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Comment by rococode | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad.

Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN (connecting to another computer in the same house).

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I use Stadia pretty regularly as my sole gaming platform, and so far its been pretty amazing for games like Assassin's Creed and even FPS games like Destiny 2. I encounter noticeable stutters a couple of times every hour or so, but for the most part its as if I'm playing on actual local hardware. Also, the loading speeds are blazing fast - its made me very optimistic about how the gaming experience can improve in the years to come due to the underlying compute being elastic instead of limited to your own box. I'm someone who held off on buying a console for years due to the cost, so for me Stadia has been an absolute blessing.

I think this is an area where instead of optimizing local hardware, it's all about optimizing network connections. Stadia works great for me for 10-20 minutes until I get a 10 second long stutter (WiFi, router in a different room). I'd imagine the experience is way better with an ethernet connection. I just wish for single player games, Stadia cloud could detect I'm lagging and pause the game.

Surprisingly stadia actually works pretty well with a few caveats. Primarily hardwired and using chromecast. I have a subscription, but i'm at the point of cancelling because my original intent was gaming when traveling, now we've been home so long I just use PC / Consoles.

The problem here is that Luna is going to soft launch with all the features + that Stadia was to launch with (but has yet to deliver). If they succeed, Stadia is going to be in a weird situation. The power of Twitch shouldn't be underestimated and it steals the thunder of the killer feature w/ was youtube advertised.

It looks like another Half Baked Google product thats going to be crushed by competition.

I have fiber at the moment and I've been using GeForce NOW on my wireless home network. I've been playing FPS games (Insurgency) and to be honest, I don't even notice I'm streaming outside of rare glitches.

I'm positive it's the future of gaming. There are countless benefits for both users (don't need to buy a dedicated gaming machine, don't need to download or install games, improved security when you're just streaming video instead of installing all sorts of software) and developers (easier to prevent cheating, stops piracy, subscription model for pricing). Previous methods of gaming just feel outdated in my opinion.

I feel like it's an easy prediction. Gaming desktops will become more and more niche over the next decade or two. Consoles will turn into streaming devices with controllers. I imagine next generation consoles will have a cheap version that just stream games on a monthly subscription, and a pro version with actual hardware. Two generations after that will just be streaming only versions.

I play regularly, usually the experience is pretty flawless, there is the occasional stutter once in while and\or degradation of graphics.

When it works well (and it usually does for me) I think most non-pro players won't notice any gameplay impacting latency.

The biggest issue right now with the service is lack of games.

And the lack of other players in multiplayer games...

I played PUBG on stadia with users on consoles. It shows a little gamepad next to their name, whereas mine had the stadia logo. I never actually encountered another stadia player.

Unfortunate PUBG did not support cross-play like that for keyboard-and-mouse users.

I think you can try it free? I did a few months ago thinking it would suck but it's surprisingly good.

I have doubts about google's commitment to it and most of my reservations have to do with that rather than the service itself. I've played hundreds of hours on it on all kinds of internet connections and it's been great. I've even played destiny 2 through my phone's hotspot and it worked fine.

I was going to give Stadia a try when Doom Eternal came out because I wanted to play it in 4K and only have a PS4. Backed out because of their announcement that it was not native 4k, as originally promised, but actually upscaling. Whether or not I would have known the difference is another story but the backtracking on something they had been so adamant about left a bad taste in my mouth.

I also don't like their subscription model, TCO is way too high compared to console. You pay monthly and you still pay full retail price for the games.

I wound up getting Doom for PS4 and it's awesome. The HDR makes it look fantastic.

This bewildered me - they advertised 4k gaming and then it turned out the vast majority of games were running at like 1080p and being upscaled. Sending 1080p video at 4k seems incredibly wasteful and pointless.

Technically upscaling with machine learning can be amazing, and it's what most real-time renderers use nowadays. You won't be able to tell, and it can even add detail if the network is good. I'm not an expert though, but I suppose it can only get better?

According to this site there seems to be quite a few games that stream at 4K 30fps and 4K 60fps

https://stadiagamedb.com/

I was very skeptical about Stadia until a friend made me try it so we could play Destiny together.

Totally blew me away. I still can't believe I'm streaming a fast paced shooter game in multiplayer and it works without a hitch.

Using Stadia with my Chromecast wired to ethernet has been pretty incredible. Very rarely have I felt like I had a degraded gaming experience.

If you're curious, you can try out GeForce Now free of charge with any of its supported titles, they just limit your sessions to 1 hour and deprioritise you in the queue when there's high demand.

I've found it generally works very well, but with the occasional hiccup.

I can't comment on how it compares against the other services, I presume they're roughly as good as each other.

I've been enjoying Stadia on a 2013 Linux PC with a ~30/8 (down/up) Mbps wi-fi. Both Destiny 2 and AC: Odyssey work great. Occasional hiccups, yes. No more than a few per hour. It doesn't bother me. The fact that I'm playing recent games on an old Linux PC still blows my mind occasionally.

