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Comment by machdiamonds | Hacker News Reader

The best gaming headset on the market would have to be able to connect to a Windows PC. The M2 chip in the headset doesn't have the power to run an intensive game at 4K resolution for each eye. Even if the headset could be tethered to a Mac for additional power, the GPUs in Macs don't come close to the capabilities of the 4090, which itself struggles to support 2K per eye for demanding games. One potential solution could be foveated rendering, which has shown some performance improvements on the Quest Pro and PSVR2, albeit not significantly. However, it's possible that Apple's implementation of this might yield better results.

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I still believe that for the masses (think console gamers and pc gamers without the gaming rig) cloud gaming will be the future.

I've been playing fps/rts/rpg games through GeForce Now on a MacBook M1 and so far there's few obvious drawbacks - good internet required, slight input lag which can be annoying for some FPS games sure, and not all games are available yet - but for those who only play a few games regularly, it's also much better than running the game on an i3/i5 Windows laptop.

I agree, the prospects for cloud gaming do seem promising. However, we can't forget that in VR, latency is a much more important factor. One solution could be for companies to establish datacenters near high-population areas to guarantee low latency. But, I believe a more effective approach might involve advanced foveated rendering coupled with technologies like DLSS. At present, it seems like a viable strategy for both Apple and Meta would be to sell "boxes" equipped with console-grade hardware that can wirelessly connect to their headsets, providing additional compute.

> I agree, the prospects for cloud gaming do seem promising.

Every attempt so far has failed, spectacularly. What is promising about that?

GeForce Now, Luna, Xbox Cloud Streaming, PS Cloud, Shadow, and a few others are still around. GeForce Now is especially awesome, being Nvidia's own offering with access to their latest GPUs at a very reasonable price point.

After thirty years of desktop gaming PCs, I sold mine and just use GFN now. It's completely silent (no fan), minor lag (only matters for competitive shooters), and much cheaper than maintaining a high end gaming rig.

Compared to consoles, it has much better graphics, can be played anywhere where you have good internet, supports mouse/keyboard, ultrawide, 120Hz, etc.

Compared to the Stream Deck, it has much better graphics, much longer battery life (it's just streaming video, not rendering on device), and no heat or fan noise. I also sold my Steam Deck because GFN plus a streaming portable (Logitech gCloud) was way more ergonomic.

Did cloud streaming really fail, or is it just a niche? It's come a long way since OnLive. Stadia was a royal fuckup but not because of its technology; Google just had no idea how PC gaming culture works. Their competitors are still around and doing fine, if not making billions.

It is still a very useful tech that I use daily.

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