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F E E L A T H O M E www.azindiatimes.com PAGE - 5 Apr 2019 1-844-AZINDIA Goodbye Gaming Console. Hello Cloud Gaming! harikrishna@gmail.com Hari Gottipati Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver. tel : 480-577-2171 Undoubtedly cloud is rising at a faster rate and everyone is looking at the cloud to leverage it for their computing and storage needs. Serverless is a concept popu- larizing cloud where you will not worry about the infrastructure, upfront provi- sioning, and pay what you use. It's no brainer that applications with unpredicta- ble scale and time-to-market requirements benefit most from serverless compute and storage. Be it a CPU based or GPU based complex application, the cloud has a solution. However, one area where the cloud is not ready for migration is gam- ing as it requires not only massive computing, but it also requires faster render- ing, typically at the rate of 60 frames per second. The biggest hurdle with game streaming is minimizing lag. If we move the computing from gaming console to the cloud, then it requires ultra-fast streaming to provide the same experience of a gaming console. Combined with Gigabit broadband and 5G wireless networks, the cloud is getting ready to host the games and it could make gaming consoles obsolete. Hello Stadia At Game Developers Conference 2019, Google announced a gaming platform called Stadia, the plural form of a stadium, which will eliminate the gaming con- soles by letting you play games in 4K and 60 frames-per-second on almost any device - browsers, computers, TVs, and mobile devices. As long as you have a decent internet connec-tion, the platform will stream games to players by han- dling image processing and con-nections through the Google cloud. The game is hosted on the cloud and you just play the game on whatever display you’d like without lengthy downloads or installations. Also, you don’t have to worry about your gaming console being fast enough because Google will provide all the power your game needs and all you need is moderate internet connectivity. In 2019, Google will be spending $13 billion to beef up its infrastruc-ture. With GPU power of 10.7 teraflops, Stadia could make PS4 Pro (4.2 teraflops) and the Xbox One X (6 teraflops) obsolete. As it is not a dedicated set-top box or console, you can access the game from any- where you want and switch between the devices as needed. During the keynote, Google demonstrated someone playing a game on a Chromebook, then switching to a phone and PC, picking up from the point where the game left off in real time. Also, you can live-stream games on YouTube and play with your viewers. Crowd Play, a built-in feature for Stadia that allows players to jump into a multiplayer game on YouTube with their favorite streamers and YouTubers. Is connectivity an issue? Playing games online or remotely with others is not a new thing. The same con- nectivity issues that prevent streaming video, watching YouTube/Netflix, getting music, and playing an online game would continue to be the issues with Stadia as well. If you are able to watch Netflix in HD/4K without buffering, you will get a great Stadia experience. In 2018, Google offered a glimpse of project Stream, a technology that made it possible to stream the games through the Chrome web browser. With that technology, Google recommended and set a threshold of about 25 megabits per second in order to enjoy 1080p at 60 frames per second. Since then, Google made significant improvements to their encoder, streamer, and compression algorithms, to get 4K at 60 frames per second in about 30 megabits per second. Right now, Stadia can stream games with HDR and 4K resolution at 60 frames per second and in future, they are planning to achieve resolutions up to 8K at 120 frames per second. The lowest resolution is 720p - technically Stadia can go lower than that but Google decided not to go lower than 720p for an optimal experience. Even if the internet drops when you are in the middle of a game, Google has a technology that will maintain the frame rate before it drops the resolution. Stadia will always try and maintain the frame rate as best as it can. Controller Google also revealed a specialized controller for Stadia that will help players. It is not necessary to enjoy Google’s gaming experience and players can also hook up an existing controller that uses the USB with HID standard or Bluetooth which includes the Microsoft's accessibility controller for Xbox. Other efforts Around the same time Google announced Project Stream with Ubisoft's Assas- sin’s Creed Odyssey game, Microsoft announced Project xCloud, which it refers to as “global game-streaming technology” that will allow users to play their con- sole and Windows PC games on mobile devices and tablets paired with an Xbox Wireless Controller through Bluetooth, and it is also playable using touch input. Project xCloud supports 4G and 5G cellular networks and uses Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud compu-ting service. Right after Google announced Stadia, Microsoft’s head of the Xbox gaming team Phil Spencer sent an internal memo calling Google's announcement is a valida- tion of the path he embarked on two years ago. As per the memo, which was pub- lished by thur-rott.com , indicates that Phil didn't see any big surprises in their announcement alt-hough he was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new Wi-Fi controller. He also mentioned in the memo: “ Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big ”. Other players are also trying to enter into Cloud gaming market. While Amazon is reportedly developing a similar service that could launch in 2020, Apple is plan- ning a subscription service for games, which is yet to be confirmed. The service is dubbed as Netflix for games, allowing users to play a list of titles with a subscrip- tion fee. What's surprising is, Walmart is also trying to enter the fray according to the US Gamer " the re-tail giant is exploring its own platform to enter in the now-competitive video game streaming race ”. Acknowledgement: Thank you Kiran Mudiam, Ph.D. for the article sugges- tion.