Cloud gaming is still kicking, and OnLive is trying to make its product more appealing to hardcore gamers by adding deeper settings management and functionality.
This week the company added a slew of options for players who want to better optimize their experience. OnLive now enables gamers to set their bandwidth manually. Players can set their connection up to 12 Mbps. A 12 Mbps transfer rate will reduce the noise that plagues the streaming-game service most of the time.
Of course, if you are on a slower connection, you can improve performance by setting the bandwidth to 3 Mbps or 4 Mbps. This will reduce the amount of information OnLive tries to send your connection in any one packet.
OnLive also added a variety of new window options. Most notable is a new low-latency mode that improves performance but sacrifices visual fidelity. Gamers can also play fullscreen or in a window with this new setting.
Other new settings include the capability for OnLive to optimize for Wi-Fi connections and less-powerful netbooks. That latter should reduce the how much the OnLive client taxes an underpowered system and its battery.
The gaming company is also adding a toggle for vertical sync. V-sync ensures that a game will display a whole frame across the entire display area all at once. Gamers can get more responsiveness by turning on the v-sync, but it will also cause screen tearing, which distracts many players.
Finally, OnLive customers can run a test to see what their system can support. It should give players a good idea of which options to turn on and off.