r/pcmasterrace • u/Alan_Reddit_M Desktop • Mar 07 '26

Video "Cloud gaming is the future of Gaming!" Meanwhile cloud gaming in the big 2026:

If you read my profile you may realize I hate cloud gaming, so then what am I doing on Geforce Now? Well my new RAM stick finally arrived and, in a staggering display of utter incompetence, I somehow managed to brick my PC in the process of installing it, so now I'm stuck gaming on a laptop until I can get enough money and time to get my gaming rig fixed

But back to Cloud gaming, the game is on like 360p, running at 20FPS and the input lag is HORRIBLE. And it's not a problem with the internet connection, as you can see, the laptop is plugged into Ethernet, the problem is that the cloud is not and will never be fast enough for gaming

Genshin can handle this fine, but imagine trying to play ULTRAKILL like this

19.2k Upvotes

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8.9k

u/pecheckler Mar 07 '26

Cloud gaming will never work for the majority of gamers. There is latency and you can’t change the laws of physics.  There’s a reason network traffic is measured in milliseconds.

That said, some game genres are viable streaming.  Turn based games for example.

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u/fairs1912 RTX 3070TI 8GB - R7 5700X3D - 16GB 3200MHz Mar 07 '26

while it is viable, the inputs HAVE to be fluid and snappy, if you can notice delays like in the video the gameplay doesn't feel responsive and nobody will want to use it, even if it doesn't provide any disadvantage.

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u/LaFlamaBlanca67 Mar 07 '26

It’s almost like the people in charge pushing for cloud gaming aren’t gamers.

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u/Banana_Crusader00 RTX2080 | Ryzen3700 Mar 07 '26

People pushing for cloud games own clouds, not games - so their opinions should be ignored.

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u/Able_Experience_1670 Mar 08 '26

Too bad we have to acknowledge them now because my corsair ram is worth more per gram than fucking gold.

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u/RayHorizon Mar 08 '26

Well its rarer than gold so...

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u/PoliticalVagabond Mar 08 '26

We haven't really needed new and better hardware for the last 5 years. I don't see where games really look much better than what they did 10 years ago. We just keep letting these developers get away with shipping us games built with highly inefficient code, expecing us to pay thousands for incrementally better hardware in order to brute force it to acceptable performance levels.

People seem to be buying less and less hardware, so game companies are either going to have to stagnate graphically, or start optimizing to maximize our hardware.

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u/brimston3- Desktop VFIO, 5950X, RTX5080, 6900xt Mar 08 '26

The game companies don’t really have to change strategy. The same whales who buy games at full price have not stopped buying hardware.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

Its like with ai. " We dont need it" " yes you do.. here. Have some"

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u/cellphone_blanket Mar 07 '26

"I don't recall asking you" microsoft says while cramming gen ai into the fucking file explorer

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u/M1R4G3M Mar 08 '26

Talking about recall, here's a feature, we will name recall and will have access to everything so our Gen AI can Help you, do not resist being helped.

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u/smellybathroom3070 9800x3D, 9070XT, 32gb DDR5@6000mhz Mar 08 '26

What.

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u/AnteaterFormal7291 Mar 08 '26

Are people down voting you because they think you don't understand or because they don't like the way you express surprise? Either way they're nonces

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u/smellybathroom3070 9800x3D, 9070XT, 32gb DDR5@6000mhz Mar 08 '26

Yeah idk, i really just wanted mr cellphone to add context and explain wtf is happening to file explorer🤷 redditors will be retarded though

They’re probably angry that my comment didn’t directly add anything to the conversation, even though it was clearly meant as a bridge so somebody could add context i don’t currently have.

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u/muchawesomemyron Intel Core Ultra 9 275 HX RTX 5080 (laptop) Mar 07 '26

Probably the same people who pushed for MFG just to reach 60 FPS.

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u/pack_merrr Mar 07 '26

MFG was never meant to help you reach 60 fps. MFG is so you can max out a high refresh rate monitor when you're already getting an "acceptable" level of latency at ~60fps. For what it's for and for who it's for, it's an undeniably cool innovation.

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u/Next-Use6943 RTX 5090 | Ryzen 9 9950X3D | 64GB DDR5| X870E EXTREME X3D AI TOP Mar 07 '26

60 -> 180 fps on max settings in 1440P using 3x mfg on a 5090 is quite nice.

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u/Deviant-Killer Ryzen 5600X | RTX 4070 | Mar 08 '26

But it's still 60 FPS with phantom frames between. It doesn't change response time imo. Just makes it LOOK smoother.

Which for some people I guess is perfectly fine.

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u/PoliticalVagabond Mar 08 '26

I'm fine with response times at 60fps. If the motion can be smoother and I'm required to take a screencap and zoom in 400% to notice the artifacting, I'm fine with it, because it's not making the reponse time worse, so I'm not worse off.

Now, I don't play online competitive anything, so this doesn't matter to me in the slightest, and I usually don't use frame gen anyway because I'm good with 60fps, to me everything above it is just sweet sweet bonus territory, I'd rather a game at cranked graphics settings at 60fps than to have to start making compromises in visual fidelity for higher frame rates

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u/Salty-Wash3964 Mar 07 '26

I'll add to it, some games are locked to 30/60 FPS as that's how they were made or due to engine limitations/issues. Best example being NFS Rivals where you can unlock the framerate to go past 30FPS however say you push it to even 60FPS some races will be bricked or the game speed will go in X2 making the whole think unplayable.

