If you never thought you’d see the day, you’re not alone: Destiny 2 is running on an e-reader, courtesy of Google Stadia.
Spotted by Vice, this video shows the popular Bungie-made game running on an e-reader. Specifically, it’s running on an Onyx Book Max 3 through Google Stadia, the search giant’s online game streaming service. Danish student Sebastian Ørsted managed to get it working without many issues.
Now, you may be wondering how on earth Ørsted got Stadia running on an e-reader, which traditionally feature e-ink displays with very low refresh rates (far too low to do anything like watching videos, let alone play games). In part, it’s thanks to the Book Max 3, which features a special ‘X-Mode’ that can boost the refresh rate of the screen for watching video.
Further, that e-reader runs Android, which with some tweaking, can work with Stadia. Currently, Stadia only works with Pixel phones, but it’s possible to tweak system files to trick the service into thinking a device is a Pixel. It’s not clear if Ørsted used this method to get Stadia running on the Book Max 3.
Ørsted told Vice that he estimates the lag while playing on the e-reader was somewhere between 500 and 1000 milliseconds. While that’s not good enough for gamers, it’s impressive on an e-reader. Ørsted said that before turning on X-Mode, the experience was “quite bad.”
Ørsted admits that the setup would “obviously be useless” for gaming, but makes for a cool tech demonstration.
In the video, you can see Ørsted’s Destiny 2 character running about an in-game location called The Tower. At the end of the video, the game stops working, but according to Vice, that’s because of the flaky Wi-Fi at Ørsted’s school. In other words, it looks like you can get Stadia to run on just about anything, as long as you’ve got solid Wi-Fi.
Source: Vice
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