Cloud Gaming: "It's Already There But Are We Ready?"

Following is a little article I wrote up back in 2018 for my college magazine. I was 16/17 and stupid, today kids are busy raising millions for startup but I was just figuring out coding, ego-fighting with friends and trying to get a girl out of pure FOMO and status back in college.
So yeah this blog has a lot of grammar mistakes, but I intend to keep it as is because it would be fun to read this later and hey in todays world where everything is heavily moderated using AI tools, its good to have some raw unedited content too. hehe.

The Precious Tech: The Cloud

What is the cloud? It’s just a huge storage connected to the internet which can be accessed from anywhere in this universe. Well a much proper geeky way of explanation is “A fully fledged Computer connected to the Internet for using it as a remote PC”. Some epic Cloud services are Google Drive, One Drive, Google Cloud ML and Google Docs. It was revealed by Microsoft in their latest Windows 10 19H1 Insider Preview Build that they are going to have an online version of Office coming preinstalled with their upcoming Windows 10 builds.

Previously we had to have around 2 GB of RAM for running Microsoft Office 2016/19 without any problems. Even my 4 GB ram would reach near full load when I switch on my Microsoft Office 2019 64-bit. But if the office were to run from the cloud then we can do the heaviest Office task even on our 2 GB Desktop just real smoothly. Like Office 365 and Office 2016 had some different features in them. Office 365 is a cloud based full productivity service.

So, the cloud is simple it’s just a place where there are tons of computers connected with each other using the web. And when we access a web service we are actually remotely controlling a computer situated somewhere really far or under the ocean (Yeah! you read it right Microsoft are actually working on a project to submerge their servers into the water for better cooling. Funny!!).

Cloud Gaming: Let’s give a simple thought about it….

In a house in every bedroom there is a super thin light weight laptop connected to a GBPS Internet Connection. Now just imagine playing GTA 6 and also streaming at the same time in this super thin laptop with specs like a 4 GB RAM, Intel Core i3 10th gen, Integrated graphics 2 GB, (a super light notebook) well you might be thinking even today playing GTA 5 on an 8 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 1050 Ti laptop is just silly.

Cloud Gaming “That’s really out there right now”

Now the above said example is possible because the 4 GB RAM laptop acts as an interface for the server where the GTA 6 Game and the Streaming Service actually lies. Here the laptop will only do certain tasks that are for gaming and streaming the display from the server and also sending keyboard strokes and mouse clicks to the server. The server directly sends the display outputs and laptop’s webcam inputs to the third-party streaming service.

That’s awesome right!! Super Gaming at cheap. But even the cloud gaming’s going to cost you as you are going to use the heavy servers build using the latest and fastest hardware ever created.

Even today you could just play GTA 5 and Assassins Creed online from your small underpowered laptop.

Some of the best Cloud Gaming Service Providers

PlayStation Now GeForce Now Parsec Cloud Gaming Playkey.net Shadow Paperspace Vortex Liquid Sky Microsoft Azure Simplay

A simple personal home Cloud Gaming

Well setting a personal cloud is not that difficult, but when it comes to a personal gaming cloud it’s just damn costly while it’s only a one-time settlement. Up to 7 of your friends could play multiple heavy XDR (An updated version of HDR, implemented by Apple) game on a single server smoothly. On the hardware part we could use a dual socket motherboard with two of latest Intel’s top Xeon CPU’s and attaching about 8x Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000, now that’s a terrible idea.

[Alphons Jaimon - 2018]