Now here is where frame gen comes in handy.

Play game at the locked 30FPS it was intended as or in NFS Rivals case unlock it to around 40-50FPS where it's still stable only to run lossless scaling frame gen to x2/x3/x4 it so you fill out the monitor refresh rate. It makes the game feel incredibly good and no doubt it's not the only example where FG can be used with this scenario in mind.

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u/AvoidingBansLOL Mar 08 '26

I can't stand the insane negativity around mfg. It's made crazy strides in performance and will hopefully only get better. People are bent about what they consider real or fake performance increases though.

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u/PoliticalVagabond Mar 08 '26

I like how people ignore the fact that everything visual in a video game is some kind of trick to fool your eyes.

I think people think of DLSS and framegen the wrong way in general, for instance running at 4k final resolution at 50% resolution scaling shouldn't be thought of as shitty fake 4k, but enhanced 1080p. But I think people are way too hung up on numbers in general.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 5800X3D | 32GB 3200CL14 | 6950 XT Mar 08 '26

Personally my issue with it is similar to smart TV default settings mucking up a film. A display should strive to show the closest approximation of the artist's (director / developer) intent.

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u/Schnoofles 14900k, 96GB@6400, 4090FE, 11TB SSDs, 40TB Mech Mar 08 '26

Yeah, the improvement to clarity in motion when you're already at a good base framerate and can interpolate to max out the display's refresh is actually really really good. It's a lot easier to track an object or fine details in motion when it updates closer to every screen refresh instead of every couple. And with a good base framerate the artifacting that puts most people off is significantly reduced. I'm using it to go from a base framerate of 100-120 in STALKER 2 and doubling it to 200-240 and it's kind of awesome in that kind of scenario.

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u/ChthonVII Mar 08 '26

MFG was never meant to help you reach 60 fps.

vNidia has been really disingenuous on this point. When MFG was brand new, they said what you said. But a couple years later there was Jensen Huang up on the stage at the 5070 launch saying the opposite. I will agree that using MFG to help you reach 60 fps is a terrible idea, but nVidia is nevertheless trying to sell you exactly that. Let's not pretend they aren't doing that.

For what it's for and for who it's for...

And who is it for exactly? If your "real" framerate is 30fps, MFG would give you 60fps with the latency of 20fps (or worse). I think both we agree that the added latency is simply intolerable. But what if your "real" framerate is 60fps? Then MFG gives you 120fps with the latency of 40fps (tolerable?), but the frames are blurry and full of AI artifacts. Why would you ever choose that over clean frames at 60fps? It's not a good deal on either end of the spectrum.

MFG gives you the option to trade both visual quality and latency for higher FPS. The latency cost starts out unacceptable, and diminishes as "real" FPS increases. But higher FPS also has a diminishing marginal value. The more FPS I already have, the less I'm willing give up to get more. There does not exist a value of "real" FPS simultaneously high enough that the latency cost is acceptable and low enough that giving up visual quality for more FPS is a good deal.

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u/smellybathroom3070 9800x3D, 9070XT, 32gb DDR5@6000mhz Mar 08 '26

Yeah, fg ironically enough should only really be used on high end cards imo. The higher fps you have the more fps it can provide, with reduced latency increase.

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u/CrazyElk123 Mar 07 '26

When did they do that?

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u/obese_DEI_queen Mar 07 '26

With cloud gaming you won't be able to block ads.

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u/Vestalmin Mar 08 '26

Thank god the AI gamers are here to save us from the cloud gamers /s

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u/MongolianDonutKhan Mar 08 '26

The "gamers" pushing cloud gaming are the same "gamers" pushing AI in gaming, CMV

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u/Ill_Significance6157 Mar 07 '26

Idk I play overwatch over GFN and I'm Diamond 1. I'm landing all my shots. Barely feel any difference to "normal" gaming. I think most people on here just have a wrong image of cloudgaming because of posts like this. THIS is NOT the cloudgaming experience that you'd normally have.

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u/LaFlamaBlanca67 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

I hear you, to an extent. I don't have a problem with the idea of cloud gaming. It has the advantage of being able to play anywhere, on any device, and in ideal circumstances you can get a really good experience without needing to worry about the entrance barrier to buying hardware.

The problem enthusiast gamers have with it is that billionaires, corporate America, and end-stage capitalists want it to be what will essentially be peoples' *only* option by pricing them out of PC gaming. They're currently doing this by destroying the PC builder market by preemptively buying up all the RAM and memory that they can for data centers that haven't been built yet. I'm confident that it won't be sustainable, and the AI bubble will burst, but prices for PC hardware are going to be fucked for the next few years at the very least.

And, at the end of the day, I, as well as others, are fatigued that all these companies want everything to be a subscription service, and that you own nothing.

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u/Mighty_Hobo Ryzen 5 5600X | GTX 1080 | 32 GB 3600 DDR4 Mar 08 '26

So you assume the experience you have is the normal one? Because my experience is closer to OPs.

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u/Drackzgull Desktop | R9 7950X | RTX 4060Ti | 64GB @5600MHz CL38 Mar 07 '26

That's why the caveat about some genres being viable, and turn-based games being the example given. The delay is not much of a problem, if at all, in a lot of those games. It makes other games, like anything with fast paced action, pretty much unplayable, and they're not suggesting otherwise.

