Investor Money Goes To Magic Lag Reducing Tech 133
Gamasutra reports on Texas technology company Bigfoot networks, which just received a $4 Million investment to develop a lag-reducing hardware PC card. From the piece: "According to the firm, it will bring to market the world's first Gaming Network Accelerator card, which will allow online gamers to play their favorite games with less lag. The company explained: 'Lag is the number one problem in online video games today, and Bigfoot Networks is the only company in the world whose sole mission is to fight lag', but gave no specific technical explanation about how it intends to do this." Greg Costikyan spells it out on the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog: "So yes, there might be a business here. But if so, it will be a business built largely on bullshit."
Weakest link? (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you looking for quite entertaining reviews of products that are quite obviously scams like this, I highly recommend articles like this one [dansdata.com] on Dan's Data [dansdata.com]
Re:Weakest link? (Score:1)
Re:Weakest link? (Score:2, Funny)
It's obvious to intelligent people. It's not obvious to top-notch leveraging 24/7 TCO-oriented business-cunts (who synergize front-end e-commerce and harness B2B portals to recontextualize best-of-breed systems in holistic technologies).
Re:Weakest link? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Weakest link? (Score:2)
Re:Weakest link? (Score:1)
Re:Weakest link? (Score:2)
Re:Weakest link? (Score:2)
Re:Weakest link? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are plenty of other ways to squeeze our a few ms on the client side. Sure th
Re:Weakest link? (Score:2)
Thanks for destroying my productivity for the week. Now, when I get home from work, I'm going to sit there reading articles rather than working on more important things, like playing WoW.
Re:Weakest link? (Score:2)
Heay! That's the difference between getting a perfect between the eyes frag at a hundred yards, and clipping an eyeball!
-
Re:Weakest link? (Score:3, Funny)
Lag is the number one problem in online video games today
Punk-ass campers, script kiddies, and bitchy n00bs are the number 1-3 problems (pick your order) in online video games today. And have been for years now. I'd have to put lag fairly low on the list.
Lag attack (Score:4, Informative)
The question is why perform it in hardware rather than software?
Re:Lag attack (Score:1)
Re:Lag attack (Score:1)
If you're going to mess with that datastream, you better be sure the server knows how to deal with the changes.
Re:Lag attack (Score:3, Informative)
Playing devil's advocate for a minute, during video games the CPU is usually otherwise occupied by tasks associated with feeding the GPU and processing AI/Physics. Separating this into a hardware card could provide an explicit processing environment to do such an analysis in real-time without stealing CPU time from the game. Plus, this would then be available to all programs/games running on the machine, not just those that support it. (Conceiv
Re:Lag attack (Score:2)
Well duh. Unless you think it might be better done by bioware? I don't think my brain could handle that.
Re:Lag attack (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lag attack (Score:3, Insightful)
There are really only two places for lag: the PC itself, and the network. I can imagine a card that optimizes itself for gaming packets. Imagine, for instance, the card estimating the arrival of a new packet comin
Re:Lag attack (Score:2)
Re:Lag attack (Score:2)
what would be nice would be a standard protocol for games to communicate what phase of play they are at, that way if Gaming rig A is running Counterstrike and rig B was playing UT, priority could be doled out based on who was closer to the end
Reducing lag? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reducing lag? (Score:2)
Re:Reducing lag? (Score:2)
Made from oil squeezed from genuine snakes. (Score:5, Funny)
Oooo! A chance to cite my very favorite product! (Score:2)
Is it something like PowerPlay? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it something like PowerPlay? (Score:2)
-Rick
Re:Is it something like PowerPlay? (Score:3, Informative)
Special Driver? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Special Driver? (Score:2)
Sure, why not (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't any different than the phantom console, magnets which supposedly help your arthritis or whatever book that Kevin Trudeau [quackwatch.org] is bilking people [consumeraffairs.com] into buying [msn.com] claiming this is information that the government doesn't want you to know about.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Not the least of which that there are VC idiots who will gladly pony up the money for a non-existant, never-to-be-made product simply because it has oodles of neat sounding words in its description.
*PT Barnum never actually said those words but people routinely attribute the phrase to him.
Re:Sure, why not (Score:2, Informative)
And there's a business graduate who wants to take advantage of them. From TFA:
The company is a start-up company with roots from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and was formed by a team of Executive MBA students to improve the performance of online video games.
Personally, I would've expected a tech start-up to include at least someone with a degree in, you know, technology of some sort...
