Could VR be cloud powered and stream games?

[Kerotan]

This goes for all VR but especially PS VR. So we know VR gaming is demanding.  So a solution I thought of was cloud powered games.  Basically boosting the performance big time.  

Another idea was full streaming.  So could Sony add PS Now support to PS VR? It wouldn't have to be super powerful because the games would be running on a server.  

Has this idea been mentioned before and do you think it would work?  

[kitler53]

secret sauce?

[Legend]

Cloud assisted VR has problems because the cloud can only be applied to very specific things. Basically lighting and destruction. So if you have a PSVR game and want to increase the lighting or destruction quality, the cloud could be helpful. Otherwise it's not going to work out.

Maybe in the future things could change.


Cloud powered VR has problems because it takes an incredible amount of cloud resources and takes an incredible amount of user internet bandwidth. The simplest solution, currently used for VR video streaming, is to just stream a large 4k primary video and then dozens of lower resolution secondary videos to create a video "sphere" around the player. Thus when they rotate their head the local hardware simply projects the video. If they do a large quick motion the video becomes blurry, but that's only temporary until the cloud can react and switch that view direction to 4k.

Alternatively you could get better results and decrease bandwidth if the local VR hardware was powerful and did much more than reprojection. Basically instead of the cloud server rendering dozens of high resolution views, it just renders the game as a 3D lightfield/model. Then the local hardware would re-render this model to apply a more advanced form of reprojection.

I just don't see how either of these could be cost effective though. The cloud server rendering the game would need to be many times more powerful than a PS4 just to produce identical graphics.

[Kerotan]

Cloud assisted VR has problems because the cloud can only be applied to very specific things. Basically lighting and destruction. So if you have a PSVR game and want to increase the lighting or destruction quality, the cloud could be helpful. Otherwise it's not going to work out.

Maybe in the future things could change.


Cloud powered VR has problems because it takes an incredible amount of cloud resources and takes an incredible amount of user internet bandwidth. The simplest solution, currently used for VR video streaming, is to just stream a large 4k primary video and then dozens of lower resolution secondary videos to create a video "sphere" around the player. Thus when they rotate their head the local hardware simply projects the video. If they do a large quick motion the video becomes blurry, but that's only temporary until the cloud can react and switch that view direction to 4k.

Alternatively you could get better results and decrease bandwidth if the local VR hardware was powerful and did much more than reprojection. Basically instead of the cloud server rendering dozens of high resolution views, it just renders the game as a 3D lightfield/model. Then the local hardware would re-render this model to apply a more advanced form of reprojection.

I just don't see how either of these could be cost effective though. The cloud server rendering the game would need to be many times more powerful than a PS4 just to produce identical graphics.

OK so basically it's not feasible but it 5/10/15 years it probably will be. Thanks for the informative reply.