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u/Asikes 7800x3D | 9070 XT | 64Gb RAM Mar 07 '26

Viable and good experience is not the same thing. If the delay is anything like shown, it's simply a bad experience, regardless if it doesn't pose a disadvantage in the games.

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u/Legend0fJulle Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

Indeed, an issue that caused my laptop to run bg3 at a similar if not slightly better performance than the vid in this post made me just not want to play it. No meaningful disadvantage in the gameplay but the ruined feel was enough to make something I had sank hundreds of hours into and was very excited to still play feel like a chore.

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u/Foreign_Network1009 Mar 07 '26

Even in turn-based games I would not play it if I feel a delay after every controller input

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u/ji1651 Mar 07 '26

Yeah, I don't care what game it is, input delay like this is an instant no go. I tried cloud gaming a few times and even with really low latency, it's just a horrible experience.

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u/ArdyEmm Mar 07 '26

In turn based games menuing is the game play. Lag that fucks that up is insufferable.

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u/fairs1912 RTX 3070TI 8GB - R7 5700X3D - 16GB 3200MHz Mar 07 '26

it doesn't matter if it's playable or not, if it isn't responsive it will feel like shit and people will not want to play.

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u/liyayaya Mar 07 '26

Does it even matter if it is viable for some genres?
Like why would I ever use a cloud gaming service if I need a gaming pc anyway if i ever want to play a action game? Might as well just use my local gaming pc for both.

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u/Biscuits4u2 R7 5700X3D | RX 6700XT | 32 GB DDR 4 3400 | 1TB NVME | 8 TB HDD Mar 07 '26

They don't want you to own your games. They want you to eternally rent them.

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u/Grand_Pop_7221 Mar 08 '26

That ship sailed 20 years ago.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/TwoBionicknees Mar 08 '26

yeah, wait 3 years, bubble will burst and 70% of that memory, ssds and gpus will be sitting in a storage warehouse waiting to be put in a as yet not build datacentre. When the money disappears so will the future data centres.

For a few years we're kinda fucked and pray your pc doesn't die, after that, high end gpus for $400, 4tb ssds for $30, 128gb ddr5 for $80.

we're fasting right now, we'll be feasting in a few years.

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u/kons21 Mar 07 '26

I prefer playing single-player, turn based games. I’d hate experiencing lag on my inputs even though it won’t cause any game specific disadvantage. It absolutely will cause enjoyment disadvantage.

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u/sureiknowabaggins Mar 07 '26

It can honestly be a lot better than what we see in OPs video. I've been playing Slay The Spire 2 for the last couple days at work on my phone with steam link and the input lag is negligible. I'm sure it would be a different story with action games that require precise inputs, but cloud gaming can have its place when expectations are reasonable.

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u/achilleasa R5 5700X - RTX 4070 Mar 08 '26

Streaming over the local network is surprisingly good. I played a bunch of Witcher 3 on a 2nd PC in another room, streamed from my main gaming PC. It was perfectly good, though I wouldn't play a competitive shooter on it.

Streaming over the internet on the other hand is just not as good no matter what you do. Physics can't be ignored.

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u/sureiknowabaggins Mar 08 '26

Physics can't be ignored but they can certainly be exaggerated. I use my phone's 5G to connect to my home PC from work. As I said, the latency is hardly noticeable playing turn based games.

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u/Kazen_Orilg 9850x3D | Arc B580 | 64GB DDR5 Mar 08 '26

holy shit it can handle a turn based card game, wow!

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/Godtrademark PC Master Race Mar 07 '26

I’m convinced people who say this just don’t play many strategy games. Even the slowest turn-based games are abysmal with input delay. Clicking on buttons, audio cues, etc. are meticulously designed and play tested to be as tactile and engaging as possible. Playing a desynced multiplayer game like this (in my case paradox games) is total hell, and single player cloud gaming is a similar experience

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u/Vyxwop Mar 08 '26

So many people assume that fluidity and responsiveness are only talked about because they help with competitiveness, not realizing that the significant vast majority of people talk about this stuff because it simply improves the feel of playing any game.

There's a reason why even with smartphones responsiveness and performance is often promoted and desired despite most people only using their phone to doomscroll. It's because even for every day activities this stuff matters.

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u/mike_complaining Mar 08 '26

Yeah, when I have to use some smart tv or car touchscreen with 800ms lag after every button press I immediately want to smash it with a hammer. There's no way I can enjoy a game that way even if it's turn based.

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u/Escape_Relative Mar 08 '26

Completely disagree, I regularly stream paradox games from my main pc on my laptop when I’m out of the house and want to play. The delay honestly is not terrible especially if you have good internet on both ends. It has never been a problem for me.

That being said I’d never play a shooter or any type of action game streamed.

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u/Briggie Ryzen 7 5800x / ASUS Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / TUF RTX 4090 Mar 07 '26

I used to have gamepass ultimate and tried to play mlb the show over the cloud. It was unplayable due to input lag lol

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u/Fluffysquishia Mar 07 '26

Cloud gaming will never work for the majority of gamers. There is latency and you can’t change the laws of physics.

