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"The Power of the Cloud" - what happened?

I read It only add 20% power so basically a Ps4 can run that natively, plus red faction looks still very good even from the beginning of the previous gen so not that impressive I think.

For those wondering why not full destruction on solo just picture a flat world.

It's what you'll end up with. It is a lot smarter for multiplayer where you just play the same map in the span of 30 min max.It's much more intelligent that way destroy it gets rebuilt.

Or it could just not be persistent?
 
Have you seen a game as dense as the gifs above with the same level of destruction and do you think it's possible without the cloud this gen?

Have we seen anyone try high destructibility environments after Volition's third attempt to do so with the Red Faction series tanked just like the previous two?

I think this level of destruction with that graphical fidelity would be possible on the PS4, Xbox One, and any decent gaming rig if a developer wanted to make it happen. It's fucking lego block construction. There isn't any material deformation (other than basic shearing), phase changes, etc. evident in any of these gifs. This is an iterative step up over what Volition was knocking out of the park early last gen, Inflating the scope doesn't impress me.

Show me a game where the rockets being shot into the building actually chips away at the concrete, creating cracks, and the building then falls based on those damage patterns. Or one where the glass actually melts when explosions go off near it. Or liquids vaporizing into steam.

Also, maybe they should have actually seen how buildings go down or even how they're built. Buildings don't fall like that when explosives go off or when they're struck with a wrecking ball. They crumple and cave in, not topple over like a Jenga tower. Also, large concrete structures have rebar all through them, netting the concrete together, resulting in entirely different breakage patterns from what Crackdown exhibits.

I mean, if you're going to trumpet early 2000's tech as cutting edge proof of DA CLOUD POWA at least get a few structural engineers to make it look right.
 
i'm sure the game will launch with none of this and this pre-alpha video is purely fluff.

Yes, it looks far more like a marketing piece than anything close to real gameplay.

The streets are empty, only the agent seen running next to the exploding building very briefly at the start of the collapse. With other buildings being triggered with explosions to hide how empty things really are.

Once you make it feel like a living breathing city with NPCs and vehicles the destruction is likely to be scaled back significantly.

Then you have to worry about vehicles being stuck between fallen debris and pathing problems. Nothing in the gameplay clips even hints that this stuff has been solved.

With the other gameplay clip character skating over the ground when moving, it's obvious it's very early as even the animations and movements are out of sync. This is likely one of many things in a long long list that needs fixing. Nevermind all the stuff that was too broken to show.
 
Have we seen anyone try high destructibility environments after Volition's third attempt to do so with the Red Faction series tanked just like the previous two?

I think this level of destruction with that graphical fidelity would be possible on the PS4, Xbox One, and any decent gaming rig if a developer wanted to make it happen. It's fucking lego block construction. There isn't any material deformation (other than basic shearing), phase changes, etc. evident in any of these gifs. This is an iterative step up over what Volition was knocking out of the park early last gen, Inflating the scope doesn't impress me.

Show me a game where the rockets being shot into the building actually chips away at the concrete, creating cracks, and the building then falls based on those damage patterns. Or one where the glass actually melts when explosions go off near it. Or liquids vaporizing into steam.

Also, maybe they should have actually seen how buildings go down or even how they're built. Buildings don't fall like that when explosives go off or when they're struck with a wrecking ball. They crumple and cave in, not topple over like a Jenga tower. Also, large concrete structures have rebar all through them, netting the concrete together, resulting in entirely different breakage patterns from what Crackdown exhibits.

I mean, if you're going to trumpet early 2000's tech as cutting edge proof of DA CLOUD POWA at least get a few structural engineers to make it look right.

The salt is real tho.

I kid, you make some very good points, but that was not the purpose of the bump, so reasons.
 
Of course it does... Are you out of you mind? How many chunks do you think are being tracked when 8 skyscrapers are being demolished simultaneously?

well not much even the art gallery demo looks to have more "chunks"processed , the skyskraper just fell apart into some "plates" and then exploaded
 
Have we seen anyone try high destructibility environments after Volition's third attempt to do so with the Red Faction series tanked just like the previous two?

