[Hardware] SONY and NVIDIA GeForce Now

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Gambling in the cloud is an option that is having more and more presence in our daily lives. With services like Google's Stadia, Microsoft's XCloud, SONY's PlayStation Now and NVIDIA's GeForce Now fighting for their position in the market, it is interesting to know how these services work and what Cloud Gaming consists of.

When we talk about gaming in the cloud, most people think of extremely powerful servers full of next-generation graphics cards that do all the rendering work for games, allowing users to enjoy great titles without the need for computers with great graphic power. But is it really so?

We call Cloud Gaming or Game in the Cloud to the fact of playing a video game where the execution of the game is carried out in a remote system and therefore different from the one the user is using to interact and on which the information is presented at all times .

Elements of Cloud Gaming
Cloud Gaming therefore needs three different elements:

Terminal: collects the player's actions and sends them to the server through the network for the latter to interpret them; It is also in charge of transmitting the image and sound information generated by the server to the terminal itself.
Server: the remote system that, based on the actions carried out by the player, runs the game, generates the image and sends it over the network.
Network: both the server and the terminal need a network with which to communicate, although we can have “Cloud Gaming” with respect to a local network and the operation is the same, it is understood that as a Game in the Cloud we are talking about a terminal connection -server over the Internet.
The main reason for Cloud Gaming is that the user does not need extremely expensive hardware to play, so the improvement of the infrastructure falls especially on the part of the server that is controlled by the service provider, since the network it is a completely independent part of both the service provider and the customer.

Stages of cloud play

The game in the cloud works almost the same locally; It is a continuous loop that begins with the player performing an action and when she receives the image already generated on her screen that is a consequence of it.

However, the game in the cloud adds a series of additional stages compared to playing with a console or a PC at home.

These additional stages in Cloud Gaming, cause the server to need a greater graphic power to render the scene. Since you need it, to render in less time so that the encoding, reception by the terminal system and decoding can be carried out in just the right time.

Encoding and Decoding
The images rendered by the server are sent as an encoded video stream from the server to the terminal. The reason for doing this is because if the images were sent unencrypted we would need such a high bandwidth that we would not receive a single frame or very few per second. The trade-off is that using a video format to encode server-generated images causes image artifacts associated with these video formats.

The servers use a special encoder in the form of an additional processor that allows this task to be performed at high speed in order to reduce latency.

 

In terms of decoding, it is the only part of all the stages that is carried out in the local system and that requires a high processing capacity. Most of the decoders found in the devices are for mainstream video so they decode images too slowly causing additional latency, which makes them unsuitable for cloud gaming.

As Cloud Gaming establishes itself in the market, we will see how different devices come with more advanced decoding systems.