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OnLive: How does it work?

OnLive is a cloud-based gaming solution. It offers streaming playback of high-quality games to any PC, regardless of its hardware. I wonder how it works: sending raw HD images and audio seems unlikely. Would it be pretty simple compression like jpeg and mp3 / ogg to do the trick?

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This is basically a game-over-VNC. Obviously, they use video compression; what kind i'm not sure about. Two obvious alternatives seem somewhat computationally easy, for example, a JPEG motion or even MPEG 2 running on the same server the game is running on, or something more computationally intensive, but compact, like H264 running on dedicated equipment.

Personally, if I were developing a service, I would go for the second: it allows you to have better compression without mass updating all your servers, for the cost of a relatively inexpensive codec chip. Since the video stream is smaller, you can attract people who have connections that are small or too slow using a poorer codec.

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Have you read this article ? Excerpts from them:

This, in fact, is a gaming version of cloud computing - everything is calculated, displayed and posted on the Internet. In its simplest description, your controller inputs are loaded, a high-level server takes your inputs and plays the game, and then the video output stream is sent back to your computer. Think of it as something like Youtube or Hulu for games.

The service works with almost any Windows or Mac machine as a small browser plug-in. In addition, you can also purchase a small device called OnLive MicroConsole, which can be connected directly to the TV via HDMI, although if your computer supports video output to your TV, you can just do it that way. Of course, you can also just play on the screen of your computer if you do not want to stream it to your living room kit.

[...]

OnLive has made every effort to overcome latency issues. The first step was to create a video compression algorithm that was as fast as possible.

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Here is what I understood: this is a game solution with a thin client. Unlike game consoles such as Wii, X-Box or Play Station, players do not need a processor / GPU or any processing. The game is broadcast from the monster via the Internet, like a HiFi-terminal session (RDP / Remote Desktop), but with HD graphics. Controls (inputs) are sent to the server, and graphics are sent back. It can be played on a Mac or PC via a web browser add-on or on a TV with a small device to connect to the server. Requires 5 Mbps for HD and 1.5 Mbps for SD. Almost all the names of the games will be available or transferred to this platform. No need to buy a console or game. No need for high-end gaming PCs ... Just a broadband connection (of course, this should be high).

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I think they use something like an HDMI h264 codec to stream video directly from hdmi audio / video output. Something like this HDMI encoder or this h264 realtime encoder

You can also use a grabber card as follows: http://www.epiphan.com/products/frame-grabbers/vga2ethernet/

Now there is another solution. If you have the latest Nvidia graphics card, you can take advantage of hardware accelerated capture without additional hardware. It is called "Gamestream". You can buy one of the Nvidia devices that support the protocol, or you can download an open source application called Moonlight http://moonlight-stream.com

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