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its a stepping stone to whats to come...

shadfurman 24th Jul 2009

I'm not at all an advocate for any cloud OS, it
has it's place, but I'm sure there will always
be a market for full client side OS's. But with
a thin OS (such as chrome OS is supposed to be)
launching a game from a browser could put LESS
stress on a system as there are less processes
running in the background (or whatever
processes are called in linux world). The
number crunching a GPU does for graphics is the
same whether the data comes from within a
browser or from a game. The graphics engine
won't be written in javascript, it will be
written in optimized machine code. The biggest
slowdown I personally can think of will be in
areas such as AI that can possibly be written
in javascript. But the latest javascript
engines are pretty darn fast. (of course a
little difference in speed can turn into a BIG
difference with recursive logic or something)
and I've never read anything that suggests that
you can't cache your game on your computer so
you don't have to download it again. Browsers
have a cache, so that really only makes sense.
While opengl is crossplatform the rest of a
game isn't (unless your using something like
.NET, but then you hit a whole other set of
performance issues), most games are not written
for other platforms and can be extremely
finicky in emulators or a VM (as well as
further performance issues). Running games and
applications will sandbox the game from your
system adding a layer of security, much like a
VM, but with the added benefit of using trusted
optimized machine code (like O3D) without the
added layer of virtualization. Also we'll see a
whole new generation of "try before you buy"
software that is harder to hack and play
forever. (of course there is always a way, and
will probably become just as prevalent with a
little time). There are also a LOT of games
that are quite popular but do not need the
latest and greatest hardware to play (one that
comes to mind is world of goo!) such games
often become MORE popular as they have a wider
audience than just the ******** gamer. Such
games appeal to just about every demographic
from little kids to old grandmas. (example: the
popularity of "you don't know jack" form the
'90s, just a trivia game, but one of the best
selling games of it's time) and not everyone
ONLY plays the latest and greatest, two of the
games that I STILL play the most are
counterstrike and day of defeat and those are
what... 3-4 years old? They run perfectly fine
on my $800 laptop. And once such games are
designed they (in theory) will always be
compatible, so the older games will run on
cheaper hardware (such as netbooks). Which will
run games as good as a DS, PSP or an iPhone.
I've had quite a few hours of fun playing quake
1, duke nukem 3d and abes oddessy on a netbook.
I'm sure I will never put a thin OS on my
desktop or laptop, but on a netbook, what more
do you need? It won't replace existing OS's,
cloud OS's will never replace full featured
client side OS's, but it adds a fantastic
option for many devices.

SO THERE! :-P