It's a video game streaming service where they run the games on their servers, but the cool thing is that it uses Java for the client. And, dramatic pause, it actually runs remarkably well, better than most applets I've seen in Mac Chrome.

Link is: http://www.gaikai.com/

Yes, it's really good stuff. They're going head to head with OnLive. I hope both services prosper - it's a neato idea. Not sure how it'll fare with 2D games though.

Cas

The current Gaikai client is Java + LWJGL + PulpCore. You should be wishing for a fiery death on OnLive

How'd you find that out?

OIC

Just played Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space 2 games on Win7,Firefox,Java 1.6.0_24 platform. Worked great and ME2 demo delivered, so I'm going to buy ps3 bluray version now. They let play 90 mins or predefined end is reached. I can see a potential how offering easy to access demos this way. No installs, no downloads, no driver issues, no nothing. Just play a heavy weight "game video stream". Its not a state of the art 5.1 audio or resolution but get the job done for demos. Buy a full game to access premium experience.

Mass Effect 2, wait for until main page shows ME2 popup in a lower corner, then click play now.
Dead Space 2, fill in the survey and play.
Spore
SIMS 3
Second Life maps

This is jvm arguments the pass to gaikai-loader-2.1.5.jar APPLET tag. Actually DS2 html page has two applets and one flash object in a html page. During the game play java.exe process took CPU% 9-20 and 174MB ram.
[CODE]
  <param name="separate_jvm" value="true">
  <param name="java_arguments" value="-Dsun.java2d.opengl=false -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -Dsun.java2d.d3d=false -Dsun.awt.noerasebackground=true">
[/CODE]

I think they run a customized x264(?) encoder, which processes game framebuffer splitted to few regions. Each region is concurrently compressed of its own and streamed to the client.