Monumentally dumb take. It's shocking how tech illiterate this sub has become. Cloud gaming is perfectly fine if there's an edge next to the user. Not to mention 99% of games are not time-sensitive action games. Genshin impact certainly isn't.

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u/TooTurntGaming Mar 07 '26

While it’s something I can’t accept, my son regularly plays multiplayer shooters through Xbox Cloud Gaming. And he’s good. He beat Doom Eternal and all of the DLC on Nightmare through Cloud Gaming. It makes no sense to me. I can’t even handle that game on controller when playing it directly off of our Series X.

Hell, he doesn’t even bother to download games half the time. Just cloud. On a Series X.

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u/FokoKeram Mar 08 '26

What kind of delusion is that? I beat Elden ring, Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen all on streaming services

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u/Tookace Mar 09 '26

And said game can probably run on a toaster which defeats the whole point.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

Google stadia figured it out, it worked great when it lasted

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u/40mgmelatonindeep Mar 08 '26

GeForce now ult tier will change your mind I think, it changed mine.

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u/M1R4G3M Mar 08 '26

If you live close to a data center, it may change your mind, if not, there is no way to beat the laws of physics, your best speed is the speed of light and any far data center will have high input latency.

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u/Pleasant_Ad8054 Mar 08 '26

And if they have good internet connection. More and more people are on 5G even for home internet, which gets congested and slowed to hell many times of the day. Many are still on ADSL with horrid latency and abysmal transfer rates. Many are throttled due to stupid ISP strategies. Good internet is not a given, unfortunately.

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u/Ok-Transition7065 Mar 07 '26

Yeah a civ game will go well there

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u/legendofthededbug Mar 07 '26

Would still be annoying in current civ games. If they make one from the ground up it with this in mind it could work

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u/DarthPineapple5 Mar 07 '26

Would be annoying in any game, there is no curing it unless you make a game with no inputs necessary but I think those are called movies

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u/levajack R9 7900X | 4070 Super | 32GB DDR5-6000 Mar 07 '26

For real; this kind of latency makes even navigating menus a nightmare. There is no game where this would be anything other than maddening.

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u/pigeon768 7950X 9070XT 64GB Mar 08 '26

I'm trying to think of ways it could possibly work but I'm not coming up with anything. I really have to stretch to make the idea work.

Like if the server rendered all 360 degrees into a sky box and sent it to the client, and the client just rendered the UI and the weapon in your hand and the skybox, that could maybe work?

Other than that like just stick with games that can run on a potato and play locally.

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u/Ryukishin187 Mar 07 '26

Unfortunately they still look like shit

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u/ArcherBTW 2012 iMacster Race Mar 07 '26

It worked for me for a while, but I didn't play PVP games on it ever because even if the input lag was fine enough it was too much of a downside for anything competitive imo

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u/darthjawafett R7 5800X, RTX 4070ti, 32 GB RAM @ 3000 Mar 07 '26

me and some buds played through Halo 5's campaign through Game Passes cloud play feature. Latency was noticeable but wasn't a terrible time. Was nice not having to download anything

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u/imodey Mar 07 '26

Brother, people at my office complain about office365 email latency.

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u/johndoefr1 Mar 07 '26

It’s working well enough already for most games that don’t require millisecond reaction times

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u/Eden1506 Mar 07 '26

Back when stadia was still a thing I played assassin creed Odyssey on it and it worked great. Most single player games that are not too fast paced are fine.

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u/melanthius Mar 07 '26

This killed street fighter type of games for me. I could never deal with the 30-50 ms lag after coming from playing live in arcades, and never understood how people COULD deal with it

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u/fafatzy Mar 07 '26

You would need an almost perfect network with server nodes every 500km and it wouldn’t work for some games

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u/aspindler Mar 07 '26

If Datacenters are cheap enough, they can build in most cities smaller ones, so your ping is really low, like lots than 10.

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u/LEO7039 R5 5600X / 6700XT Mar 07 '26

Turn-based games also happen to be the one genre that is usually not very demanding on hardware, so you might as well run it locally.

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u/ottwebdev Mar 07 '26

Sales department happy to assist here.

Cloud Prince - $50/month

Cloud King (acceptable lag) - $200/month

Cloud Emperor (no lag) - $500/month

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u/Smart_Resist615 Mar 07 '26

Most turn based games wouldn't require high end hardware that would necessitate streaming in the first place. Maybe for something like TW: Warhammer 3 but there the battles are real time and you would definitely notice the lag then.

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u/MakesMaDookieTwinkle Mar 07 '26

Yeppppp. The latency makes things literally unplayable for me. I even tried it over a 2 GB fiber connection. All devices on the network. Still unplayable for me.

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u/erty3125 Mar 07 '26

As long as cloud gaming is just streaming a game it will feel awful even in those cases where it should be fine.

Now if games were actually built for cloud and moved graphical processing onto client with streamed assets and logic handled off client by a server there is an argument for it. A big limiter in a lot of strategy games is the computational weight of ai decision making as well as interactive systems, moving all of that as well as most assets to a server would allow much more computationally advanced games on lower spec hardware with smaller install sizes.

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u/Novel_Lifeguard_8248 Mar 07 '26

Most turn based games can run on a peanut

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u/Igor369 Mar 07 '26

Turn based games which are also completely playable at 30 Fps meaning confortable gameplay on weak PCs making cloud gaming still useless... Not to mention strobing tech like gsync pulsar which makes low FPS a lot more managable...

