Homebrew What are the Chances?

[LightyKD]

Hey everyone. I created this thread not to ask for something to be made (granted it would be nice) but to talk about possibilities and theories. I just finished playing around with OnLive on my PC and I was wondering, what would be the chances of a OnLive client being able to be made for the Wii. If not that do you guys think that some sort of cloud gaming service could be made using a modded version of the Wii VNC app and maybe a decent server and Internet connection. I know it's not super easy. I had this conversation with my friend (one of the creator of the PC game, Wings of Apocalypse) earlier today and we were going over the logistics of how such a service could be done. So, what do you guys think? All input would be welcomed.

 

[tueidj]

Extremely unlikely given the speed of the wii's internet connection (both wired and wireless).

 

[LightyKD]

-_-' So that's it? One reply and of course its a negative one. Seriously, what happened to the people here? What happened to creative thoughts and ideas and people willing to actually dream. OK sure the Wii isn't a technical beast but Ive seen more miracles pulled off with this machine than with most machines with more power. Seriously. Where's the creative spark that led me to this forum in the first place? It seems like everyone's so busy with raw numbers that they dont even attempt anything before shooting out a quick "no". I wasn't expecting some fairy tale ending but damn I was at least hoping to see some creative spark from the people here. I guess I was hoping for too much.

 

[Clarky]

well back in the day when the game cube was first cracked it was done by streaming iso's over a network, so i imagine if someone knew what they was doing it could be re-created on the wii. the idea of streaming an iso over the internet though seems a little too much in my opinion but that is due to the speed needed, i couldnt honestly tell you off the top of my head how fast a wii has to read a dvd to be able to run its games....besides if a service like that was made nintendo would come crashing down on the idea like a house of bricks, tis a nice idea but i don't think we will see it in our life time

 

[Bladexdsl]

it really can't be done since the wiis net speed is shitty the max speed i get from a connected 16mb wired connection is...2mb!

 

[tueidj]

Don't get all snooty just because you don't like the answer. Go check how much bandwidth OnLive requires and see if it's less than 700KB/s, because that's the most you'll get out of the wii.

clarky: OnLive doesn't stream the ISO, it runs the game on a remote server and streams the output video to your PC while sending your input (button presses and whatever). The wii can barely decode DVD movies in real-time let alone H264 compressed gameplay (which is what OnLive uses).

 

[Rydian]

-_-' So that's it? One reply and of course its a negative one. Seriously, what happened to the people here? What happened to creative thoughts and ideas and people willing to actually dream. OK sure the Wii isn't a technical beast but Ive seen more miracles pulled off with this machine than with most machines with more power. Seriously. Where's the creative spark that led me to this forum in the first place? It seems like everyone's so busy with raw numbers that they dont even attempt anything before shooting out a quick "no". I wasn't expecting some fairy tale ending but damn I was at least hoping to see some creative spark from the people here. I guess I was hoping for too much.http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/Wii:WLANQUOTEKnown Limitations
Throughput

The DMA engines of the 4318 core cannot be used due to the already described hardware interface (the 4318 core has no way to directly access the host memory via the SDIO interface). Thus, reception and transmission of frames must be performed through the 4318 FIFO engine which, according to the b43 developers, is only capable of offering 2-3 Mbps.

The modified b43 driver compatible with the Nintendo Wii WLAN card currently offers the following throughput numbers:

* RX ~2.8 Mbps
* TX ~1.8 Mbps

Positive Thoughts™ don't magically make five megabits of throughput fit into less than less than three.

The wii wasn't just hacked yesterday. It's been hacked for YEARS, most of what hasn't been done yet hasn't been done because it's not plausible given the specs. The wii is nowhere near to a home computer.

 

[tueidj]

Note that those limitations only apply to wii Linux, not native wii apps that use IOS (which can get roughly 7-8mbps).

 

[Rydian]

Note that those limitations only apply to wii Linux, not native wii apps that use IOS (which can get roughly 7-8mbps).

Where'd you get those specs? Those ones I listed were the only concrete ones I could find.

 

[tueidj]

From running my own tests using both wifi and the LAN adapter.
The document you quoted is only talking about software limitations:

The b43 driver in the Linux kernel is capable of managing the 4318 core in the BCM4318E chipset found on the Nintendo Wii WLAN card. However, the current b43 kernel driver only supports PCI, PCMCIA and SSB host interfaces (not SDIO), and it is incompatible with the locking required by the Linux SDIO stack.

A patchset to add SSB over SDIO support to the Linux kernel and to overcome the current b43 driver limitations has been developed.

AFAIK those patches greatly improved the performance under linux.

 

[Rydian]

So the 7-8 was over a local network and it can be assumed that's about the real-world max?

 

[tueidj]

Yes, copying random files from a PC on the same LAN using 65536 byte chunks, that was the average receiving rate.

 

[LightyKD]

OK. Here's an interesting question. When was the last time WiiVNC was worked on? The reason I'm asking is because I figure a home created "service" would go this way...

Wii with WiiVNC >> connected to PC hosting multiple profiles>> The games would be in a shared folder so that all users could access them>> User uses Wii VNC to remotely play games

The Pros

-Being able to play HD style games on the Wii (...just technically not in HD)

The Cons

- The Windows process system sucks ass I'd imagine it would take a pretty powerful PC to run the multiple profiles and games at the same time.

- Even if I could get a PC to run the multiple profiles and processes at the same time If we were to make this thing work for the mass of our community, play time would have to be restricted, maybe 5-10 profiles at a time 2 hours each play session? Sure it would suck but this is just a scenario for one dedicated PC

- WiiVNC and the VNC server are the major issues. Finding a VNC server with decent video compression and MAYBE good audio streaming is an issue. Also, right now WiiVNC doesn't have audio support.

With all of that said. I dont think it's totally a lost cost. sure there are some snags but I'm willing to test a few theories and more likely will, this weekend.

 

[techboy]

OK. Here's an interesting question. When was the last time WiiVNC was worked on? The reason I'm asking is because I figure a home created "service" would go this way...

Wii with WiiVNC >> connected to PC hosting multiple profiles>> The games would be in a shared folder so that all users could access them>> User uses Wii VNC to remotely play games
Profiles won't help here...AFAIK, all VNC servers/clients transmit only what's on the screen. Since two profiles can't be visible at the same time (even though they can be logged in at the same time), it won't work.

Unless you get into VMs, making VNC show two different screens at once will be difficult to impossible. An alternative would be to set up Windows Terminal Server, and make a Remote Desktop client for Wii (is this possible?).

- The Windows process system sucks ass I'd imagine it would take a pretty powerful PC to run the multiple profiles and games at the same time.
Depends on what games...if you're talking stuff that's not graphics intense, you could run quite a few.

- Even if I could get a PC to run the multiple profiles and processes at the same time If we were to make this thing work for the mass of our community, play time would have to be restricted, maybe 5-10 profiles at a time 2 hours each play session? Sure it would suck but this is just a scenario for one dedicated PC

Profiles won't work. But, assuming a solution was found, I know I wouldn't want to wait in a virtual line for up to 2 hours...

QUOTE(LightyKD @ Nov 26 2010, 01:35 PM)

- WiiVNC and the VNC server are the major issues. Finding a VNC server with decent video compression and MAYBE good audio streaming is an issue. Also, right now WiiVNC doesn't have audio support.

Decent video compression could be an issue...

As for audio, you won't find a server with audio streaming, because the VNC protocol (aka the RFB protocol) doesn't support audio transmission. It could probably be added, although this would mean a custom server and client that does not comply with the existing standard.