I think this level of destruction with that graphical fidelity would be possible on the PS4, Xbox One, and any decent gaming rig if a developer wanted to make it happen. It's fucking lego block construction. There isn't any material deformation (other than basic shearing), phase changes, etc. evident in any of these gifs. This is an iterative step up over what Volition was knocking out of the park early last gen, Inflating the scope doesn't impress me.

Show me a game where the rockets being shot into the building actually chips away at the concrete, creating cracks, and the building then falls based on those damage patterns. Or one where the glass actually melts when explosions go off near it. Or liquids vaporizing into steam.

Also, maybe they should have actually seen how buildings go down or even how they're built. Buildings don't fall like that when explosives go off or when they're struck with a wrecking ball. They crumple and cave in, not topple over like a Jenga tower. Also, large concrete structures have rebar all through them, netting the concrete together, resulting in entirely different breakage patterns from what Crackdown exhibits.

I mean, if you're going to trumpet early 2000's tech as cutting edge proof of DA CLOUD POWA at least get a few structural engineers to make it look right.

They have tried this in several tech demoes, the minute the particles split in a billion different directions the FPS drops to zero. It is not technically possible to run that many calculations and not cook your device. Especially when that destruction stays static.
 
They're obvioulsy just letting it do the physics calculation and then send the info back to the Xbox. They presented a prototype of this a while ago

https://youtu.be/MJfEUJ57qD8

Sure but to suggest that a server will be calculating the physics of an entire building collapsing over with as significant detail as the trailer, and for the servers being able to process and send out that data to provide for multiple play sessions at the same time is quite frankly unbelievable. As in "not probable at all" unbelievable and not "OMG really?" unbelievable.

Saying that the server will be processing 20x of what your Xbone is processing is just downright lunacy.
 
Being sceptical of Microsoft after the nonsense they came up with in terms of "power of the cloud! is not a bad thing. Too many people willing to take it as fact with no real world testing.

True. Given MS PR fuck ups over the past two years, it was (still is) completely reasonable to doubt their constantly shifting "Power of the Cloud" claims.

That a PR video is now released claiming the Power of the Cloud will be giving you 20X the performance of an Xbone doesn't prove the doubters wrong. It is just another claim MS with have to prove when the game is released.
 
Gunna cross post from the Crackdown thread:

People are still dismissing the cloud compute thing?

Really?

The foundation of the tech in no different than hosting a game on a dedicated server. You know that Minecraft multiplayer server you play on? That's all cloud computing. This is the exact same concept.

The physics of the destruction is calculated on the server, just like the Minecraft world is hosted on a server.

I don't understand why people find this hard to believe. We've been using the tech for years.
 
Have we seen anyone try high destructibility environments after Volition's third attempt to do so with the Red Faction series tanked just like the previous two?

I think this level of destruction with that graphical fidelity would be possible on the PS4, Xbox One, and any decent gaming rig if a developer wanted to make it happen. It's fucking lego block construction. There isn't any material deformation (other than basic shearing), phase changes, etc. evident in any of these gifs. This is an iterative step up over what Volition was knocking out of the park early last gen, Inflating the scope doesn't impress me.

Show me a game where the rockets being shot into the building actually chips away at the concrete, creating cracks, and the building then falls based on those damage patterns. Or one where the glass actually melts when explosions go off near it. Or liquids vaporizing into steam.

Also, maybe they should have actually seen how buildings go down or even how they're built. Buildings don't fall like that when explosives go off or when they're struck with a wrecking ball. They crumple and cave in, not topple over like a Jenga tower. Also, large concrete structures have rebar all through them, netting the concrete together, resulting in entirely different breakage patterns from what Crackdown exhibits.

I mean, if you're going to trumpet early 2000's tech as cutting edge proof of DA CLOUD POWA at least get a few structural engineers to make it look right.


the thing its the graphics on the game doesnt look that good for starters,simple textures,decent geometry nothing special,i will asure you this destructability its possible on a pc or event a ps4 if they want to focus on that ,its not magical mumbo jumbo from the cloud,just a good engine


True. Given MS PR fuck ups over the past two years, it was (still is) completely reasonable to doubt their constantly shifting "Power of the Cloud" claims.

That a PR video is now released claiming the Power of the Cloud will be giving you 20X the performance of an Xbone doesn't prove the doubters wrong. It is just another claim MS with have to prove when then game is released.


but haven you seen the GIFS?
 
