This post is related to the OnLive technology that is due to be demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference (GDC)  this week.    Articles on the technology for background are here and here.

A basic description of the system is thin-gaming - similar to Thin-computing as devised by Citrix for business applications, but for gaming.     Basic low-powered machine is needed to display the graphics, which are all generated by powerful gaming servers in the center.     So basically controllers and screens (plus a big broadband connection) at the client end.

Will it work?    In my opinion as a technician - No, I do not believe it can be made to work - and I can explain several reasons why below:

1. Latency - gamers really hate latency - some Counter-Strike gamers and game servers reject users with ping times of over 50ms.     In my opinion there is no way they will be able to get the latency to an acceptable level to make this product a viable concern - 80ms in gaming is an age, and that is what is being touted as normal latency for this.    The reason - compression/decompression adds considerable latency - also the raw internet speed.   Example, my home 5.5Mbit connection has around 25ms-40ms latency to most sites in London without the compression touted.
2. Resolution - PC Gamers and now PS3 gamers are getting used to 1920×1080 and similar resoultions on their kit when playing games.     On a PC even 1024×768 is deemed a “low resolution” now by many gamers.   At the moment this tech is producing 720p.   That is 1280×720.    By even modern standard in PC gaming, thats a low resolution.
3. Bandwidth & Fair use policies- The above 720p resolution is toted as using 5Mbit/sec (listed in the article as high-def).     By my calculations 5Mbit a second is around 37.5Mbyte/minute, or around 2Gb an hour     Gamers being “hardcore” tend to play for a few hours at a time - how many people will hit their ISP’s fair use Policy, which in many cases is around 40Gb.     Ie, about 20 hours of gameplay.    How many gamers play over 20 hours a month? - I would say quite a few.     Virgin/NTL in the UK throttle users using this quantity of bandwidth down from 50Mbit/sec to a far lower figure if this kind of transfer is common - would this even stop the Gaming working?
4. Economics - How many high-end graphics cards & CPU’s will be needed at the server end to support users?   If the OnLive company is having to buy thousands of servers to handle user-load, I question how this can be viable.    Especially when compared to game-download/subscription services such as metaboli.
5. Reliability - If a node crashes and takes out several clients at once, thats >1 pissed off gamers.      Games nowadays in their 1st interation past release are often unstable from my experience at least, needing a patch to improve stability.  In some cases they lock up your computer fully.    If this happened to a server node and impacted someone 2 hours into a mission that had not saved on another client this would greatly annoy the latter user for having to replay 2 hours of content.    If this happened frequently - it wouldn’t be great.
6. The multi-gamer home - Bandwidth to most UK homes at least wouldn’t support 2 concurrent clients - and this is likely the case globally in the non-fibre world at least.   Also some games are great in multi-monitor mode (Supreme Commander is excellent in this mode) - there doesn’t appear to be capability for this now..

I would be very interested from the press visiting the GDC as to their impressions of this technology in the demonstration - and whether they could note whether the server is > 80ms away!    I could be wrong - but still am of the opinion this cannot be made to work without fibre broadband and 100Mbit connections to the home (allowing say 2 x1080p screens to play games simultaneously).

Basically in my mind potentially a great idea for future, but would need severe broadband investments to work, and a very reliable back-end for users to think about subscribing.    I also have doubts when compared to Gametap/Metaboli type services as to which is going to take the upper hand (or pureplay distribution such as Steam).    If such a service was available for the PS3 or similar console,  ie a console with a monthly fee and subscription for all the games you would want would be ideal for me at least.    I would consider signing up in a heartbeat.

What are your views on OnLive - or do you agree with me that Gametap/Metaboli services long-term will be the winners.

My home computer recently kept powering off when doing anything requiring CPU power (say transcoding a video or editing it).   This was annoying, and I thought I’d got a hardware fault - but strangely no part of the kit was reporting errors.

So, Sunday morning after the 5th try at editing a video and a power-off (and the inevitable swearing at the computer and technology in general), I popped off the lid of the computer…

The CPU fan was “caked” in dust.     Now checking the airflow of the machine, the CPU fan sucks in air from outside (side of case), distributes it over a massive fan above the Quad core processor in the machine, which then makes the heat leave into the case.    The case then has 2 fans keeping a constant airflow front->back to expunge the air.    Basically what was happening was the airflow from outside was hitting a wall of dust at the front of the CPU fan, and thus not cooling the CPU blades and causing a thermal overload and thus a power-off by the mainboard to allow cooling to occur.    As this only occurred when CPU was over 75% utilised in normal day to day use, or when gaming it had not happened before this weekend.

