Over Thanksgiving I played ARK with @Bart_Elia and @Chris_Conn and I decided to give GeForce Now a try.
I must say I am impressed! I was skeptical! How can you RDP a 60fps game and still use audio chat etc… It will be laggy! Slow! Blurry!
It was the opposite. I ran it at MAX Graphics with 60fps and the beauty was:
I didn’t install anything on my PC
Games were pre-installed on GeForce
Switching between 10 different large games, was instant.
You can play on crappy computer! Chromebooks and even Phone
It recognized my Hardware / Headset
Works with your Steam Account as well
I was ready to play within 5 minutes and I could play other games that are 80GB without downloading them, moving files around to make room for disk space, waiting hours for downloads/updates…
If you have a good internet connection, I would recommend GeForce Now if you are a casual gamer. Loved it! I am a Customer, and I no longer need to buy gaming rigs because GeForce Now will only get better from here and at 4.99/mo that pays for itself.
Tech:
I noticed they run Citrix and VNC.
What I don’t like:
If you are idle 5-10min it will close your session, so I guess you can’t take a bathroom break.
We all have that period where we just want to play a game, once in awhile, which doesn’t warrant us buying a Gaming PC or PS5… My PS4 was barely used. Services like GeForce Now come in handy!
I agree, lot’s of load-balancing hey atleast your games run on an RTX.
I used to play a lot of Destiny on the PS4. And being the nerd I am, often wondered what the architecture was that allowed 12 different players together in a fast paced realtime shooter. So I fired up Wire Shark to capture packets going to and from my PS4 while a game was in action. The data transfer was surprisingly less than I had anticipated.
Since almost all of the work is done on the console, the only info that needed to be exchanged between the 12 PS4’s was basic stuff like characters’ position, orientation, velocity, if any effects were in play (shield up, on fire, etc…), and I assume hit damage. So if I shot another player (and hit them), part of the packet sent to that players PS4 was that they received damage, and probably other info like the type (gunfire , grenade, etc.), from what direct, and what player.
But it sounds like this steam cloud gaming is really just using your PC like a terminal, with Steam servers generating the displays, and your input is processed on their servers. I can only guess this is so that the game company (or platform provider) can get more people into gaming, without waiting for them to invest in the minimum hardware.
P.S. If your a PlayStation gamer, throw me a friend request on PSN at Alphadad1966. I’d love to get back into community gaming.
P.P.S. - my adult son (with special needs - high functioning Autistic) also uses my PSN account, so if you see me online, it might just be him playing. And not me that is ignoring you.
Just connect an ethernet cable, WiFi is less than optimal for a lot of stuff…
As a sidenote, I tried GEForce Now before, it was great, until publishers got greedy and decided that you need to buy games twice… Now only some of the game I already own on Steam can actually be played.
Right now I am a subscriber to the Playstation Now service, which is essentially the same thing but comes with a whole bunch of games on rotation that you don’t need to buy. They only stream 720p for now though, 1080p is supposed to come soon. I am mostly awaiting the equivalent service from Microsoft, formerly project XCloud. All games on gamepass streamable for like 100$ a year. It’s working right now on Android, supposed to launch on PC mid December…
