Submitted by june.huang on July 21, 2010 - 11:19.
With OnLive's on-demand gaming service, PC gaming has gotten cheaper and easier. There is no need to have high-end computers with fancy graphics cards and fast CPUs to play the latest videos games. Low-end computers running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Intel-based Macs running OS X together with a decent Internet connection is enough to get started. Users can also gain access to OnLive using their televisions with the OnLive MicroConsole. OnLive enables users to play or rent games, try out game demos and play multi-player games with other users using the OnLive service. There are also community features such as speculating live games, recording and sharing gameplay videos and accessing gamer profiles.
Essentially, the user just needs to know how to use a browser. Game data and interactions are sent from the browser to the OnLive servers for processing. Once all the data has been computed, a compressed video stream is sent back to the user's browser and the user continues to play the game. To the user, the gameplay is real-time and will feel no different than playing with a local copy of that game. It is convenient for the user, because OnLive eliminates installing and updating the games and the need for local storage space.
The OnLive service achieves this instant access with a combination of remote servers working dedicated or shared to produce continuous gameplay for the users. Game data are stored and processed on these servers and their hardware are upgraded every six months to provide users with optimal processing power. Each server has a particular task like handling the user interface, running the games and streaming video. There are also several classes of servers depending on the requirements of the computations and the number of connections. Thus, during a session, a user is passed to several servers depending on their state of play and processing requirement.
With all the data transmissions happening in the background, it is obvious that the OnLive service is dependent on and limited to the user's broadband connection and region. OnLive claims that high-definition quality is achievable with video at up to 1280x720 resolution and a frame rate up to 60 frames per second with a connection of at least 5 Mbps. However, the slower the speed, the lower the resolution and frame rate. With a 1.5 Mbps connection, a standard-definition quality is obtainable, but it may be insufficient to play a real-time, action-packed game because the video feedback may not be as smooth as playing on a local machine. Also, with the compression of the video, some of the art details in the scenes are lost.
