On 07/10/2023 13:31, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
On Sat, 7 Oct 2023 09:56:19 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
On 07/10/2023 00:43, rms wrote:
Meh. I'm so far behind on the Assassins Creed series, I see no
immediate reason to grab this one.
 Ok that was a bad example, here's a better one: "Also another shout >>> out to GeForce now. I’m playing Psycho pathtracing at 4k on a 4080 with >>> 7ms network lag for $20 a month.  makes it very hard to justify buying >>> a new gaming PC for the prices a 4080/4090 based system commands"
that's more in line with what I was thinking about.
I can see the appeal of streaming services (you can have that sort of
graphical fidelity without breaking into a sweat as you press the Add to
Cart button for a top end GPU) but I'm still yet to be tempted as the
games I now play* just don't need the power of a higher end system. My
last upgrade (GPU + MB + CPU + RAM) was less than £400 and is perfectly
fine for the games I play. I did think maybe I was just kidding myself
and this was really a chicken and egg situation in that I didn't play
games that require a high end PC because I didn't have a high end PC.
Then I though about my previously PC which was the lower end of the high
end for want of a better term. Did I play games that really required
that type of performance, very rarely.
I agree.
While I find GeForce Now neat on a technological front - playing
"Doom" (2016) on an underpowered netbook was a hoot! - I just don't
see the necessity of it, and the downsides of relying on a streaming
service don't outweigh the upsides.
Then again, I tend to be the opposite of JAB, where my PCs are usually
closer to high-end, so I don't NEED a streaming service to get me
ultra-class visuals; I have the hardware available locally. But even
were my PC less impressive, I'm not sure I'd see the advantage to
streaming services because most games just don't /need/ a high-end PC.
Sure, there are some games where you won't get an enjoyable gaming
experience without a mega-PC, but these are honestly rare. And
certainly, the more grunt your computer has, the better the visuals
will be. But even a modern potato-PC can still generate some pretty compelling visuals. Most low-end laptops today out-perform high-end
PCs from ten years ago, and - while modern games at their best look
fantastic - they really don't look THAT much better than games like
"Mass Effect 3" or "Dishonored" or "Metro: Last Light".
Good visuals have always been as much dependent on the skill of the
artists as they have on the technology, after all.
And that's even before you start considering that many developers are purposefully limiting themselves by creating retro-styled games, which greatly reduces how much processing power is required.
TL;DR: Even with a ten-year old CPU/GPU, you can still get excellent visuals... and often enough, many of the best games don't even need
that much power. If your PC is powerful enough to run a streaming
service, its probably powerful enough for most games - especially the
fun ones - too.
Determining value for money is never as easy as it seems, although I
think one of the major factors is what your anchor point is. So for me,
and having read various posts of yours, that anchor point is more based
on what level of graphics fidelity is acceptable. Where we obliviously
differ is that you have a system that can reach an 'acceptable' level
even if that is 4k+ plus all the extras. My system would very much choke
to death if I tried doing that with say Cyberpunk but even if it was a
game I really wanted to play I'm sure that I could get it running with
the graphics at a level that is acceptable to me as my standard is as
long as it doesn't make your eyes bleed I'm happy.
A different perspective is if you're the type of gamer that keeps up
with having a higher end system. The anchor point can then be how much
does that cost and with the rise in GPU prices the answer is a lot more
than it used to. Looking at it that way streaming services become far
more attractive. Now of course that is not my perspective but neither of
them is either right or wrong.
To touch on something else you mentioned, graphics in older games vs.
newer games. I tend to agree that even if the raw performance increases
are quite dramatic over the last ten years what you actually get out is
a lot less than is you say looked at a game from 2000 vs 2010. Crysis
Warhead I think is a good example, released in 2008 and for me the
visuals are still more than acceptable. Added to that is that it does
feel that, as you say, a lot more devs. have now gone down the route of
you don't need good graphics you need interesting graphics. Off the top
of my head Sunless Sea, Firewatch and Disco Elysium are good examples of
this. I'd assume that in many ways smaller devs. have basically been
forced down the route as they just don't have the budgets to create all
the assets required.
So my final thoughts, I don't think streaming services are a fad, like
VR seems to be, but I'm not sure how mainstream they will become.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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