Imagine a Gaming-Computer world with unlimited bandwidth

[littlefuzzy]

(I wrote this a couple of years ago on the Playstation Underground message board.)


I just read a book by George Gilder called Telecosm, which was all about the promise of unlimited bandwidth, through fiber optics and wireless technology. The book was written in 2000, but I can see many of the things he was talking about coming true today. He wrote a previous book in 1995 or so called Microcosm (which I haven't read,) that was about the dominance of cheap silicon chips, although at the time, he thought bandwidth was a finite resource.

Basically, the premise of the book is that bandwidth is a vast resource that we have barely begun to tap, instead of the hoarded, regulated trickle that we have today. Much of this deals with the use of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, while we are only using the very bottom of the spectrum now. This applies to fiber optics, satellites, and wireless technologies.

Higher bands (herz) in the spectrum use less power and can carry more data. Satellites in geosynchrous orbit in the Clarke Belt (about 22,000 miles away) required quite a bit of power, very large dishes on the ground, and fast orbits to stay above their target. Communications with these satellites had a 1/4 second delay. There were also a very limited number of slots in the Clarke Belt, since this was a narrow band over the equator, and the antennas couldn't separate signals that were too close together.

Low Earth Orbit satellites are 25-60 times closer to the earth, and require much less power. The delays in communication are comparable to fiber networks on Earth. Also, they can have 900 kilometers of space, with the satellites 500 meters apart, so there can be ~65,000 of them in orbit without interference.

According to the author, it is now possible to put a thousand wavelengths on a single fiber, ten billion bits of information per second on each wavelength, and as many as 864 fibers in a single fiber sheath. This equals 8.6 petabits of information per second! That was 1000 times the total average global telecommunications traffic in 1997. 8 petabits represented the total internet traffic in 1995, per MONTH!

Another aspect he mentioned that would apply to gaming systems as well as computers is the bandwidth bottleneck from the processor to the memory. Bus speeds are barely increasing in comparison to the power of the CPU or memory, meaning that the chip can do many calculations before the bus can take the information to the memory. One solution to this is a single-chip system, where the CPU IS the memory! More and more functions may be moved to this single chip as time goes by.

How would our gaming world be changed if we could instantly download the latest game to our PS3 (or PS4) over a several petabit fiber cable or high-speed satellite (for rural users), instead of going to the store to buy it? We could also download patches that might completely change the game, from user-created skins, to new maps, or even completely new move sets. This might put an end to upgrade cycles such as the ever-present sports games... Just download the 2007 upgrade, and your 2006 game has the new players and moves, without you having to start from scratch.

How much data would be needed for a persistent online immersive Virtual World, where even a single apple on a tree would need to have data for the apple as a whole, the skin, the flesh of the fruit, the seeds, and even a worm sticking his head out... If our virtual bodies would be able to feel, smell, or taste that apple, that would add even more data. In addition, the apple would react differently if dropped, shot, exploded, set on fire, etc.

I can imagine an open-source, user-developed, persistent Virtual World, where a programmer/artist can spend time developing the best apple that he can create, and uploads it to everyone's console. Someone else can inprove on his design, or upload a Granny Smith apple instead of the Red Delicious apple that the first user developed. Another person might tweak the leaves of the tree until he considers them perfect. The apple tree might seem just a bit of background to some players as they are engaging in a firefight, but it will have much more meaning later when they are victorious and decide to take a break.