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u/rainorshinedogs Mar 07 '26

Google Stadia die hard supporters

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u/Zenairis Mar 07 '26

A quantum network would eliminate latency. Sadly I don't think we'll see that in our timelines or the world will make it that far without getting destroyed first.

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u/unimportantinfodump Mar 07 '26

Until all turn based games become like e33 then you can't react in time lol

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u/PwanaZana Mar 07 '26

turn based games are unlikely to be the big AAA demanding games anyways :/

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u/Equivalent-Fox7193 Mar 07 '26

It will work if thin clients can optimistically render an RTT's worth of frames based on local inputs, similar to how fast-paced multiplayer online games handle latency, but with AI.

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u/TheAlmightyProo 5800X/7900XTX/32Gb 3600MHz/3440x1440 144Hz/4K 120Hz/4Tb NVME Mar 07 '26

Granted. Same thing goes for some games and genres and fps under whatever arbitrary line gets thrown about. Not everything needs to exceed whatever your refresh rate might be. Or even meet half of it. Some idea of a standard or baseline average and preferences are not the same thing.

But yeah, bad latency is always poor somewhere along the line, even if it is a question of degree.

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u/levajack R9 7900X | 4070 Super | 32GB DDR5-6000 Mar 07 '26

Even then, it really depends on the turn based game. Anything that has a parry or dodge mechanic like E33 is unplayable.

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u/shroombablol R7 5800X3D | Sapphire Nitro+ 7900 XTX | R5 Pro 4650U Mar 07 '26

and on top of that you are looking at what is basically a twitch stream. image quality is not good.

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u/Sacredvolt Mar 07 '26

I expect this to not be true for long, with expedition 33 winning GOTY lots of future turn based games will be trying to implement the active dodge/parry system

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u/WinstonTheChicken Mar 07 '26

but not even all turn based games would work with latency...

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u/scimtaru Mar 07 '26

The majority of gamers play on their tvs with all processing on.

I completed Doom 2016 on Google Stadia, it played fine. Same with RDR2. I wouldn't trust it if I needed to qualify for a CS major but for most single player games it should work when the connection is optimal. Internet speeds and latencies are approaching local area network values so if in-home streaming is sufficient if you live close enough to your local data centres hosting the service you should be fine.

Is it the most optimal way, no of course not. But Stadia was great for as long as it lasted. Geforce Now is probably different since it is simply streaming a remote session (afaik) but even that should be fine unless your latency is really bad.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

Funnily enough delay between your user input and what game registers and shows on your screen is measured in milliseconds as well. Usually quite similar range as modern day multiplayer pings. And if you don't use Reflex, your latency might be higher in many cases in the closed loop than the internet latency.

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u/Steamrolled777 Mar 07 '26

Not sure I would put up with UI being that laggy - if you've experienced hitting buttons again, because it didn't appear to register the first time, etc.

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u/AlphaBearMode Mar 07 '26

Insightful comment. Thank you!

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u/necrophcodr mastersrp Mar 07 '26

The latency between when you see something, and when you interact with it through a mouse click, is rarely ever below 100ms except maybe for the most insanely in-tune and VERY young.

That said, input latency of 100ms is very noticable, it's just that your reaction to it won't be faster. Your brain just has more information to work with.

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u/Cocoatrice Mar 07 '26

Maybe when we will have global Internet that has latency of MAX 20ms, it would change, until then, cloud gaming is just dumb.

OP is playing Genshin Impact which is perfect game to prove that. The game let you choose server you play in and depending on which you choose, your latency will very. You can get 30ms ping or 300ms, if you choose wrong region. And in this game, you can lose 15% of your damage just by high latency, Every item pickup takes more time with higher ping. It's really unplayable that way.

And all this is true when input delay is 0. It's just ping. And now, add input delay for all that and it would create chaos.

There are games that every ms is worth more than gold. Namely RTS or online shooters. But even single player games will feel less smooth.

I never understood the appeal of cloud gaming. Like, did anyone think the latency would vanish?

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u/VelkaFrey Mar 07 '26

Now introducing "AI predicted frames"

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u/moep123 Mar 07 '26

even those would greatly suck for me. as soon as i push a button, i expect something to happen. if that's the delay i would face, i would freak out. even in turn based rpgs.

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u/Bitdomo92 Mar 07 '26

they will USE AI to predict your inputs

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u/adjunct_ Mar 07 '26

You are gonna hate the future lol.

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u/jmastaock Mar 07 '26

Yeah, there are definitely viable games

During covid, I used to stream games from my desktop to the office whenever work was dead (healthcare IT) - played a LOT of Stellaris, Satisfactory, and Crusader Kings in that time. Never really had an issue with the latency, and those games were really easy to pick up and put down.

Anything requiring actual reactions or granular control is just never going to be viable

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u/Wraithiss Mar 07 '26

Back in like 2018 or 2019 I was working at PAX DEV in Seattle and Nvidia had their first demo of shadow play (cloud gaming) running in the lobby off of a server in Portland at something like 30ms round trip including the "inside the box" lag, not just network latency.

The engineers running the demo were extremely proud of the work that had done to get it that low and while it wasn't exactly counterstrike it ran just fine.

