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Introduction
Take a look at the jumble of wires behind your computer. Go on, do it now. In all likelihood, it's similar to mine - wires everywhere and, perhaps, some effort to gather them together in some semblance of order. Now, think into the future. A future that sees you sitting outside on a sunny day with your gigabyte laptop and super-contrast screen, scoring yourself a head shot on some poor sap in CTF-Face. Or, perhaps, you and your friends are all sitting around your living room with those monster laptops - no wires - and you're enjoying an almost-too-cool LAN game.
While it's certainly possible to do some of this now (for instance, the wireless LAN game), without GPRS, the additional bandwidth of, and optimizing of games for, GPRS makes this all a very exciting development!
Aaron So, Wireless Application Specialist, Interactive Entertainment for Ericsson GAA, is here to tell you the future is nearly here! I had an opportunity to question Aaron about General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), and the work Ericsson GAA has done with UT to demonstrate the future to us now:
PlanetUnreal: For people who aren't familiar with it, what is GPRS (General Packet
Radio Service)? Is it a technology in and of itself, or an initiative that
will/does support and depend on other technologies?
Aaron So: GPRS is packet switching technology over current GSM networks. GSM is a
digital cellular system with over 250,000,000 subscribers in over 140
countries. Mobile operators can quickly and inexpensively complete GSM
upgrades to GPRS because the addition is mainly software. It is a major
step forward in satisfying the need of the mobile data market for more
efficient and faster data transmissions. Also, it supports the principle
Internet communications protocols, IP and X.25. This means that the user
will no longer need to dial up a separate ISP to get access to the Internet.
PU: What are the major advantages of using GPRS?
AS: First, as mentioned earlier, GSM, and soon GPRS, is deployed on a global
basis with widespread coverage throughout Europe, Asia, North America, and
Africa. Plus, GPRS technology is "always on-line and always connected"
meaning that there are no special dial-ups required. GPRS users can remain
on-line without continuously occupying a specific radio channel since a
channel is allocated only when a data packet is to be sent or received.
This means users will not have to log on each time they want to check their
e-mail or use other services. Consequently, operators may encourage GPRS
users to remain connected by charging them for data volume instead of
connection time. GPRS will enable increase data transmission speeds from
the current 9.6 kbps to over 50 kbps. Additionally, GPRS is just one step
on the migration to EDGE and 3G, where speeds will approach 384 kbps and 1.5
mbps. GPRS is also a global standard and has the support of all telecom
vendors, which means that your interoperability concerns are greatly
reduced.
PU: With the clean, fast connection speed needs of online gaming, how can
GPRS serve as a viable alternative to wired access? We all know how easy it
is to get disconnected during a cell phone call, or get garbled results.
AS: First and foremost, GPRS is not going to be as good a connection as the
current wired access. But it provides far better bandwidth and features for
data traffic than the current circuit switched wireless technology. You can
expect bandwidth that is comparable to a 56k modem connection. But the stability of the connection would not be
as good as wired access, you will have varying bandwidth, latency, and even
disconnection at times. That's why we feel that games that are currently
design for the fixed network need to be optimized before they can run well
in wireless. But the most exciting things are going to happen when games
start to take advantage of the possibilities that wireless is offering. And
with technologies that are going to be widely used very soon, like GPS and
Bluetooth, games are never going to be the same. Let's just say that the
line between work and play will soon become blurry.
PU: Why did you pick Unreal Tournament as your default game to demonstrate
the usefulness of GPRS?
AS: We first started testing it even before the launch of the full game. It's
one of the games that I played heavily at that time, and so I decided to try
it out in the lab to see how it performs under our GPRS simulator. The
result was surprisingly good, and it actually performed way better than a
lot of other applications that we have tested. By looking at the data
traffic on our simulator, it shows some very efficient and elegant use of
the available bandwidth. From that day on, I always have a deathmatch with
one of my colleages whenever people come into our lab for demo. Most of
them are really impressed by it. We tried many other games on the simulator
after that, but to this date, UT is still one of the best performers. It's
one of the few games that work reasonabily well under wireless right out of
the box.(heck, even before release) And it's still one of the most
impressive demo to date.
PU: Are the technologies in place now to support wireless online gaming? If
not, can you peer into your crystal ball a bit and give us an idea?
AS: If you are talking about serious gaming as we know it, no. But if you are
talking about simple B&W games that you can play on a cell phone, then you
can already find lots of those in Japan. Currently, most wireless
technology (esp. in the U.S.) have a limited bandwidth of 9.6kbps. GPRS
will give you a highest limit of 115kbps (in theory), realistically you can
expect a bandwidth of 20-50kbps. When we get to 3G (third generation of
wireless technology, currently we are at 2G, and GPRS is 2.5G) you can
expect bandwidth to go up to 2Mbps. GPRS is going to be commercially
available in Q4 2000. And right now, more and more gaming companies are
including wireless strategies for the future. Sony's Playstation 2 is
talking about wireless connection, and Nintendo's Game Boy Advance will make
heavy use of wireless technologies. We expect a lot of games that are
coming out next year to be "wireless friendly".
