NVIDIA GDC 2015 Liveblog
by Ryan Smith on March 3, 2015 9:53 PM EST
11:42PM EST - We're out
11:41PM EST - One last video: TRON: Legacy parody
11:41PM EST - That's a wrap. Look for formal press releases soon
11:39PM EST - SHIELD Console: 4K-capable Android TV device, high performance SoC for Android gaming, and GRID for streaming PC games
11:38PM EST - Wrap up time
11:36PM EST - Now running UE4 Infiltrator demo via GRID
11:35PM EST - Jen-Hsun mentions that since Unreal Engine 4 is now free, PhysX is similarly free since it comes with UE4
11:33PM EST - Side note: it looks like NVIDIA has a new revision of the SHIELD Controller; the D-Pad is different
11:32PM EST - Discussing how there's more GPU performance available in the cloud (i.e. the PC) than the Xbox One
11:31PM EST - NVIDIA thinks game streaming will be the next revolution
11:30PM EST - A difference of 17 years
11:30PM EST - NES: 1983. PS2: 2000
11:30PM EST - Jen-Hsun talking about the history of consoles
11:28PM EST - 50+ launch titles on GRID. 100 by the end of the year
11:25PM EST - The Witcher III running via GRID
11:23PM EST - Now on deck: Damien Mnnnier of CD Projekt Red
11:23PM EST - Metal Gear Rising Revengences will be coming to SHIELD
11:21PM EST - Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeros running via GRID
11:19PM EST - Now on deck: Keichiro Imaizumi of Konami
11:19PM EST - Resident Evil 5 getting an Android port
11:17PM EST - Considerable audio/video desync in this demo
11:16PM EST - Demoing Resident Evil Revelations 2 over GRID, a free-to-play game
11:16PM EST - NVDIA still needs publihers to sign on to GRID, hence the publisher showcase
11:14PM EST - Now on deck: Michiteru Okabe of Capcom
11:14PM EST - NVIDIA's benefit here is that they can offer almost anything that runs on Steam and support the Xbox 360 controller
11:12PM EST - Current SHIELD owners should be familiar with the current selection of free GRID games
11:11PM EST - Looks like the built-in benchmark (or at least the track)
11:09PM EST - Now demoing GRID2 over GRID
11:08PM EST - Coming in May
11:08PM EST - NVIDIA will also sell individual games
11:07PM EST - The higher tier gets more free games
11:07PM EST - Two stores; basic subscription and premium subscription
11:06PM EST - Discussing how only NVIDIA could do this due to making the server GPUs and client SoCs
11:04PM EST - Amazon AWS powered
11:04PM EST - Have to trim latency as low as possible
11:03PM EST - Now discussing NVIDIA's development process for GRID
11:01PM EST - NVIDIA has had long-term ambitions for game streaming. Those plans went sideways whn early partner Gaikai was purchased by Sony for Playstation Now
11:01PM EST - Can steam up to 1080p60
11:00PM EST - GRID is becoming an official service
11:00PM EST - Yep, it's GRID
11:00PM EST - Jen-Hsun is now talking about streaming
10:59PM EST - Final announcement time
10:59PM EST - Still trying to find out about the OS, but it sounds like an up to date version of Android TV
10:58PM EST - Game controller included
10:58PM EST - Price: $199
10:57PM EST - A large number of PC/360 ports
10:56PM EST - "50+ Android launch titles"
10:56PM EST - Crysis 3
10:54PM EST - Cryengne 3 running on Tegra X1 at 30fps
10:53PM EST - Now on stage: Cevat Yerli of Crytek
10:52PM EST - Note that we still need a GTX 970 to run Crysis: Warhead at 1080p with everything turned up and 4x SSAA
10:52PM EST - "Can it run Crysis?"
10:51PM EST - Looks to be running well. A 60fps target gives them a lot of room to work in
10:50PM EST - Doom will run at 60fps
10:50PM EST - Side observation: each generation of NVIDIA products gets bigger. Tegra 4 SHELD Portable, Tegra K1 in the 7" Shield Tablet, and Tegra X1 in the SHIELD console
10:49PM EST - Doom 3 BFG will run on the microconsole
10:47PM EST - Now on deck: Tim Willits of id Software
10:45PM EST - The Talos Prnciple is being ported to the microconsole as well
10:45PM EST - Now on deck: Alen Ladavac of Croteam
10:44PM EST - Borderlands on an SoC-class platform is ambitious. Sony tried it with Borderlands 2 on the Vita, to mixed results due to performance issues
10:43PM EST - TPS demo. We're told it's running at 30fps, however it feels like it's struggling
10:43PM EST - NVIDIA has the source code, and it sounds like they did a lot of the heavy lifting
10:42PM EST - Gearbx is going to do a Borderlands: TPS port for NVIDIA
10:41PM EST - Now on deck: Randy Ptchford of Gearbox
10:41PM EST - Looks very similar in functionality to the current NVIDIA game software on SHIELD Tablet
10:40PM EST - Back to software, taking about the SHIELD Store
10:39PM EST - The console will of course use the SHIELD controller, first introduced alongside the SHIELD tablet
10:39PM EST - Now talking about internals and construction
10:38PM EST - A 360 comparison makes sense given the performance, though at the same time game development for those last-gen consoles is winding down
10:36PM EST - 360 turns 10 years old this year, BTW
10:36PM EST - Xbox 360 comparisons
10:36PM EST - Notably absent: Tegra 3 powered Ouya
10:35PM EST - Though none of them were designed for intense local rendering
10:35PM EST - Vastly more powerful than other smart TV devices
10:34PM EST - Tegra X1 confirmed
10:34PM EST - Do for gaming what Netflix did for videos
10:34PM EST - How to expand the reach of gaming?
