This
March, a company called OnLivepromised
a gaming technology
that seemed almost too good to be true. The company said it could deliver
graphics-heavy video games over the Internet to any computer or to a
miniconsole hooked to a television. This includes games such as the
first-person shooter Crysis,
which is normally beyond the capabilities of anything short of a multi-thousand-dollar
gaming machine.
Today
at Technology Review’sEmTech@MIT conference,
OnLive founder and CEO StevePerlman presented a live demo of the system in action.
Advertisement
OnLive
has met with skepticism from hardcore gamers. The big question is whether the
system can transmit high-end games over the Internet without serious lag, and
many have said it can’t be done. OnLive is currently in an open beta, which
involves testing its technology on a variety of real networks and computers.
This story is only available to subscribers.
Don’t settle for half the story.
Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.
Though
OnLive has developed its own compression technology, Perlman says that this is
“just one piece of a complex problem.”
The
main issue, he suggests, is dealing with real-world network conditions. The
company has spent the last seven years in stealth mode learning to do just
this. Years ago, Perlman says, OnLive’s technology worked perfectly under ideal
network conditions. Since then, a lot of work has gone into addressing less-than-perfect
conditions.
When
streaming something like a video, a computer builds up a buffer to protect
against network problems. The buffer buys some time to check whether the stream
is flowing smoothly and to ask the server to resend any information that gets
lost or corrupted along the way. In the case of a video game, which is
inherently unpredictable, Perlman says that such a technique is out of the
question.
Instead,
OnLive’s system uses perceptual science to keep the gaming experience smooth.
The company’s algorithms adapt what’s shown so that it seems to be a complete
image while the screen is moving, even if it wouldn’t look that way if the
picture were still. This allows some leeway for network hiccups. “Each
frame may not look good, but we always deliver the data,” Perlman says.
The
company plans to launch to the public this winter.