I've tried both Nvidia GeForce Now and Stadia, and Stadia has been a much better experience. GeForce Now takes a few minutes to launch, and it's really wonky to tweak your mouse settings to make your mouse speed match what you're used to on your own computer. I also experienced terrible input lag on GeForce Now even on 600mbps wired internet and after turning on all of their recommended settings.

Stadia has felt pretty magical, I just open chrome and go, I don't notice any input lag, and I also have the option to grab my controller and play on a TV. It has a few hiccups every now and then, but nothing bad at all. It feels like the future.

i haven't tried stadia, but i have tried sony's alternative (PS Now) with a couple games. i'm a pretty casual gamer, and was playing some pretty casual games (grand theft auto, some car racing sim, and something else i forget), i'm not going to be as sensitive to latency as a lot of people probably, and it was completely unplayable for me.

i guess it must work for some people, but my 100Mb canadian internet was definitely not good enough.

Yeah, I tried it back when there was a free trial. For what it was, it was pretty impressive to be able to just start playing the game without installing anything. That being said the experience is just plain worse than playing locally. Resolution/graphics quality was worse, input lag was definitely present, and other limitations like lack of crossplay. It's got its niche but I probably won't use it again.

I tried OnLive, LiquidSky and GeForce Now.

Cloud gaming when done right is amazing.

OnLive was nothing short of magic in ~2010-2011: quite smooth, easy-to-use, decent library of games (for their time).

LiquidSky (in limbo/defunct for the past 3-4 years) was actual magic: you could play any game from your regular Steam library, and it would be streamed to you. No "your game doesn't support our service yet".

GeForce Now is sorta decent, but suffered (and probably still suffers) from connection issues, long wait times, clunky library selection and installation process etc.

Latency is really only an issue for fast paced action games (FPS, bullet-hell twin-stick shooters, precision platforming). So you need to be really close to a datacenter with a good line to it to not "suffer" (for some definition of "suffer"). I played Batman Arkham <something> on OnLive and a friend of mine played DOOM beta on LiquidSky, and we were both more than satisfied.

I believe there is (was?) a trial for Stadia Pro if you want to try it.

Having tried it myself, I don’t think you’re off point on anything you’ve said.

The latency is substantial (and I’m on Google Fiber) and my wi-fi caused regular hitches. Which could be my hardware, but it’s not like my hardware (Unifi gear) or situation (typical suburban environment) is odd.

Can't comment on Stadia, but my Unifi UDM and WiFi routers weren't good enough for reliable game streaming. Had to go wired. With Gigabit Fiber (Centurylink in my case) it works extremely well on several cloud game streaming services.

I beta tested it for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and it was pretty damn good. ~100ms on wifi didn't feel noticeable to me and I only disconnected a couple of times over a period of 2 months or so. This was on fiber, but not hardwired into the router.

My issue with using it is their software model. Google is notorious for closing things I use and enjoyed, and I don't want to effectively throw away AAA titles

> Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN

I'm not convinced by this, because RDP feels laggy even remoting to a vm on the same machine

I haven't tried Stadia. I tried PS Now on a wired connection, using a 1Gbps fiber connection.

It's not ready. I played Infamous 1 and 2 and it would get choppy during complex events and the latency was noticeable. Sometimes my character would just keep moving until it registered on their server that I let go of the joystick.

If I had a bad experience what chance does everyone else have on slower connections?

Not Stadia, but I've tried PS Now on Playstation 4. At least for the older-gen games it worked fairly well, but occasionally it'd get choppy. I'm not sure if that was a transient network blip on my end or somewhere between my end and whatever backend services PS Now runs on (AWS?).

Not Stadia, but PS Now. Ignoring the fact that it lets you install some of the games, the latency isn't really a big deal. It's nice having access to so many games as well that I can play in minutes.

I tried it out. I'm a very casual gamer. Some types of games cannot tolerate the extra latency. GRID, a racing sim, was basically unplayable. The input latency was too noticeable.

PUBG, on the other hand, was perfectly playable (although I have never played it natively so can't compare). If I were a skilled player, I might have noticed the latency, hard to say.

I'm on Linux, so I was interested to try games I can't run easily. Unfortunately, chrome on Linux doesn't have VP9, so 4k resolution was not possible. It also didn't fit my wide-screen aspect ratio, so I had black bars on the side.

You can compile it yourself or some such hacky thing, but the whole point of Stadia for me was not to futz around with that stuff.

Note that this was from Vancouver, with hard-wired ethernet on ~300Mb/s cable. If you are closer to the server (California?), your results may differ.

I've played a lot of PUBG on PS4, and playing on Stadia is uncompetitive. I've switched back to PS4. A friend also switched back to PS4 for PUBG. I do not recommend PUBG for competitive FPS, but something like coop FPS is fine.

Not stadia but geforce now and I like it a lot.

I also like GeForce Now a lot. Works great with Gigabit Fiber.

Can't wait for them to upgrade their servers to Ampere GPUs.

Another game streaming experience: I sideloaded the XBox Game Pass app on Nvidia Shield TV Pro and stream the xCloud games that way. Input lag feels acceptable in this unsupported environment.

Same here. I like their model, as I can play most of my already-bought games on my MacBook. I don't want to buy another copy of a game on a new platform.

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