Stadia users are reporting that the Chromecast Ultras used for game streaming are overheating. Meanwhile, Google has provided us a response with respect to the disparities in resolution and framerates of games.
Over on the Reddits, users are reporting overheating, with one user discussing how he was disconnected from Destiny 2 and that his Chromecast died and was hot to the touch,
“I was in the middle of a fight in Destiny 2 when suddenly my Chromecast died and lost connectivity to the network. I went to unplug it from the power and it was extremely hot. Has anyone else experienced overheating with the new Chromecast Ultras that come with the Founder's Edition? I hadn't seen other posts about that.”
Questions have also been raised about the resolution and framerates of games after Phil Harrison had tweeted citing Stadia, “always streams at 4K/60,”
Yes, all games at launch support 4K. We designed Stadia to enable 4K/60 (with appropriate TV and bandwidth). We want all games to play 4K/60 but sometimes for artistic reasons a game is 4K/30 so Stadia always streams at 4K/60 via 2x encode.
— Phil Harrison (@MrPhilHarrison) October 9, 2019
However, this has come under serious scrutiny. Google provided the following statement to us,
“Stadia streams at 4K and 60 FPS - and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen: GPU, encoder and Chromecast Ultra all outputting at 4k to 4k TVs, with the appropriate internet connection. Developers making Stadia games work hard to deliver the best streaming experience for every game. Like you see on all platforms, this includes a variety of techniques to achieve the best overall quality. We give developers the freedom of how to achieve the best image quality and frame rate on Stadia and we are impressed with what they have been able to achieve for day one.
We expect that many developers can, and in most cases will, continue to improve their games on Stadia. And because Stadia lives in our data centers, developers are able to innovate quickly while delivering even better experiences directly to you without the need for game patches or downloads.”
This statement does not necessarily clarify the current findings of game resolutions and framerates. For example, the folks at Digital Foundry have determined that Red Dead Redemption 2 runs at a maximum resolution of 1440p at 30fps. While some games like Destiny 2 do run at 60fps, it does so at 1080p. And even then, that 60fps isn’t solid according to their findings.
In fact, here’s what Bungie said to The Verge regarding resolutions and framerates for Destiny 2,
“When streaming at 4K, we render at a native 1080p and then upsample and apply a variety of techniques to increase the overall quality of effect”
Given these findings and admission by developers, Google’s statement seems to be at odds with the resolutions and framerates being objectively measured. We have reached out to Google for clarification.
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