10:33PM EST - Now it's time to talk about gaming
10:32PM EST - It's rechargable via USB
10:32PM EST - Overheard in the front of the crowd "What?!"
10:32PM EST - "You don't ever have to replace the batteries"
10:30PM EST - It's also a Bluetooth receiver for headphones
10:30PM EST - Betting heavily on voice search. The remote is vey simple with only a couple of buttons and a microphone
10:30PM EST - Almost certainly a Tegra X1 then
10:29PM EST - Now demoing 4Kp60 decode capabilities
10:29PM EST - Which I suspect is where GRID will come in
10:28PM EST - Of course it's one thing to leverage Android for media, but for gaming that's another matter
10:28PM EST - It isn't quite perfect yet...
10:28PM EST - Now showcasing Google Play Store voice recognition
10:26PM EST - Curretly showing off Android software and features
10:25PM EST - Just like the previous SHIELD devices, NVIDIA is leveraging Android and their own hardware to tap into the Android ecosystem and build off of that
10:24PM EST - NVIDIA didn't get in any of the current gen consoles, so NVIDIA seems to be going it on their own
10:23PM EST - Despite TV being mentioned, to be clear this is not an actual NVIDIA television
10:22PM EST - "World's first Android TV Console"
10:21PM EST - Very thin, but in terms of total volume it seems to be a decent size
10:20PM EST - And there's the microconsole
10:19PM EST - The NVIDIA SHIELD living room entertainment device
10:18PM EST - "Likely a multi-billion unit market"
10:18PM EST - Apps make for unlimited possibilities
10:16PM EST - The TV? The portal to those services
10:16PM EST - Jen-Hsun is very gung-ho on remote/cloud computing
10:15PM EST - Not to mention tablets on TVs via Chromecast and similar techs
10:15PM EST - Now getting int discusions of TVs and consoles
10:15PM EST - "The Modern Living Room"
10:14PM EST - Continued recap of NVIDIA's latest market entries
10:12PM EST - And NVIDIA's history of breaking into new markets
10:12PM EST - A brief history of GPU development
10:11PM EST - TV? Did not see that coming (edit: and indeed it did not. "TV" was in reference to the device being an Android TV set-top box)
10:11PM EST - 3 announcements: TV, game console, and a supercomputer
10:10PM EST - "Working towards this day for many years"
10:10PM EST - Now on stage, Jen-Hsun
10:10PM EST - Final slide note: walking up Nob Hill in San Francisco looks like a much better idea than it actually is when you're at the bottom
10:08PM EST - Should begin in a moment
10:07PM EST - Side note: I have to admit whatever projection system NVIDIA is using for projecting on a black surface looks really good. Very Tron-ish
10:05PM EST - NVIDIA has always been aggressive in the gaming market, a bet that has worked out well for them in the past
10:04PM EST - But dGPUs alone do well enough to keep the whole company well in the black
10:04PM EST - Tegra sales, not so much...
10:04PM EST - dGPU sales have been booming in consumer, pro, and compute
10:03PM EST - NVIDIA overall is having a great year
10:02PM EST - Looks like it'll start just a bit late. 5 minutes from now
09:57PM EST - Our bets: GRID becomes a paid service, VR, and microconsoles
09:56PM EST - What we'll be seeing tonight will be gaming related ad is said to have taken NVIDIA 5 years, but beyond that we don't know what to expect
09:56PM EST - Being held in the Nob Hill Masonic Center, NVIDIA has recented out a fairly large venue
09:55PM EST - We're here at NVDIA's GDC 2015 press event
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37 Comments
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tviceman - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Ryan I quit watching the live feed about 2/3 the way through. At that point, it was not said whether this would be able to do local game streaming like the previous Shield products (streaming already owned games in a steam library). Can you confirm whether or not this new Shield product will have that capability?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Wasn't mentioned in the presentation, look for the press releasestviceman - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Thank you good sir!Wardrop - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I've never got the idea of streaming games. It makes no sense. Every cloud-based SaaS provider is focused on cutting running costs by either using consumer hardware in the datacenter, or ideally offloading processor to the client, like image resizing, etc. De-centralising is more cost-effective and seems to be the trend for obvious reasons, yet you've got Nvidia looking to go the other way for an application arguably more latency-sensitive than anything else in the cloud. On top of that, we're getting to a put where client hardware is getting more powerful than it needs to be. What am I missing here exactly? Why is Nvidia sinking money into something that certainly must fail.tviceman - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I have no interest in cloud-streaming for games either. I was referring to local streaming.Wardrop - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Yeah sorry, I wasn't actually meant to reply to your post. AnandTech comments system has always left a lot to be desired.bunnyfubbles - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
seems like a stunt to show off their prowess in the supercomputer/datacenter realmthat being said I agree, it was super cringe-worthy watching him try and convince the world that a 150ms response time is fast. Such high latencies might be ok for certain types of games (slower adventure/puzzle style games where you might want to enjoy some very breathtaking scenery, etc) or possibly even revolutionary for a few niches (MMOs with massive numbers of pcs/npcs on screen but no drop in frames because the supercomputer server handles *everything*)
but the average game is likely to be dreadful to play, especially shooters
Michael Bay - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Is it bad photos, or do I see quite bad quality of streaming?I mean youtube usually has it better.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Judging by how excellent the rest of the photos are, my guess is that the streams really are that terrible. Even if it were 50% stream artifacts and 50% capture artifacts, it would still be terrible.JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Ryan was on site, I was helping by adding photos using screen captures of the live stream. So it's a screenshot of a compressed video stream that's showing the content of a compressed gaming stream. Heh. Sorry a lot of the images look pretty bad.