Re:Sure, why not (Score:1)
Personally, I would've expected a tech start-up to include at least someone with a degree in, you know, technology of some sort...
Right, like during the dot com boom/bust, when a B.A. in Sociology made you a programmer.
Re:Sure, why not (Score:2)
Re:Sure, why not (Score:2)
So...what causes lag? (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now, with the proliferation of antivirus and antispyware software, I could see something designed to alleviate I/O constrictions as being very beneficial to gamers. Perhaps a battery-backup+cachedrive device to chain between the hard disk and the I/O controller. If an application can request that its data be cached, you no longer have to worry about seek times in reading data off the drive. (You could conceivably reduce your RAM and VRAM requirements, too!)
Re:So...what causes lag? (Score:1)
~ Wizardry Dragon
Re:So...what causes lag? (Score:1)
That's easily enough to seriously screw up a high-intensity FPS game. When you can't even aim at that sniper you've been trading shots with, you're screwed.
Re:So...what causes lag? (Score:4, Informative)
Now, perhaps we can invent an add-in card that uses subspace carrier waves that will make a direct connection to your opponent instead of wi-fi or copper wires that go through switches and proxies. (oh yeah, and they need to have open source linux drivers,
Re:So...what causes lag? (Score:1)
They don't measure up to the Slashdot norm for technical competence.
Re:So...what causes lag? (Score:2)
It's filled with entangled qubits! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's filled with entangled qubits! (Score:3, Funny)
And if I don't look... Does that mean my online Counterstrike guy is neither alive nor dead, but stuck in some limbo where he has neither rescued the hostages nor got an Desert Eagle round to the head?
I don't know about this service...
Re:It's filled with entangled qubits! (Score:2)
Sounds like a job for Schrodinger's Medic.
Re:It's filled with entangled qubits! (Score:2)
Re:It's filled with entangled qubits! (Score:2)
The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a semi-decent 5.1 surround setup, and have avoided expensive cables because I simply don't believe in it. Audio cables might benefit from better shielding and low capacitance wiring, but digital signals.. come on man. A bit across the wire that's "worn in the edges" is still a bit, unlike a sound wave.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:3, Informative)
Baseband audio is only 0-30khz and that's being generous. You can put 30khz across barbed wire fence and it'll sound the same. It's just too low frequency for RF effects to show up unless your wires are 50 miles long, no matter what any "audiophile" says.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:4, Informative)
Digital signals are a little more sensitive actually, but audio in general is extremely independant of wire characteristics.
This is somehwat true, but there are two important factors here:
- In home audio at least, all the digital codecs ship with some levels of ECC. So any minor data lost is irrelevant.
- Because it is a digital signal and not analog, it is therefore either a perfect transmission, or a flawed transmission. There is no middle ground. If your reciever gets an uninturrupted data stream without obvious bleeps with your crappy 0.99 RCA SPDIF cable, then buying a $40 monster gold plated cable will make no difference whatsoever. If it did, then you would be hearing the interference as very obvious bleeps and bops, or your reciever would be cutting in and out. Digital audio codecs do not gracefully degrade as bits randomly vanish.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Not PCM (Score:2)
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
I believe that to be false. Although I never really investigated their claims, some people say that the lack of an external clock on sp-dif can cause audible variations in the sound output. The impression I took away from the discussion was that the timing of the DAC on the end of a sp-dif connection is driven by the clocking of the sp-dif signal itself and thus
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
When most people are talking about HiFi, they are talking about Dolby Digital or DTS surround sound, like the GP with his 5.1 setup.
Both of these binary codecs include ECC and don't care about discrete clock timings any more than an MP3 player would.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
it is, in theory, possible for your digital signal to get corrupted if it lacks any sort of ECC. the flaw however is that digital transmission is a well solved problem, even cheap unshielded ethernet cable will rarely have data loss issues if terminated and connected properly. the cheap hi-fi digital cables are much better protected from interferance than cat5.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS.
Yeah, my 'real audio' stream is a digital signal. Therefore it's either a perfect stream or a flawed transmission.
Yeah, well, it's nearly always flawed. I can still get it.
Even CD redbook has ECC, and you get better sounding and worse sounding CDROMS, depending on how well they can correct the 'error'. cf CDMA digital signals.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Consider getting an extra 2-5 fps in your favorite FPS because you've paid twice as much as "value ram" for the best tweaked ram there is... There's definitely a tangible benefit here, and quite possibly an objective benefit.