So only MP servers are on the cloud on super duper hardware to enable massive destruction but not in SP ?

In the Crackdown thread there's been some discussion about this. Chances are, the destructible environments are used in staged games for multiplayer where at the end of the game "voila! the world is fixed!" and nobody much questions it. It might not be a technical limit, but a conceptual one (and who knows, could be both).

Maintaining a playable, campaign game world would be pretty difficult if you could destroy the whole thing within the first couple hours of play. Not that they can't think around it, when Red Faction debuted and had the explosive walls (first one) you just figured you could tunnel from the beginning of the level to the end and avoid every enemy, but they obviously introduced the unbustable walls to avoid this... which accounted for most of the walls. It's similar to Portal not allowing you to place a portal on a metal wall. "why don't portals work on metal walls? They don't."

The Crackdown team could have had to think creatively to solve that, but it might have had difficult consequences for the gameplay.

I'd wager that, in single player there will be destructive environments but it won't be on the grand scale of taking down a building and leveling part of the city... except for maybe very controlled segments of the game.
 
True. Given MS PR fuck ups over the past two years, it was (still is) completely reasonable to doubt their constantly shifting "Power of the Cloud" claims.

That a PR video is now released claiming the Power of the Cloud will be giving you 20X the performance of an Xbone doesn't prove the doubters wrong. It is just another claim MS with have to prove when then game is released.

Exactly.
 
Have we seen anyone try high destructibility environments after Volition's third attempt to do so with the Red Faction series tanked just like the previous two?

I think this level of destruction with that graphical fidelity would be possible on the PS4, Xbox One, and any decent gaming rig if a developer wanted to make it happen. It's fucking lego block construction. There isn't any material deformation (other than basic shearing), phase changes, etc. evident in any of these gifs. This is an iterative step up over what Volition was knocking out of the park early last gen, Inflating the scope doesn't impress me.

Show me a game where the rockets being shot into the building actually chips away at the concrete, creating cracks, and the building then falls based on those damage patterns. Or one where the glass actually melts when explosions go off near it. Or liquids vaporizing into steam.

Also, maybe they should have actually seen how buildings go down or even how they're built. Buildings don't fall like that when explosives go off or when they're struck with a wrecking ball. They crumple and cave in, not topple over like a Jenga tower. Also, large concrete structures have rebar all through them, netting the concrete together, resulting in entirely different breakage patterns from what Crackdown exhibits.

I mean, if you're going to trumpet early 2000's tech as cutting edge proof of DA CLOUD POWA at least get a few structural engineers to make it look right.


It's a 2011 tech demo by Nvidia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lCkB77it-M
No cloud required.

apex_destruction_small.jpg
 
True. Given MS PR fuck ups over the past two years, it was (still is) completely reasonable to doubt their constantly shifting "Power of the Cloud" claims.

That a PR video is now released claiming the Power of the Cloud will be giving you 20X the performance of an Xbone doesn't prove the doubters wrong. It is just another claim MS with have to prove when then game is released.
I don't think many were doubting what power multiplier they could apply, but rather how it could be implemented well and also debating what actual benefits it will bring.
 
The cloud is real!!!

The fact that you can allocate virtual servers and use them as you please was never disputed. The debate was about the scope of applicability of such servers to running a game, as well as the economic feasibility of doing that.

They have made destruction physics asynchronous and are running them on servers. Running basic physics, like collision detection, on servers is a standard procedure in online games. So that in itself is not extremely surprising. Running more complex destruction physics asynchronously certainly required some development effort and is surely not trivial. But to put that achievement properly in context, the following question have to be answered.

- How much processing power is actually used for these calculations per collapsing mash?
- Are collapsing buildings reused for all connected players in a shared online match, and if so, between how many players are they shared?
- What was the development effort of building and testing such a physics component?
- How expensive is it to run these servers?

Looking at what is happening in these gifs, I strongly suspect that the processing resources required for a single collapsing structure are way less than "20x". As others have said, that collapsing mash just does not look "20x" more complicated than similar things seen in other games. You could likely reach that number by aggregating everything that is happening at the same time in that shared online world. But if that world is shared by, lets say, 20 players, the figure loses its impact. "20x" for 40 players is less of a talking point than "20x" per player.

