> Wouldn't a pre-rendered video also force a single (possibly sub-optimal) experience across various form factors?
Since they'd still be working from a 3D scene, they could easily render ten different videos (or twenty, or thirty) and send a different one depending on the device.
> Especially in the context of low-end devices, I don't think the cost of bandwidth should be discounted here.
I agree, which is why I'm not positive they did the wrong thing, I'm just skeptical.
The thing is, it's not as though their current approach is particularly light on bandwidth. They appear to be downloading many (all?) of the models and textures ahead of time, which makes sense, since it's hard to predict what will be visible in the viewport first. By contrast, videos naturally lend themselves to incremental streaming.
We're also pretty good at compressing videos these days, and a lot of AAA video games are significantly larger than even movies on BluRay (although I admit, I've never quite grokked how this can be.)
So, I'd be interested to see the bandwidth comparison. It's not entirely obvious to me which would win out.
Since they'd still be working from a 3D scene, they could easily render ten different videos (or twenty, or thirty) and send a different one depending on the device.
> Especially in the context of low-end devices, I don't think the cost of bandwidth should be discounted here.
I agree, which is why I'm not positive they did the wrong thing, I'm just skeptical.
The thing is, it's not as though their current approach is particularly light on bandwidth. They appear to be downloading many (all?) of the models and textures ahead of time, which makes sense, since it's hard to predict what will be visible in the viewport first. By contrast, videos naturally lend themselves to incremental streaming.
We're also pretty good at compressing videos these days, and a lot of AAA video games are significantly larger than even movies on BluRay (although I admit, I've never quite grokked how this can be.)
So, I'd be interested to see the bandwidth comparison. It's not entirely obvious to me which would win out.