A quick trip to PC world later, and air-duster in hand, the fan’s blades were cleaned (due to location, under the fan, I couldn’t get to all the blades without a air-duster).

I had not spotted this as I had not installed any ACPI monitoring to monitor CPU temperature.    Prior to cleaning the fan’s -  I went to the Asus website, installed this, and where-as pre-cleaning the CPU was hitting over 80 Celcius, it stayed at a constant 55 Celcius with the fans cleaned.

A side effect is according to my girlfriend -instead of the PC sounding like an aircraft taking off (full fan noise) - it now sounds more like a hairdryer on low…  She actually says she can work in my office now (before it was too noisy)… Although I am unsure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing !

So a lesson to all PC builders, and users - don’t forget to clean your fans on a annual, or more frequent, basis as not only will it result in a noisy machine, you may endure the pain of a thermal shutdown event by your motherboard.

Anyone else suffered this joy ?

For those who havn’t seen them - mini Infrared controlled indoor helicopers are a complete blast…and amazing fun.    I got the linked one for a christmas present.

I’m seriously amazed, it had the whole family playing with it on Christmas day - and trying to control it.    We’d set up a take off and landing point in the living room, and everyone got involved trying to make the helicopter do what we wanted.

You see the remote control helicopers nowadays hover really well - but to make a real helicopter go forward, you angle the blades forward.   In these (simple) RC ones, you can’t do that, and instead use the rear propellor, and spins, to make the helicopter (very slowly) move to your destination.    Making it do what you want is therefore very tricky indeed - especially when small gusts of breeze from nearby air movement can catch  you off-guard and send the copter flying into a wall/furniture!

I’d say its been one of my favourite gadget presents ever - and even my 55 year old Dad enjoyed it a lot.   I sense a present for him on his birthday..

What presents did you get/love at Christmas?

Looks like another PC magazine is potentially set to close doors to printed text and become online-only.

My personal opinion:

Beautiful - solid Alumininum manufacturing showing the industry the way to go forward.

I’ve decided, I’m getting one (as mentioned in last blog post).

What swung the decision for me is the fact you can get 16Gb storage on a phone for mp3’s - with the size of my collection this will allow a decent amount of music for all occasions. + room for some movies and applications.

Note that in the past I was critical of the iphone (even I believe on this blog 18 months ago), but the 3 crucial things lacking then have been fixed

1. GPS
2. 3g/HSDPA!
3. 3rd party Applications

With these fixed I can’t resist getting one. Super monkey ball looks great - and excited about possibilty of GPS. Only thing I can fault really is the camera and lack of user replaceable battery. The touch interface I had tried on the old iPhone and although I think it’ll take some getting used to, I think I’ll grow to like. Also the excellent Cloud/Btopenzone roaming deal should be commented on as it should greatly increase data speeds in a lot of places I visit (liverpool street/city area for one). This doesn’t change my perception overall that Wifi will be surplanted by 3g cards where it is overpriced - coffee shops being a prime example.

I think the critical thing for Apple in terms of revenue generation on the iPhone will be MobileMe as this will allow full sync from PC to Mac, to iPhone for a very reasonable sum (in fact for less than I pay now for less email storage on another host…). If Apple get this right then it certainally will make me switch email hosts… cant’ wait for the upcoming trial. I have 2 PC’s, 2 laptops at home now - one is a work laptop admittedly so lets exclude that - however email sync is always painful between the 3 - I use imap currently… but I have no caldender/contacts sync, which this will fix at long last. This is a longstanding gripe of mine - exchange for the masses is finally here I hope!

Now I just need to prepare for the small queue (I do live in a small part of suffolk so not expecting a huge queue). I just hope they do have a 16Gb in store if I join the queue at 7:45am… if not I’ll just wait a few days/weeks until they do have stock. I’m not queuing at the crack of dawn - this isn’t that important to me!

Are you queuing?

First I will list the parts I used:

• Zirco mAX Micro-ATX Desktop Case with 300W PSU
• VIA iDOT PC2500E

I need help - my old circa 1990 CD player has packed up - which was a portable ghetto blaster style unit which had reasonable sound, was battery powerable for taking into the deeper regions of the garden where I have no power (nor a lead long enough).

I have many other things that can play CD’s, including my TV.

In the past buying hardware in the US has saved a considerable amount for me as I do tend to travel to the US 1 or 2 times a year with work, and have friends who can receieve and store packages until I arrive.

Now however…. it appears to be not so attractive as it was - in the Apple US store the basic macbook is $1099.00 - the UK macbook is