need marketing speech to get your message delivered.

You could try giving some insight about the technical stack you are using, challenges you have been facing and things that are more appealing to technical people.

AirConsole game developer here - A colleague and I made a game called Hit Parade which you'll find in the store. We work with Unity 3D, using it's webGL export. One challenge for me personally was optimising the game enough so it would run smoothly even on older computers.

Here is the link to our developers page: http://developers.airconsole.com/#/

I am an engineer at AirConsole and we are soon gonna write about some tech stuff too. We were just busy with the launch and all that stuff and wanted to let you know what we are here ;)

And it's NSFW in that it makes that hellish noise without warning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com