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About 10 years ago I decided I didn’t feel comfortable running a proprietary operating system on my computer anymore and made the leap to Linux, and like many converts, I had to give up PC gaming. I moved over to the next best thing, joining the legion of console gamers, but once and awhile there would be that one big PC game that I would miss out on.
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About 10 years ago I decided I didn’t feel comfortable running a proprietary operating system on my computer anymore and made the leap to Linux, and like many converts, I had to give up PC gaming. I moved over to the next best thing, joining the legion of console gamers, but once and awhile there would be that one big PC game that I would miss out on.
The OnLive MicroConsole promises to change all that. With this device, it’s now possible to play some of the hottest titles on the PC…without the PC. For those of us running free and open source operating systems, this little device can get you back in the game (literally), and it even runs Linux!
How OnLive Works
The concept behind OnLive is not unlike VNC or other remote-desktop protocols: the client (you) simply sends input to a remote machine and receives visual and audio data back. The actual processing is done on OnLive’s servers, and all you need to do is provide a machine fast enough to handle the video stream it’s pushing out during gameplay. This means even comparatively weak devices like smartphones can play the latest PC titles, often with visuals that would simply be impossible for the native hardware to render on it’s own.
To be perfectly honest, when I first heard of OnLive a few years back, I was convinced it would never work. It sounded ludicrous at the time, and in the days when 8 Mbps was considered a top-tier Internet connection in the US, it seemed unlikely the average consumer would even have the bandwidth to make it possible. Today with services like Verizon FiOS, the average home can easily get access to a 25+ Mbps duplex Internet connection, and OnLive’s developers have proven to be exceptionally skilled in optimizing the whole process to deliver very impressive gameplay. Playing a game via OnLive will never look as good or run as fluidly as if you had a $3,000 top of the line gaming PC, but it’s certainly better than the alternative: not being able to play the thing in the first place. Full Story |