The more important point, though, is the question of development efforts and server costs. As I argued in earlier threads, it makes no sense to build such a thing, unless your game absolutely needs it, or you explicitly want to have a tech demo. It increases development costs and it creates server costs. Since destruction is something that has obviously already been done on much weaker hardware, a developer would, under normal circumstances, just create a physics components that scales well with the local hardware that is available. It's easier, cheaper, and creates virtually the same game. My prediction is that, for these reasons, this will remain an insular case.
 
Sure but to suggest that a server will be calculating the physics of an entire building collapsing over with as significant detail as the trailer, and for the servers being able to process and send out that data to provide for multiple play sessions at the same time is quite frankly unbelievable. As in "not probable at all" unbelievable and not "OMG really?" unbelievable.

Saying that the server will be processing 20x of what your Xbone is processing is just downright lunacy.

Why is that unbelievable? Is it also unbelievable for a server to process thousands and thousands of individual players in a single instance and relay that information to everyone? Servers have been doing that for years.
 
Gunna cross post from the Crackdown thread:

People are still dismissing the cloud compute thing?

Really?

The foundation of the tech in no different than hosting a game on a dedicated server. You know that Minecraft multiplayer server you play on? That's all cloud computing. This is the exact same concept.

The physics of the destruction is calculated on the server, just like the Minecraft world is hosted on a server.

I don't understand why people find this hard to believe. We've been using the tech for years.

You see, the whole dedicated server cloud thing really is old.

Processing 20x your Xbone and transmitting it to multiple play sessions con-currently(also meaning it is processing 20x the Xbones for every user connected to the server,) is beyond improbable.
 
the thing its the graphics on the game doesnt look that good for starters,simple textures,decent geometry nothing special,i will asure you this destructability its possible on a pc or event a ps4 if they want to focus on that ,its not magical mumbo jumbo from the cloud,just a good engine

All these flavors, and you chose to be salty.
 
Considering the whole "power of the cloud" joke has been constantly thrown around in just about every single Microsoft/Xbox article for the past 2 years here on NeoGAF, I think bumping this thread was more than warranted.

oh i see ..the feelings of people being sceptic on ms :( sorry bro must hurt someone makes jokes of your multinational of choice :( poor poor pathfinder
 
LMAO

Really?

Yeah.

Don't get me wrong. If it were running natively on an Xbox One I'd be impressed. It looks good, but not 20x as good, or 200x as good (if we're comparing the computational power of the cloud to the power of the 360).

Diminishing returns, perhaps.
 
Have you better arguments?

I've never said that they are the same but guerrilla was targeted to, according to MS claims, a two generations less powerful hardaware. (around 1/100x)

I can't see the stunning difference. Sorry. It's not about the scale of the destructible object but about the scale of the simulation.

What they have shown is not leaving me impressed.


2011 Nvidia Offline Tech Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lCkB77it-M

What the hell are you talking about? The scale of the simulation in the crackdown demo is several orders of magnitude larger than what we saw in red faction AND what's happening in the nvidia demo...

It's not just because some big buildings came down... It's because there were hundreds of thousands of objects of various sizes, shapes, and weights, being governed by A real-time physics engine is a process that is impossible to render on any $350 gaming hardware without slowing to a crawl...

You can't see it because you don't want to...
 
Why is that unbelievable? Is it also unbelievable for a server to process thousands and thousands of individual players in a single instance and relay that information to everyone? Servers have been doing that for years.
Processing 20x the power of an Xbone for thousands and thousands of users concurrently and transmitting that data to people is unbelievable.

There is nothing close to this having ever occurred because of a lot of fundamental flaws of cloud processing.
 
You see, the whole dedicated server cloud thing really is old.

Processing 20x your Xbone and transmitting it to multiple play sessions con-currently(also meaning it is processing 20x the Xbones for every user connected to the server,) is beyond improbable.
It doesn't exponentially increase for every user.

One server can easily have 20x the power of an X1.

Say 16 people connect the server, they're all receiving the same data. The server isn't calculating 16 separate worlds, it's calculating 1 world which 16 people are downloading.

Using the Minecraft example, you can have servers which have 1000 people connected, that doesn't mean the server is computing 1000 worlds.
 
This is just the beginning...

They needed to develop the tech to pull it off, then they needed a proof of concept... First came cloudgine, next comes Crackdown 3....

