SXSW XS Render Cloud Interview - Simon Solotko IView Jules Urbach W/XSForum Questions

I just had a unique opportunity to interview Jules Urbach with your questions on cloud-based rendering and blogger Paul Mooney was onhand with his HD camcorder here at SXSW in Austin. I asked the hardest questions I could devise based on the XS forum feedback from the original thread. I hope you enjoy it, I certainly did!

The live interview from Paul Mooney on Neuronspark just posted: http://neuronspark.com/videos/rendering-in-the-cloud/

The Blog on Cloud Computing and the Render Cloud: http://links.amd.com/9prl

Original thread on XS: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=220778

Cool Otoy Demo Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nydW9XUA5VQ

Jules Urbach is the expert on the cloud-based rendering and the CEO of Otoy. I took the questions raised in the XS thread on cloud computing and did a spontaneous interview with Jules.

I can't watch the vid right now with this absolute garbage xplornet sattelite, but OTOY are the ones developing Cinema 2.0 and Lightstage, right? I believe that's what I was told on another forum anyway.

Dude that is a VERY interesting cloud computing conversation. Watch the video peeps. We need to discuss this.

Yep, very interesting is right.

How I hate all these videos recently...
Text is faster to get through and easier for foreigners.

I dont believe gaming over an external network will be possible.

Lan possibly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by STEvil

I dont believe gaming over an external network will be possible.

Lan possibly.

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And that Luke, is why you fail.

Just joking.

Same deal as playing games online like UT3 today, the only question is, where is it rendered, and is the client simulating and generating the scene or is it being done by remote GPGPU? The question isn't whether it wiil work (my opinion), the question is whether it is responsive, scales and can form sustainable business models.

It looks like the answer will turn out to be yes for small high bandwidth clients. A great question to many in this forum is whether it will impact PC gaming as we know it?

Hence the discussion here.

Realistically we need to look at the options of what is going to be rendered.

Using a single 4870X2...

For example if you were gaming from a low resolution display (phone, 7" netbook, handheld gaming device similar to PSP, etc) then its not so much of a problem and there would be GPU power left to spare on the host render device for more than one client. If you were using a non-portable client with a larger display you are going to eat up more GPU resources. The GPU resources need to be hosted in a facility (assuming net-hosted vs lan-hosted) with power and space considerations for the number of clients.. which is going to cost money to you if you want that much rendering power. Would you rather rent GPU power for $500-$1200 (gpu+power+space) per year or host it yourself locally?

I also havent seen anyone explain how the latency concerns will be taken care of. Generally most people have between 30 and 100ms of system latency on their input-output cycle (not including gaming engine design differences). Add onto that the 40-150ms that external hosting would induce (lan would be 20-50) due to data volume and packet density and you're nearing dial-up response times.

These days I game on DSL which has a maximum download speed of 330Kb/sec and an upload of 70Kb/sec. Neither of these maxes out at the same time and getting either of them near their max means significant increases in latency. I can usually put up with up to 150ms of latency but I spent a lot of years on dial-up, even up to and including about 1.5-2 years ago. Even with my tolerance I dont see how this is viable in a net-hosted situation without fiber optic links to everything.



edit - and really, if we want to look at how things might be done, there are some interesting examples in filmography/animation out there which I believe give better alternatives to what has been discussed from various parties as of late.
Over here in canada we're already being taken for a ride concerning "high speed" costs and I dont want to consider what will happen if the ISP's decide to "upgrade" at our expense... again. $50/mo gets me my DSL package...

with more than 2 gpus we already see lags in game response time, since it takes a couple of frames until a fast movement actually can be processed in the game...
i really dont see this working well with everything being rendered somewhere on the internet :D