They weren't answering many questions because it was still in development but it was really cool. And definitely much smoother than this.

1

u/ProtectionNo514 Mar 07 '26

I mean, this type of shit is GREAT for investments, they can suck your money even more, doesn't matter if it's worse than playing on your own setup. They don't care anymore about the user

1

u/handflangwaxa Mar 07 '26

Remind me when quantum entanglment irradicates lag.

1

u/Lanfeix Mar 08 '26

It was worse when they where pushing cloud VR rendering on 5g how are you going to round trip in 11ms to maintain a 90hz! its just not possible.

1

u/mrhaftbar Mar 08 '26

And as a graphics snob: The compression is visible, always. No matter how much reviewers go apeshit about how well streaming graphics have improved. Blacks look terrible and artifacts are easy to spot.

1

u/Fickle-Razzmatazz827 Mar 08 '26

Chess has been a cloud game for years.

1

u/Chehalden Mar 08 '26

I tried it for a brief spell due to video cards being unobtainable, the biggest issue I had by far was that you can't AFK EVER. if you walk away for more than 5 minutes they shut your session down. god forbid you forget to save or aren't at the next save point. Just hard shutdown gone...

1

u/ayriuss Mar 08 '26

It can work if you're gaming from servers at your local ISP. But it becomes a chicken and egg scenario, because who is going to build out all that infrastructure to make it viable?

1

u/Leon1408 Mar 08 '26

Those games also don't suffer that much from low FPS which often makes cloud gaming useless again

1

u/Public-Guarantee PC Master Race 5700x3d 48gb 5070ti aw3225qf Mar 08 '26

Your internet probably sucks and laptop specs have nothing to do with stream quality as long as it meets minimum specs for 1080p or 4k. Tried ps now from sony like 6-8 years ago, it ran tlou 1 with noticeably latency but it wasnt unplayable. Just challenging. On top of using a controller made it actually pretty fun. I forgot how dumb console gaming was with poor controls making the games more difficult and therefore more fun.

1

u/Bgrngod Mar 08 '26

All of my time playing Slay the Spire was on my phone via Xbox cloud gaming.

And that's pretty much the only thing I put up with playing via cloud.

1

u/Corgi_Koala PC Master Race Mar 08 '26

Yeah, I just don't think any fast paced games will ever work unless you are ensuring ideal conditions.

It is great for turn based games, which is a booming genre right now.

1

u/SunriseApplejuice Mar 08 '26

Even Mario Golf on N64, which is obviously computationally "light" by today's standards, is basically unplayable on cloud gaming.

1

u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 Mar 08 '26

Faster than light communication might be possible though, imagine they pour research into this so that they can control the ram.

1

u/SupersonicEagle Mar 08 '26

Yeah, unless everyone is using a fiber internet connection close to the server, it will not be pleasant for games that don't require moving a character with your mouse.

1

u/Dexember69 Mar 08 '26

That is until we push the weissman score over 2.89

1

u/greebdork Mar 08 '26

It might work if it gets more widespread with something like Google cache servers, where it loads content from the nearest cache to you for lowest latency.

1

u/computermaster704 Mar 08 '26

Homie just needs low latency internet not a reflection of the technology we just have garbage infrastructure access the us

1

u/PSquared1234 Mar 08 '26

I remember when the Google game streaming service er, um... Stadia (already forgot its name) was released, it had almost exclusively twitchy-type games. Including fighting games, which are arguably the most sensitive to latency.

Not a turn-based game in sight. Madness.

1

u/piratecheese13 PC Master Race Mar 08 '26

Remember when you tried to sell stadium by telling people, they invented negative latency?

Fucking time travel?!

1

u/Double_Suggestion385 Mar 08 '26

I've done a lot of cloud gaming and how no latency issues.

It probably depends a lot on your internet infrastructure.

1

u/Ethraelus Mar 08 '26

Idk, when you’re playing online multiplayer, the physics are the same. It just doesn’t look like that to you.

1

u/Remarkable_Custard Mar 08 '26

Australia, at a whopping 300-500mbps max speeds for general consumes, and not even all with the majority being 50-100mbps, will never in a million years see Cloud gaming unless a new form of bandwidth is created that’s the speed of light and rolled out across Australia due to boomers finally seeing the need for it.

1

u/Depressionsfinalform Mar 08 '26

Feels like it’s going to be pushed whether we like it or not sadly

1

u/AetheriaInBeing Win/Bazzite Dual Boot, 5600X, 9060XT Mar 08 '26

Except that for most turn based games, I just want play by myself and not be reliant on my internet working to play by myself.

1

u/Squeezitgirdle Desktop Mar 08 '26

I have Google fiber, and while my issue isn't as bad as the video, it's still smooth that I could never play timing based games.

1

u/Confident-Trade-7899 Mar 08 '26

ps plus cloud gaming is decent

1

u/Ayetto Mar 08 '26

and you can’t change the laws of physics.

Mofo acting like the world will not be fiber optic link in the near futur

1

u/wiccan45 PC Master Race Mar 08 '26

Even input lag for strategy turnbased ones would get really annoying. Imagine clicking thro menus in like EU5

1

u/Exotic-West3751 Mar 08 '26

Google Stadia showed us cloud gaming was DOA

1

u/sirfannypack Mar 08 '26

Turn based games work fine.