Depending on who you ask, it will be iffy. But will it be tangible?
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Of course you don't need the overpriced ram with heatsinks and LCD displays on the side. You just need to buy good quality (Kingston, Crucial, etc...) DIMMs.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:1)
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Still, RAM errors are one of the most annoying to track down too. At least with bum power supplies you can put a multimeter in t
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:3, Funny)
By getting the routers to support the NO_LAG bit, of course.
Re:The "gold cables" of gaming? (Score:2)
AFAIK, they just QoS [wikipedia.org] the hell out of everything so that game packets get YOU MUST DELIVER THIS IMMEDIATELY OR FACE CERTAIN DEATH!!! service and everything else gets meh, whenever you like, if you're not busy... service.
There's Bull and Then There's Bull (Score:2)
This quote comes to mind every time I hear a new MMORPG is being announced for that overcrowded, money-losing market. Won't be long before they start bundling a game network accelator card and a game network router as freebies.
The speed of light? (Score:2)
The on
Re:The speed of light? (Score:1)
Wait....
I just found out some company developed a point mass on a frictionless surface. Sorry, my money's going to them.
It's already been tried with dialup (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.usr.com/support/overview-template.asp?p rod=s-game [usr.com]
http://www.tweak3d.net/reviews/3com/gamingmodem/ [tweak3d.net]
Their Performance Pro modem also claims to have a gaming mode:
http://www.usr.com/products/home/home-product. [usr.com]
flimsy method, attractive idea (Score:1)
Mpath was doomed from the start because they segmented th
using beta hardware here.... (Score:1, Funny)
C:\>ping www.bigfootnetworks.com
Pinging www.bigfootnetworks.com [66.219.46.153] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.219.46.153: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=47
Ping statistics for 66.219.46.153:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4
Cute and interesting - is it an RDMA NIC? (Score:2)
Imagine I write my software to take advantage of DDP/RDMA/whatever protocols that sit on top of TCP. I do this to reduce the memory copies on the server side (where these NICs are essential) - something like this might help even MMOs where the cost of memory copying in the network stack could be significant (I doubt this however - I mean you can do 2-3 GBit on a modern system with plenty of CPU to spare). Now with RDMA I get direct memory placement so the ho
This is nothing. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This is nothing. (Score:2)
Think of the possibilities! I can get first-post on this article, for starters...
No, you just need Monster Cables (Score:5, Funny)
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Not long ago, the world of USB was limited to low-speed devices like keyboards, hubs, and scanners, so using ordinary USB cable could suffice. Things have changed. USB is now used for high-speed peripherals like speakers and video capture delivering larger and different kinds of data at much faster rates with incredible bandwidth. Ordinary USB cable isn't designed to meet the new high speed demand. High attenuation can occur, which may result in "clipped" sound, lost frames of video when capturing, and connection failure. Of course, data isn't the only element a USB cable carries. In many cases, it must carry power, too. Average USB cables often promote loss, because they can't transfer all the power needed. This invites, lockup, hard shutdowns, etc...
Introducing Ultimate Performance Monster USB: The Only High Speed USB Cable You'll Ever Need
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Prices start at only $24.95!
And for that extra, melee-winning boost, get Monster Cable Ethernet Cable [monstercable.com]. Advanced XLN® Xtra Low Noise® construction delivers fast, reliable data transfer -- up to 100Mbps. 24k gold contacts provide error--free data transfer and maximum corrosion resistance.
Re:No, you just need Monster Cables (Score:2)
Galvanic corrosion (Score:3, Funny)
Uh, nothing, unless there's an electrolyte in contact with both. I think if the back of your computer is regularly getting splashed with salt water, you might want to think about moving it to another location...
Don't they remember the 12 netwriking truths? (Score:3, Informative)
RFC 1925 should be required reading for everyone who thinks they have a bright new idea for a network. In this case the company should pay particular attention to rule number two:
[2] No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light.
Since the signal has to travel a certain physical distance, there will always be unavoidable lag. Changing the NIC will have little to no effect, unless you are using some antiquated card that was designed around the early TCP/IP stacks. And gamers are hardly known for not having hardware that is so cutting edge the wounds are still bleeding.
I'm waiting until some new VC-funded company requests major sums of money to build a NIC that communicates on the basis of quantum enatnglement for zero lag. Not to buy one, you understand, since you can't send information faster than the speed of light -- not even by entanglement.
And have a read of the RFC I mentioned [faqs.org] as well. Well worth the time.
