UL Benchmarks is showing off the power of Google's game streaming platform, Stadia, at GDC 2019 with a real-time tech demo.
You probably guessed from its name that UL Benchmarks focuses on developing--wait for it--benchmarks. The company offers a variety of tests meant to put everything from smartphones and tablets to laptops and desktops through their paces. It's often quick to adopt new tech, which is why it's already made a demo for Stadia.
Here's a video of the demo as it's being presented at GDC 2019:
UL Benchmarks explained in its announcement: "In our demo, one GPU handles most of the traditional geometry rendering. Additional GPUs are called in as needed to enhance the scene with dynamic fluid simulations and complex particle effects." Stadia makes such multi-GPU setups available to everyone via Google's cloud platform.
This is part of the appeal of cloud-based platforms like Stadia. While they have their own challenges, foremost among them being the added latency present even with decent internet connections, they also give people access to powerful hardware they'd never use otherwise. (Which is exactly why cloud services became popular.)
UL Benchmarks said it's been working on this demo with Google "for the last few months." It'll be interesting to see how the company approaches a benchmark for Stadia and similar platforms once they've actually, you know, launched. In the meantime, maybe this demo will convince game developers to give the services a shot.
