How video gamers will be able to play in the cloud without guzzling gigabytes

[Panich52]

How video gamers will be able to play in the cloud without guzzling gigabytes

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/OzOFpls8miU/150520134633.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Gamers might one day be able to enjoy the same graphics-intensive fast-action video games they play on their gaming consoles or personal computers from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets without guzzling gigabytes, thanks to a new tool developed. Named 'Kahawai' after the Hawaiian word for stream, the tool delivers graphics and gameplay on par with conventional cloud-gaming, while using one sixth of the bandwidth.

[tech3149]

1. I'm not sure how new this is

Back in 1998 a game was released called Grand Prix Legends. It was innovative for many reasons, mostly it's accurate physics but the online performance provided a capacity that even modem users didn't suffer from limited bandwidth. As I recall it being explained only numerical information of car position, direction, throttle, brake etc: were transmitted. Everything else was generated on the local machine. The major limitation was latency of the connection to the server. Even a modest machine(300 Mhz processor) with an average ADSL connection could function as a server for a dozen participants.
I'm not really a gamer but considering the massive growth of capabilities of the typical home PC, why should online gaming not be able to provide almost lifelike performance without requiring a minimal amount of bandwidth?

[drray23]

2. not sure how much of a breakthrough it is.

I suspect its marketing hype for the reason that this is already done by every major gaming company. Massive online games such as world of warcraft or the like only transmit minimal information from client to server. The whole universe is stored on your computer.

The downside of it is that when you install a game, you have to install many gigs, same thing with the patches.