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What I've learned about Stadia when factoring myself into the equation


Mr.Vic20

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Very early this morning I had a spare hour and remembered that while I've laughed at Stadia for some time now, I aught to at least take advantage of its free month and have a proper frame of reference by which to later laugh at it more. To that end, I signed up and was able to briefly try out the Panzer Dragoon remake prior to work starting. It ran smoothly and looked as good as I could have expected. OK, not bad, but a up rez/re-texture of a fairly dated Saturn title was not likely to be be a good test of such a platform so, on my lunch break, I tried out Grid.

 

Being a racing game, GRID seemed like the best way for me to truly test the platform. Sure enough it looked great, and ran great! Hot damn! And then I realized several things. Things that likely make me an "ideal" customer in the future. Allow me to list them:

 

1.) 1Gb internet connection

2.) Not really a competitive gamer 

3.) More of a fan of adventure and RPG games

4.) Either I'm not able to detect lag, or its extremely minimal under the conditions of my gaming environment

 

Now I'll say this, their business model still doesn't make sense for a gamer like me, at least at present. I still prefer gaming on a high end PC. Their title selection is abysmal. Their interface could use some work as well, though I understand what they are shooting for with it and maybe its just my preferences that are disagreeable to it. I'm sure that if I was even a modestly competitive gamer, I would be concerned over the potential impact of lag (or be able to detect it?)but I guess I'm not because it was a fine experience. Overall, I've left the last gaming session thinking that the over all quality of the experience was pretty good compared to other streaming solutions I've tried, and certainly favorably comparable to playing on a console. Its honestly not terrible! Quite the ringing endorsement, I know.  But it beats what I expected to fine.   /smattering of Vic feels. :sun:

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Streaming games still seems like the obvious future of games to me, but as much as I like Google, it just feels like a doomed project.

 

 

I tried the beta for Stadia and couldn't get it to work well enough, despite having a solid 400 down and a capable gaming rig. Not sure how much they ironed out by launch.

 

 

I'll happily continue to give these streaming platforms a go, but I'm going to be pretty hesitant to buy into them anytime soon.  Glad to hear you had a mostly positive experience. If nothing else, it certainly seems like these platforms will evolve quickly and require constant re-evaluation.

 

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I tried the beta with Assassins Creed and it ran flawless for me. Aside from me already having a ton of games the graphics/fidelity is the biggest reason I wouldn't sign up for Stadia. I think a lot of us expected if we are paying to stream we should be getting maxed 4k high end stuff. Doesn't seem to be the case. 

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Fair points! I will also add  that I've played through the first 15 minutes of Gylt and while its a very charming and atmospheric title, I could see artifacts in the shadows and other dark parts of the screen. Also, a shame. I would agree that project like these, at least their current iterations, seem doomed to fail. Still, this gives me some hope for future attempts. 

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I literally wrote up half a Stadia post this morning, but ended up deleting it because I hadn't put in enough time and wasn't sure if I could give proper feedback.

 

I am a Stadia "Founder", and have paid the monthly sub even though I haven't used it.  I decided to test it yesterday, so I fired up the first Tomb Raider reboot, and played it for a bit.  Like @Mr.Vic20, the controls actually feel very responsive for the most part, and the lag was not noticeable to me in my time with it.  In that regard, I was impressed. 

 

My issue with it though, was that the opening areas of Tomb Raider are very dark, and in the dark areas, the graphics just don't look at what I'd expect, and worse than what the Xbox One looked like that I could remember.  I have 500gb down, so the connection should be more than enough.  It never looked like 4k to me.

 

I do hope we see some bigger projects from them in the future that utilizes the servers like they claimed to have in the works.  Time will tell.

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I felt the input lag when I was in on the AC Odyssey demo, it definitely turned me off on streaming for anything remotely action oriented.  Maybe there's a better 1080p+ solution out there beyond Google?  Maybe they've improved it a bit?  It didn't instill me with hope in any case.

 

There's also examples like RDR2 where Stadia has quite literally shit the bed:

 

Quote

 At the reveal, we were told that Stadia's GPU has the power of Xbox One X and PS4 Pro graphics combined, yet RDR2 on Stadia only has 44 per cent of the X's rendering resolution, while even the 4.2TF PS4 Pro GPU is generating a higher pixel-count (even before factoring in its checkerboarding upscale). Stadia's GPU seems to be an offshoot of AMD's RX Vega 56 based on its specs, yet in 1080p mode, performance is more in line with the PC version running on a much less capable RX 570 or RX 580.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-red-dead-redemption-2-stadia-analysis

 

Doesn't inspire confidence it'll ever be worth it.

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I demand you turn in you Master Race card if you don't notice the input lag.  I can notice the lag on local streaming with Steam or Nvidia's services, or hell if I'm at a friend's house I can tell when their TV isn't in "game mode".

 

*whispers* But those methods, along with the Assassin's Creed Stadia demo, don't impact single player games too badly.  Lag is there, but you can adjust to it.

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2 hours ago, cusideabelincoln said:

I demand you turn in you Master Race card if you don't notice the input lag.  I can notice the lag on local streaming with Steam or Nvidia's services, or hell if I'm at a friend's house I can tell when their TV isn't in "game mode".

 

*whispers* But those methods, along with the Assassin's Creed Stadia demo, don't impact single player games too badly.  Lag is there, but you can adjust to it.

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