Re:Don't they remember the 12 netwriking truths? (Score:1)
In my experiences with using a cell phone over long distances (distances greater than 500 miles), I have never experienced any lag in conversations. Why are cell phones any different than anything else?
Of course, it's because when talking about networking, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of routers that informations ends up passing through before you end up receiving data. Conversations via cell phone only have to travel through a handful of major routing areas be
Re:Don't they remember the 12 netwriking truths? (Score:2)
Re:Don't they remember the 12 netwriking truths? (Score:2)
Make a PPP session with your friend over there, and you will have a lower RTT than by going trough internet
Maybe not entirely BS (Score:4, Informative)
So this might work to improve things, but it seems that your software would have to be rewritten to use it. And I don't know mow significant it is, but one of the guys behind it is a former Intel chip designer. I guess there's plenty of stupid shitty intel chips in the world, but even they didn't want a piece of this.
Re:Maybe not entirely BS (Score:2)
Re:Maybe not entirely BS (Score:2)
Offload what? There's absolutely no reason why you need a specialized card for a fictitious "lag-causing work" function.
"Might be useful in a MMO where 'server lag' does happen."
Again, if there's a function that can be performed on a user's PC, it can be performed on a user's PC already. Any server function o
Re:Maybe not entirely BS (Score:2)
Actually, the claim is even more ridiculous. (Score:2)
That's going to be a really neat trick, totally removing distance, the speed of routers, and the speed of the physical loop itself from the loop.
Maybe they have secret alien ansible technology.
Re:Actually, the claim is even more ridiculous. (Score:2)
Why has no one mentioned (Score:2, Funny)
Another device that appears to already exist (Score:2)
http://www.hawkingtech.com/products/productlist.p
Types of lag in reality... (Score:2)
There are multiple kinds of lag:
1) Server side. Nothing you can do about this, period.
2) Graphics. Have 200 toons on your screen at once? Have an anti-virus scan fire up in the back ground? burning a DVD while playing a FPS? Enjoy the slide show.
3) Client side connection. I have 3mb cable from charter, I experience connection lag about never, same goes for those people with DSL and T1/OC3 lines. But if you are trying to play an MMO over a 33.6kbps modem, you'
Not Impossible, Just Improbable (Score:3, Insightful)
More improbably, though, is that Bigfoot Networks could implement and expose a programmable protocol processor on the card. This won't help existing games, but would enable developers to move some of their protocol closer to the wire, where it may be possible to buffer data more efficiently (send one "game state" packet to the protocol engine, which can then create the multiple unicast packets needed, instead of sending multiple wrapped network packets with effectively the same data across the PCI bus multiple times). However, this will require games to be adapted for it - somewhat unlikely - and even then would only provide significant help for game servers. But since many games - Quake, Half Life, et al - are hosted by home users, it might reduce lag in some situations.
Of course, without a product to play with or any real announcements from the company, it's just speculation at this point. But I'd love to play with a programmable protocol processor - such a device could open up new opportunities for network efficiency innovation (running PPPoE in hardware, integrated firewalls like the nForce ethernet, not to mention TCP, segmentation, and checksum offloading).
Further reading (Score:2)
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Laten
This means further delays... (Score:5, Funny)
Remember CISCO/VALVE PowerPlay (vapor) ? (Score:2)
Those modems never materialized.
First the Phantom, now this (Score:2)
When people name their product or company after something that doesn't exist, then claim to have a secret ultra-cool device that works by magic,
Personally I'm beginning to think that these fake companies with "Look, we're not real, teehee" names are all founded by the same guy who just gets a huge kick (and a lot of money) out of it.
The real cause of lag (Score:2)
Here's an easy way I have people check: ping Google. I've never gotten even 100ms round-trip to Google, and 100ms is still playable -- meaning that somewhere out there, there is a Counter-Strike server that I can play on without lag.
However, most of the lag will be caused by something else -- generally software. Don't be stupid and get infected with spyware, viruses, and worms. Don't do that on the server side, eit
They're trying to hire someone to make it work (Score:2)
Bigfoot Networks, Inc. - Senior Video Game Network Programmer (C++, C, Game Design, Networking)
Full Time Employee will be responsible for architecture and implementation of programming interface and device driver interaction for a next generation network acceleration device targeted towards video games.
Responsibilities include API interface architecture and programming, development and implementation of sample implement
Re:Latency vs. reaction time (Score:2)
Re:Latency vs. reaction time (Score:2)