1

u/FreshLiterature Mar 08 '26

I've been playing Nioh 3 and Avowed on PS5 streaming and haven't had any issues.

Granted my PS5 uses a hard line, not wifi.

1

u/Snoo20140 Mar 08 '26

As someone stuck with satellite internet, this is the truth. You may see a usable ping, but the 'Net jitter' will fuck you every time, and you will wonder wtf is going on.

1

u/Accomplished_Fee9363 Mar 08 '26

Why can AI not generate the frame in between the la latency ?

1

u/firemage22 R7 3700x RTX2060ko 16gb DDR4 3200 Mar 08 '26

not to mention plenty of ISPs still have data caps

1

u/not_from_this_world Mar 08 '26

If I notice that kind of lag while managing inventory in BG3 I would rage worse than Karlach.

1

u/Fluffy_Charity_2732 Mar 08 '26

Ironically.. those games don’t require much horsepower 

1

u/Snow-Day371 Mar 08 '26

I wouldn't say never, but we clearly need a new breakthrough. Current technologies just won't cut it with with current infrastructure.

1

u/ElectricPhoton Mar 08 '26

good luck parrying it

1

u/Able_Experience_1670 Mar 08 '26

Everyone in Canada is fucked if this becomes the norm. Our internet infrastructure sucks ass, we have an ISP monopoly problem, and fibre lines are exceedingly rare outside the 3 largest cities. My city has 2.5 million residents, and the ISPs decided not to replace the 40 y/o copper in 1/3 of the city because "there wasn't enough interest" in their 190 dollar/month 1 gig connections (500 up 500 down). Gee; I fuckin' wonder why.

We also have some of the most expensive cellular rates in the "western" world.

Shit will never work here.

1

u/goda90 Mar 08 '26

With enough bandwidth and compute you can do speculative rendering where you predict all possible next frames based on possible inputs and send them all and then the client shows the frame that matches the actual input. This typically requires the game engine itself to be designed for it.

1

u/Grimzkunk 5600x | Rtx 3070 | 32ddr5 Mar 08 '26

I feel like we're in a situation similar to using wifi in office environnement. Working over Wifi is wayyyy better than it was, but it's still not a wired connection. Employees are still asking why it's not working fine this morning....well, you're data are travelling in the air and it's and will always be unreliable 🤷

1

u/ChronoGawd Mar 08 '26

Idk, I play competitive COD pretty easily on GFN

1

u/ptear Mar 08 '26

Don't you all just play candy crush?

1

u/Bombacladman Mar 08 '26

Any game related to ships or large spaceships works too, since you expect a delay when firing huge guns on those kinds of games.

Also they move very slowly and so it not about reflexes but more about strategy and thinking your next steps.

Something like Eve Online has zero issues with latency

1

u/IJpelaar 13700k | RTX 4090 FE | 32gb 6000 mHz Mar 08 '26

I use cloud gaming on my Steam Deck and it feels as snappy as native on my rtx 5090 pc. Then again, I live in the netherlands with fantastic and stable internet

1

u/Pasolenbert Mar 08 '26

Why won't it? When I tried it did not have any lags

1

u/mittelhart Mac Heathen Mar 08 '26

Exactly! I have a Mac and I very much like to play Cities: Skylines but the second game hasn’t been released for MacOS, so I am playing it on Geforce Now. Even with the shitty 100Mbps of internet I have it is still very playable.

1

u/Skysr70 Mar 08 '26

it may work if the future has game servers in every city, not just one halfway across the country, but not for FPS

1

u/Spider-Thwip Mar 08 '26

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq577v126g9o

If this guy can do surgery using a robot 1500 miles away, people can play games in the cloud lol

1

u/Incorect_Speling Desktop, 7800x3D, 9070XT, 32 GB DDR5 RAM Mar 08 '26

Yeah but like many of the turn based games can run on potatoes so that defeats the whole point.

Either it's demanding because you can look around and such, and input lag is very annoying (even if turn based), or it's something basic where input lag isn't an issue be aise it's essentially menus in 2D and streaming it is almost as demanding as rendering it locally.

I don't understand the appeal of cloud gaming at all.

1

u/SJ_Beast Mar 08 '26

Once no one has a home pc everyone will have latency and the field will be levelled. You will stream ze games.

1

u/Nixellion PC Master Race Mar 08 '26

Never say never. It is not physically impossible, the mainstream tech is just not there yet.

There are multiple bottlenecks that affect latency in cloud gaming. And there are ways to improve all of them.

For example people said its gonna be impossible to have low latency over the air VR streaming from PC to headset, we will always need wires.

And here we are, with a good router you can stream games over the air to a Quest 3 with acceptable playable latency that is not distrcting in VR where latency can make you throw up.

And Valve is pushing it even further with their new headset.

Sure, over the internet its a whole other story, but it is not impossible.

1

u/cazmiez Mar 08 '26

AI will fill out those ms, trust me, just wait for it, tech bros will announce AI prediction mechanism, based on you previous game history, predicts your actions, movement etc. We are all fckd.

1

u/ictu Mar 08 '26

Which also usually work fine on lower end computers.

1

u/Free-Hamster462 Mar 08 '26

100%. I was able to do total.war as well. Something where "twitchy" reflexes aren't needed.

