TECHNOLOGY
Architects of the Metaverse
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying the bricks hour by hour.
Since 2015, we’ve been the picks and shovels laying down the foundational infrastructure that will enable interactive experiences to be cost-effectively delivered from any cloud, anywhere.
Our breakthrough command streaming technology is shaping the metaverse, paving the way for a new era of cloud-native creations, and powering the next-generation of synchronous social experiences at unprecedented scale.
Powered by Command Streaming
The need for a cost-effective, elastic, and scalable approach to cloud streaming has long been a driving force behind the work we do here at Polystream. We envision an open 3D internet; we’re talking about an on demand commodity for millions of concurrent users, where you can seamlessly move between multiple interactive experiences, and it starts with command streaming.
- Pixel Streaming sends images using VIDEO technology
- Read user inputs and run application
loop on CPU - Output is rendered by a GPU in the cloud – and you need a GPU PER USER
- When render is complete, it then gets encoded into a video stream
- Video packets are sent to the user
- User device decodes video packets to images and you have to wait until the WHOLE IMAGE renders
- Ave costs ~50 cents / hr / user to run a GPU stream
- Launch numbers for a AAA game today is multiples of 1,000,000s
vs CCU capacity of the pixel streaming vendors is multiples of 1,000s at best; there simply aren’t enough GPUs available in the world’s clouds combined to stream to every user (and no one can today present incontrovertible evidence to prove this statement is wrong…)
- Command Streaming sends DATA to draw the image
- Read user inputs and run application loop on CPU
- Output is drawing commands compressed on the fly – NO GPUs
- Data packets are sent via any cloud to the user
- User device GPU executes DRAW commands in real time
- Choose stream visual fidelity based on each user device GPU
- Transport uses BBR-style RTT congestion control as well as burst mode chunking
- Cost To Serve (CTS) shared between Data Center and user device
- Ave costs ~4 cents / hr / user to run a stream
- Utilizes caching and CDN services – reduced egress
- Containerized workloads – dynamic scaling
- Cloud provider agnostic to be physically close to users – less hops
- Business models to monetise non-player participants
- Novel applications for interactive 3D social spaces
Just a Few Things Command Streaming Can Do
Command Streaming the Unity Editor
Using command streaming, we can stream the Unity Editor from within our virtual, interactive office – highlighting our ability to stream multiple workflow windows, where resizing, pop-outs, and web links are all a click away via the cloud.
Command Streaming the Chrome Browser
Another Polystream experiment – streaming the Chrome Browser from the cloud via command streaming.
Command Streaming the Unreal Editor
Our CTO, Adam Billyard, demonstrates how Polystream’s command streaming technology can run large real-time 3D applications like Unreal Engine directly from the cloud and is rendered pixel perfectly on your device’s GPU.
Command Streaming to Android
This video spotlights how our command streaming tech can run DirectX games from the cloud to Android OpenGL ES.
Freed from reliance on expensive GPUs in the cloud, experience makers are able to take advantage of the world’s ready supply of cheap and ubiquitous commodity cloud machines – bringing incredibly meaningful ways to connect audiences wherever they are in the world, with unbelievable concurrency, at low-latency, and a fraction of the cost; sidestepping the roadblocks to the metaverse with an intelligent edge-based infrastructure.
Technical Advantages
MASSIVE SCALE
Polystream can elastically scale to meet any demand, without compromising on delivery quality or speed. Using state replication and lockstep simulation, we can serve audiences of unlimited sizes, without sharding. Whether adding a single user or 1000, the equivalent demand is of just one player.
LOW LATENCY
With command streaming technology, latency is kept low. Cloud commodity machines without GPUs are ubiquitous and can be located close to clients – usually within 20 milliseconds of end users!
COST-EFFECTIVE
Because command streaming doesn’t rely on expensive GPU machines in the cloud, interactive experiences powered by Polytsream can run from almost any data centre in the world – at significantly lower costs.
FRICTIONLESS USER JOURNEY
Users can access Polystream powered experiences seamlessly, in just a few seconds. Following a URL posted in a chat or social media post, viewers can instantly jump into any 3D experience as a spectator. User URLs can also be controlled, tracked and time-limited to provide adaptable security & management of the spectating experience.
MINIMAL OVERHEAD
Our technology is designed to complement projects made in existing game engines like Unreal Engine with minimal performance impact to the experience.
NO SPECIALIST TOOLS REQUIRED
You can build Polystream-enabled experiences using the same code base and tools as you normally would. From there, it’s as simple as integrating with our SDK and Plug-Ins as much or as little as you like.
Hang out in your favourite games!
Our Fantom Spectator Engine allows anyone to jump from game to game without you having to download each game, or repeatedly navigate your way through menus and tutorials to get set up being a ‘player’. It instantly gives you a front row seat alongside the action, without interrupting gameplay of those playing, and gives you agency to move around, chat to other spectators.
