Maximum PC - USA (2021-Holiday)

HOL 2021 MAXIMUMPC 15

Ian Evenden

TRADE CHAT

Ian Evenden’s first PC was a 286

with 640 kb of memory. And who

could need more than that?

©^

MI

CR

OS

OF

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Compression, streaming,

and internet connections

I know, I should stop moaning, storage is cheap and

I’m lucky to live at a time when the finest gaming

experiences money can buy can be squirted down

an internet pipe into my PC. But download sizes are

outstripping the ability of our internet connections

to deliver them in a timely manner.

According to Microsoft, over 20 million

Americans live without access to high-speed

internet connections. The chances are many

of them are quite happy doing so. After all, the

connected life is a special kind of punishment, with

constant pings and buzzes having to be silenced

and filtered out so you can get anything done at all.

However, the trajectory is only going in one

direction —and that’s toward greater and greater

online confluence. The days of going to Blockbuster

for your shiny movie disks are long gone, and while

we understand it’s still possible to buy a CD in a

record store, we haven’t been in one since the

pandemic started.

Streaming is, essentially, a one-time download

that’s deleted instead of stored, so why do we

still download games and software, rather than

stream them? Size, mainly. Nvidia and the console

manufacturers are all making strides with cloud

gaming, and Microsoft has demonstrated a cloud-

streamed version of Windows 11 that you can

subscribe to. But streaming requires more of

those always-on, high-speed internet connections.

FARCRY 6 , INCLUDING ITS HD TEXTURE PACK, is a 5 0GB download. Red Dead

Redemption 2 is currently taking up 119 GB on our gaming PC, and Halo:

The Master Chief Collection is a little bit more. Final Fantasy XV Windows

Edition and Microsoft Flight Simulator also take up almost 150 GB each,

whereas Call of Duty: Modern Warfare breaks the 20 0GB barrier.

An interesting blog post by

Microsoft software engineer

Jonathan Ready [https://bit.ly/

MPC-squish] addressed the need

to compress Windows updates

in order to squeeze them down

limited internet pipes, as a fully

updated population of Windows

boxes is a safer population, and MS

has managed to shave 40 percent

off the size of its updates.

The post goes into more detail

than you ever could want about

forward and reverse differential

compression, but it got us thinking

about how games are compressed

as they come down the pipe.

Far Cry 6 says it’s downloading

50GB and takes up 5 0GB on

our drive. We know that Steam

compresses its downloads, using

the lossless LZMA algorithm (the

same used in 7 zip), and encrypts

them using AES 256 if necessary,

such as when you’re pre-loading

an unreleased game.

If you were thinking of decrypting

one, 50 supercomputers checking

one billion, billion keys per second

would still need a number of years

beginning with three and ending

with 51 zeroes to brute force the

256-bit keyspace. Besides, AES is

thought to be quantum-resistant

as long as sufficiently large

symmetric keys are used.

If we stream all our games and

software as well as our media,

then while the amount of data

transferred may rise in the long-

term, the short-term effect will

be that individuals require a less

powerful connection, as the need

to download all the data before you

start won’t be there anymore.

Networking an entire country

with fiber optics, including every

mountain farm, lakeside fishing

retreat, or ranch 300 miles from

the nearest phone, will take

a while. And another type of

confluence, that of 5G or 6G mobile

data and Wi-Fi, is likely to make

that obsolete before long too.

Why do we still download

games and software,rather

than stream?Size,mainly.

Here’s a weird thing. RDR 2 was

123 GB before a recent 5 GB patch,

after which it was only 119 GB.