PU: I noticed, in the information you sent me, some info on a GPRS PC card. Are these available now?
If not, are PC card manufacturers working on this technology?
AS: Our demo did not use a GPRS PC card, and those are not available right now.
Ericsson is currently working on a GPRS PC card. We expect similar products
to be available from other telecom companies as well. We used a real time
GPRS simulator that we called GATE to perform the demo. GATE stands for
GPRS Application Test Environment, it's a tool that we used to test
applications for wireless. The good thing about such a tool is that we can
change the parameters and conditions of the network on the fly, to see how
applications(or games in this case) will perform under different wireless
network conditions. It's also a very good tool to stress specific aspects
of an application and pinpoint some of the potential problems that the
applications might encounter under wireless.
PU: Tell us a bit about the test bed you set up to run UT over GPRS.
AS: The system consist of three laptops.(fast laptops but without 3D cards of
course) Two of them, the client and the server, run Windows 98. The third
one sits between those two and runs GATE, the GPRS simulator under Redhat
Linux 5.2. Please refer to the network diagram. The client uses a wireless
LAN connection to GATE(to simulate the GPRS network, with 2 timeslot upload,
4 timeslot download, 30 background data users, and normal radio signal
strength, each timeslot = approx 14.4kbps. For GPRS, the absolute max
bandwidth in theory is 115kbps, but realistically, we usually can get
20-50kbps.) You can see the settings and the actual traffic on the
simulator with the provided screenshot. Then we started a non-dedicated
game on the server with player GAA_DUDE and 2 bots, 16bit color 640x480
software rendering mode, all detail settings to high, and with max 8 player
call "GPRS UT Demo Server".(the low-res and color is limited only because of
the non 3D card on the laptops) Then Mobile station(client) join the game
from the menu "find LAN game" with the player GAA_GUY as you can see from
the screenshot.
PU: Describe the results you obtained from the GPRS/UT tests.
AS: From the provided screenshots, you can see the netstat page after a player
got killed. The ping time usually goes from 250ms to 600ms with the
settings that I mentioned.(Which is still playable even at 600ms) UT's
tolarance on non-stable connection is pretty good as well, we usually can
throw in small groups of short disconnections(1-2 secs) and the game will
carry on without timeout. Lost of connection for 10 secs or more will
usually result in timeout.(as expected) We expect modifications to the
networking code that specifically attack the problems with wireless will
make UT works even better under these conditions. In short, it's very
impressive. That's why we are showing it to everyone everywhere. It works
better than a lot of apps that we have been tested.(both games and business
apps) Great work guys!!
PU: What did you learn from the GPRS/UT tests?
AS: That UT has a very robust network engine. It performed very well, actually
way better than what we originally expected. As a comparison, we tested one
of the best FPS games from two generations ago side by side with the same
conditions on the simulator. That game failed completely under the same
wireless conditions after just a few minutes,(the game crashed, and even
during the first few working minutes, the performance was really choppy)
while we can play UT for hours without getting any problems. It showed us
how much improvement has been made to network codes in games. And we expect
future games to perform even better with further advancement in software
programming, especially now developers can learn about wireless and pinpoint
the limitations that they will encounter in such conditions. The test is a
"proof of concept", to make a point that some current generation online
games are already quite playable right out of the box under the upcoming
wireless network. So with further optimization, we expect a lot of them to
be "wireless friendly" very soon. We also expect a lot of future games to
be designed with wireless in mind, or even designed just for wireless.
PU: What's next for the GPRS Application Alliance (GAA), which I notice
features IBM, Lotus, Oracle, Palm, Symbain, AOL and Microsoft?
AS: Those companies that you mentioned above are current affiliates that we have in the Ericsson GAA, there are also around 250 members in GAA that are
contributors in advancing the "Wireless Internet". We expect similar
partnerships to be formed in the gaming industry, but with much greater
growth than all other segments. We are currently talking to some of the
best companies in the industry, and most of them are very interested to
contribute in this area. You can expect us to become a lot more active and
visible in the future.
Many thanks to Aaron and Ericsson GAA for the time, information and screenshots. You'll be hearing more about mobile/wireless internet gaming news here on PlanetUnreal.
GPRS Applications Alliance (GAA) is an Ericsson initiative dedicated to the advancements of the Mobile Internet Market. The GAA is committed to support you, as part of the Mobile Internet Market, in the building of knowledge of the busines opportunities ofered by GPRS technoligies. Under the auspices of GAA, Ericsson is providing the GPRS applications industry easy access to a wide range of services, for example, testing applications, access to the market and training, among others.
The vision of the GAA is to enhance the quality of your private and business life, anytime and anywhere, through the Mobile Internet.
For more information about GPRS, GAA and to become a member of the GPRS
Applications Alliance (GAA), please visit GPRSWorld on the web.
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