Won't be long before other games are finding new and improved ways to use the added horsepower the cloud provides...

You don't need to convince me, I use the cloud every day.
 
Levolution was all pre-rendered by triggering a certain object in the environment. This is dynamic real-time destruction, where every single pixel on the screen reacts to damage.

Was it ? Sorry I didn't know that but there's still quite a lot of destructible environements in battlefield, but the truth It doesn't fit every games, and as got persistency (I'm sorry I van't find the post mentionning it)
How persistent would it be?
Timed
By area
Restarting the game ?
It would broke the continuity of the game and make you feel like whatever you do it doesn't matter. And that's precisely the opposite spirit of a single player game like this you want to make the difference be that shining diamond in a bland world.

Multiplayer is much different though it's about the moment what you do during those sessions. Ne the destroyer of an important building helping your team win the game but not the world in multiplayer you are smaller and your victories are humans you can relate more to them because you did it a this instant then it vanished.

Anyway sorry if you have trouble understanding me english isn't my native language please tell me if you want me to rephrase some parts.
 
So blowing up a few walls with pre-rendered pieces breaking apart is the same thing as leveling a city. I don't think you understand the scale comparison we are dealing with here.

The scale of the structures relative to the player is irrelevant. What counts is the number of nodes and edges in the mash.
 
You see, the whole dedicated server cloud thing really is old.

Processing 20x your Xbone and transmitting it to multiple play sessions con-currently(also meaning it is processing 20x the Xbones for every user connected to the server,) is beyond improbable.

Why the hell would they do that? They process the physics calculations once, and send that data to everyone connected to the server. Everyone sees the same destruction because they're receiving the same calculations.

Processing 20x the power of an Xbone for thousands and thousands of users concurrently and transmitting that data to people is unbelievable.

There is nothing close to this having ever occurred because of a lot of fundamental flaws of cloud processing.

I seriously doubt this game will have thousands and thousands of players on the same server concurrently. It's not an MMO.
 
There are some disingenuous comparisons in here.

RFG had some stellar destruction, but let's not forget we're comparing a finished and released game to one that's potentially a year+ away from release.

Not to mention it feels like the RFG gifs have been selected to make the comparison seem more favourable to Crackdown. That's not to say CD doesn't look better or offer a more detailed level of destruction, but anyone who played RFG at length knows the destruction in the gifs isn't entirely representative of what the game offered.

We shouldn't be trying to downplay the incredible work that went into Geo Mod 2.0.

chgwbQY.gif

MGleQkS.gif

bytRjnq.gif

QpiiJub.gif


It's pretty hard to find gifs that are truly representative of the destruction that was possible in RFG.
 

if only that was what people in this thread were actually arguing about, though.

In reply to
In the early day MS emphasized the cloud as something that could improve the gaming experience.

People said:
It was never actually meant to be a big deal. Marketing futurespeak.

Spin.

The cloud exists, but not for those reasons or uses.

They finally realized they weren't fooling anyone so they stopped bothering.

It was marketing bullshit, I mean every game this generation is benefiting from cloud servers.

It was complete and utter BS from the get-go.

It was all bullshit, thats what.

i think it was always a bit more 'fog' than 'cloud'. or maybe just 'pollution' :) ...

reality happened

It was marketing word salad that didn't survive contact with reality.

it's almost like it was always bullshit

The cloud is great for offloading workload but not in things that need instant calculations like games.

It's there but not in the way Microsoft made you think it would be. I'm fairly certain a lot of their voice stuff is cloud based.

I think they realized that everyone saw through it as marketing bullshit and nothing more.

They just notice almost everyone aren't stupid enough to get their bullshit, glad they stopped with it though, it was ridiculous.

Smoke and mirrors.

MS learned slowly that people weren't as stupid as they thought and that it was a completely silly bullet point.

Reality happened.

Don't believe something a marketing guy tells you

The marketing nonsense blew up in their faces while consumers pointed and gave it a good bollocking. We know what dedicated servers are, and all the doublespeak in the world from Harrison, Penello and company was nothing compared to the facts.

None of these mentioned "infinite power of the cloud" "10x" "20x" etc. These people flatout denied that it would have any effect. They're wrong. That's why this thread was bumped. You guys are moving goal posts arguing about this 20x shit.
 
