The biggest fear about game streaming comes from the latency associtated with button presses, but Google claims it will address these concerns through Stadia by predicting what inputs players will make ahead of time. Google Stadia looks to be taking a very different approach to gaming, as a streaming-only service available across a range of devices. Gamers are eager to see how it will all shake out for Google, especially with Stadia netting games like Red Dead Redemption 2, but it’s going to be difficult to compete with both Xbox and Sony both offering consoles and streaming solutions.
Still, Google has been hyping up its gaming initiative whenever given the chance. The company has already spoken about how Stadia will feature the ultimate multiplayer services. That much remains to be seen, but this biggest issue facing the tech company’s gaming ambitions is latency. Keeping that in mind, Google claims that it will surpass console-quality games with a fix for that problem within “a year or two.” The solution? Having Stadia predict players’ inputs before they make them.
Speaking with Edge Magazine (via PCGamesN), Google Stadia’s VP of engineering Madj Bakar confirmed that his team was working on something called “negative latency.” This system would be able to read the ebbs and flows of a players’ internet (namely, lag between the user and the server) and counter with inputs that A.I. forecasts from the individual playing. In return, the system may increase frames per second in order to portray a seemless experience.
There are a few inherent problems with the concept, namely, whether or not people would actually be playing the game at that point. The system is simply predicting inputs after all, so there’s likely a slight difference between human input and the projected actions Google Stadia supplies in moments of severe latency. This is sure to make it a controversial solution in competitive titles like Mortal Kombat 11. Conversely, it would be ideal technology for a single-player game on Google Stadia like Cyberpunk 2077.
“Ultimately, we think in a year or two we’ll have games that are running faster and feel more responsive in the cloud than they do locally, regardless of how powerful the local machine is.”
Still, it’s a neat concept on paper and one that could help address latency concerns ahead of faster internet connection availability worldwide. If implemented properly it would also be almost impossible to notice, which could mean that inputs are actually even faster than they are on current consoles. Of course, it would still be a computer making those inputs, so it wouldn’t really be the individual playing. If you’re playing casually though, these aren’t really concerns.
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Source: Edge Magazine (via PCGamesN)