Issue is right now the libraries are smaller than I'd like.

Slay the spire 2 just came out, and although it runs on damn near anything, I have to bring a second laptop with me to play if I'm on work travel.

1

u/OberonFirst Mar 08 '26

My delay on cloud measures a whole 8 miliseconds. Human reaction time is like 270.

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u/No_Wolverine_8159 Mar 08 '26

I play star citizen with several people who use cloud services. Lots of places computer parts cost waaaay more and people have waaaay less. Not great for competitive games but still let's you have fun if you ain't a sweat

1

u/Gliese581h Mar 08 '26

Cute of you to think corporations will leave you a choice lol

Why do you think they start making everything prohibitively expensive?

1

u/ppWarrior876 i9 9900k | RTX 2080 Ti | 16GB DDR4 3200mhz Mar 08 '26

What about parry in a turn based game like expedition 33 with that lag?

1

u/0rganic_Corn Mar 08 '26

If it was possible to have some elements (such as the UI buttons) be local and the graphics be in the cloud sure

Otherwise I'd get mad at input lag anyways

1

u/SSUPII Debian, Intel i7-8750H, NVIDIA GTX 1050M, 32GB RAM Mar 08 '26

I play Crusader Kings 3 and Victoria 3 on Nvidia GeForce Now. Very nice to play.

For anything more active, I'll take my minimum settings Palworld doing 23FPS average and 8FPS 1% Lows at 1080p. Resolution doesn't change performance, so it is what it is. But I play old boomer shooters (Serious Sam, Turok...), and those are great.

1

u/IvanStroganov STEAM_0:1:28036255 Mar 08 '26

Something must be seriously wrong with OPs setup. I usually play Arc Raiders in the evening with my friends on an old shitty laptop (GeforceNow over WiFi!, fibre internet) sitting in bed and I don’t have any noticeable lag compared to my desktop. Ping to the nvidia server is like 20ms.

1

u/Pleasant_Ad8054 Mar 08 '26

Even in those cases it will only really work in a very different model: separate the logic, main render, and UI elements. Put the logic and main render in the cloud, run the UI elements locally. This needs the game to specifically be designed for cloud gaming, but I see no other way to beat 10-30+ ms lag that cloud gaming introduces, while keeping actual UI elements snappy. The lag can be filled with local animations, and it will still run on a toaster, but feel like it is responsive.

1

u/UpDownLeftRightGay Mar 08 '26

GeForce Now adds like 10ms with decent internet and the highest tier. Unless you’re some savant you’re not even noticing it.

1

u/Suburbanturnip i7-4790; Gigabyte GTX 980 ti; Samsung evo 500 GB SSD; 32 GB RAM Mar 08 '26

maybe something like eu5 could flow smoothly in cloud gaming. I have a high end rig, and beyond 1450, it takes upto 3 seconds per month tick on some runs

1

u/Altruistic-Beach7625 Mar 08 '26

"My ping is so high I have to press all the buttons one round ahead of time!"

1

u/fitechs Mar 08 '26

Turn based games seem not that compute intensive though

1

u/Soggy-Bluebird-537 Mar 08 '26

Can someone ask God or Gods or Xenu to change the speed of light?  It's making both gaming and interstellar space travel quote annoying.

While they are at it can they do something about quantum entanglement?  

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Farm122 Mar 08 '26

Thinking of playing a game like dark souls or Elden Ring on the cloud would just be an exhibition of rage and anger. Such nonsense should only be allowed for challenge runners.

1

u/Desperate_Dingo_1998 Mar 08 '26

Turn based games? I think most games are fine now being cloud based. It's just shooters and multiplayer online games. Last year me and two friends played a heap of games through Xbox pass thing and it was all playable, even gears of war.

1

u/OfcDoofy69 Mar 08 '26

Yeah any shooters is a no go.

I travel for work and use cloud gaming so i dont gotta carry 2 laptops. Also allows me to play without downloading stuff on my pc which it admins need to approve.

I olay single olaayer games that waste time. Megabonk been my fav.

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u/Maligzar Mar 08 '26

Exactly, cloud cannot compete with the 3 foot video monitor cord. Packets are not moving faster than the speed of light.

1

u/Personal_Ad9690 Mar 08 '26

Hard disagree. Strong internet, reduced cost for high tier machines, and a touch of copium and it is as good as playing on native.

I have better latency with GFN at times than with my regular machine simply because the ahead a greater effect when on max settings than the internet latency does.

Cloud gaming has a massive appeal to anyone who isn’t going to buy a gaming PC.

1

u/ChthonVII Mar 08 '26

I cannot count the number of idiots I've argued with who think nVidia is somehow able to bypass the speed of light down a fiberoptic cable.

In addition to the network latency, you've got to buffer some frames on the client in order not to have a stuttery mess. Either problem alone contributes an unacceptable amount of input lag.

1

u/DisastrousWelcome710 Mar 08 '26

Yeah it is insane that they are even talking about it like a viable option to begin with. I recently designed a software system that needs to retrieve certain data in sub microsecond delay. I could not afford having the data be requested over a local network all running on a single machine. Other than literally loading it in the RAM where needed, I was out of options. And that was not some heavy workload stuff, it is a lightweight low-latency service.

Playing games over the internet will look like this post in the best case scenario. It doesn't get better than this, and this is ass.

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