Actually, it's about holding people responsible for their shit posts.

so pleople being sceptic on pr statments from a company well know to "lie" its now shit post

keep waving the green flag son

The scale of the structures relative to the player is irrelevant. What counts is the number of nodes and edges in the mash.

and bingo,its amazing how many people say things on this kind of post and are wrong...BU BU BU THE SCALE,it doesnt work t that way people
 
It doesn't exponentially increase for every user.

One server can easily have 20x the power of an X1.

Say 16 people connect the server, they're all receiving the same data. The server isn't calculating 16 separate worlds, it's calculating 1 world which 16 people are downloading.

Using the Minecraft example, you can have servers which have 1000 people connected, that doesn't mean the server is computing 1000 worlds.

This is false.

The costs of such a hypothetical server would be so high, and the amount of issues with latency...

We can't get a server to render the power a low-end GPU to two dozen users.

Much less 20x the overall power of an Xbox for thousands* of play sessions.

It is laughable and there is honestly not a precedent that it will happen any time soon.

The scale of the physics in that video just aren't viable.

* By thousands I'm referring to concurrent players online spread across multiple servers
 
The fact that you can allocate virtual servers and use them as you please was never disputed. The debate was about the scope of applicability of such servers to running a game, as well as the economic feasibility of doing that.

They have made destruction physics asynchronous and are running them on servers. Running basic physics, like collision detection, on servers is a standard procedure in online games. So that in itself is not extremely surprising. Running more complex destruction physics asynchronously certainly required some development effort and is surely not trivial. But to put that achievement properly in context, the following question have to be answered.

- How much processing power is actually used for these calculations per collapsing mash?
- Are collapsing buildings reused for all connected players in a shared online match, and if so, between how many players are they shared?
- What was the development effort of building and testing such a physics component?
- How expensive is it to run these servers?

Looking at what is happening in these gifs, I strongly suspect that the processing resources required for a single collapsing structure are way less than "20x". As others have said, that collapsing mash just does not look "20x" more complicated than similar things seen in other games. You could likely reach that number by aggregating everything that is happening at the same time in that shared online world. But if that world is shared by, lets say, 20 players, the figure loses its impact. "20x" for 40 players is less of a talking point than "20x" per player.

The more important point, though, is the question of development efforts and server costs. As I argued in earlier threads, it makes no sense to build such a thing, unless your game absolutely needs it, or you explicitly want to have a tech demo. It increases development costs and it creates server costs. Since destruction is something that has obviously already been done on much weaker hardware, a developer would, under normal circumstances, just create a physics components that scales well with the local hardware that is available. It's easier, cheaper, and creates virtually the same game. My prediction is that, for these reasons, this will remain an insular case.

Great post, Completely agree

So blowing up a few walls with pre-rendered pieces breaking apart is the same thing as leveling a city. I don't think you understand the scale comparison we are dealing with here.

How do you know if Crackdowns features "pre-rendered pieces breaking apart" or not? The video really looks like it does.


What the hell are you talking about? The scale of the simulation in the crackdown demo is several orders of magnitude larger than what we saw in red faction AND what's happening in the nvidia demo...

It's not just because some big buildings came down... It's because there were hundreds of thousands of objects of various sizes, shapes, and weights, being governed by A real-time physics engine is a process that is impossible to render on any $350 gaming hardware without slowing to a crawl...

You can't see it because you don't want to...


I haven't see many objects in the video shown.

The art gallery demo had 10.000 rigidbodies.
 
Actually, it's about holding people responsible for their shit posts.

And there we have it.

Bump was to create a war. In essence, bait trolling.

Sad, because people ElTorro and Drek made some great posts in all of this pre-alpha[see: teen] dick waving noise.
 
excuse me ..you are one of the posters on KIA and one of the most prominents gamergaters i havent seen on twitter? just for curiosity

Huh? You can go to my profile to see my gamertag ...

And there we have it.

Bump was to create a war. In essence, bait trolling.

Sad, because people ElTorro and Drek made some great posts in all of this pre-alpha[see teen] dick waving noise.

Holding people responsible for what they say is not creating war, but I suppose, in order to paint those who are following up as bad guys, that's the mental gymnastics you have to perform.
 
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