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Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

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Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#21

Post by shmerl »

cdchn wrote: post #20
shmerl wrote: post #5

Being exclusive to Nvidia GPUs doesn't sound like a good idea. What makes it rely on CUDA anyway? It's cool that it's using Wine though. From these cloud services like Amazon's Luna or Geforce Now, none are running Linux, so this is interesting. No idea why Stadia couldn't do the same and tried to reinvent the wheel with Windows ABI translation at some point before it shut down.

I'd guess it does the video encoding on the GPU before it goes back to the PC. GeForce Experience recording does this as well I believe.

They don't need CUDA for video encoding?

For video they can rely on VAAPI or Vulkan video (the latter might be behind on AV1 encoding options though) which can work on any GPU with video acceleration hardware.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#22

Post by wudangmonk »

shmerl wrote: post #5

Being exclusive to Nvidia GPUs doesn't sound like a good idea. What makes it rely on CUDA anyway? It's cool that it's using Wine though. From these cloud services like Amazon's Luna or Geforce Now, none are running Linux, so this is interesting. No idea why Stadia couldn't do the same and tried to reinvent the wheel with Windows ABI translation at some point before it shut down.

My understanding is that at a certain point the only way to keep climbing the corporate latter at google is for other's projects to fail and yours to make it which explains why they come out with a new messages app every 3 months before killing it.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#23

Post by denysvitali »

PrivateButts wrote: post #19

Wait, I thought that you need either a hacked driver or a very expensive license to split up Nvidia GPUs, even within containers?

Wasn't it just a very expensive GPU which basically had a flag that enabled the feature in the driver? I seem to recall reading about people unlocking their NVIDIA GPUs to allow the nested virtualization.

--- Edit: here it is https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#24

Post by WildGreenLeave »

softfalcon wrote: post #18
mynameisvlad wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parsec doesn’t use their servers though. It’s peer to peer once discovery is done. So the “server” is likely elsewhere in your house. That’s basically as close as you can get.

Oh, wild, I didn't know that. I definitely see some high latency on Parsec within my home. It might be bouncing around through the net somehow instead of transferring directly within my local network? I wonder if something about local peer-to-peer discovery isn't working properly? Maybe that's also happening to the other person comparing GeForce Now to Parsec?

I've been using Parsec on my local network for several months now and I see absolutely no latency whatsoever. GFN and any streaming provider gives me a very small but noticeable lag in shooters, but Parsec on my home network is genuinely perfect. I game from my Macbook and I play whatever I want from my homeserver (3090 and 4060) in another room. Both my Macbook and computer are wired of course. Important to note is that I needed a dummy HDMI on my computer for a 'true' screen, any kind of virtual screened caused it to lag hard, probably because the game or stream ran without any kind of hardware acceleration.

I have to say, I love the way Parsec works and allows you to use your whole library (since it doesn't stream the game, but it streams your whole desktop). But if there is ever a service that allows you to get the same thing including remote servers (since I travel), I would probably switch.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#28

Post by i5heu »

killingtime74 wrote: post #6

One of the benefits of GeForce now is im pretty sure they are subsidizing it. I get unlimited gaming on a 4080 for USD$20. I have a 4080 at home and I can't get the same latency/frame rate with Parsec even though I have a gigabit connection. Cool project, actual experience unsure.

Also one does have to consider energy! In Germany energy prices are currently at 0.328€/kWh from big providers, and considering a RTX 4080 has 320W alone an say 230W extra for the rest of the system + PSU inefficiencies - my M1 MacBook has way under 30W so the difference between these 2 is 520W.. what means that alone for energy consumption you need to game about 129 hours/month or 4.3/hours per day to break even ... _but_ this is before having to buy a 1300€ GPU, that one would have to replace every year to have the same as GFN.

But IMHO the biggest appeal to GFN in Germany is temperature. In Germany there are no air conditioners in normal households and even in apartments with more then 2k a month rent there are none. So it is quite luxurious to game while not having 0.5kW blasting into your room.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#29

Post by softfalcon »

WildGreenLeave wrote: post #24
softfalcon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, wild, I didn't know that. I definitely see some high latency on Parsec within my home. It might be bouncing around through the net somehow instead of transferring directly within my local network? I wonder if something about local peer-to-peer discovery isn't working properly? Maybe that's also happening to the other person comparing GeForce Now to Parsec?

I've been using Parsec on my local network for several months now and I see absolutely no latency whatsoever. GFN and any streaming provider gives me a very small but noticeable lag in shooters, but Parsec on my home network is genuinely perfect. I game from my Macbook and I play whatever I want from my homeserver (3090 and 4060) in another room. Both my Macbook and computer are wired of course. Important to note is…

Appreciate the details you’ve provided!

I’m going to do some more Parsec experiments this weekend thanks to your info.

Something is clearly wrong with my setup, I’m going to figure it out.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#30

Post by WildGreenLeave »

softfalcon wrote: post #29
WildGreenLeave wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Parsec on my local network for several months now and I see absolutely no latency whatsoever. GFN and any streaming provider gives me a very small but noticeable lag in shooters, but Parsec on my home network is genuinely perfect. I game from my Macbook and I play whatever I want from my homeserver (3090 and 4060) in another room. Both my Macbook and computer are wired of course. Important to note is…

Appreciate the details you’ve provided! I’m going to do some more Parsec experiments this weekend thanks to your info. Something is clearly wrong with my setup, I’m going to figure it out.

I'm not a professional myself either, but the things I would check are:

- Make sure you run hardware acceleration, you can see if this is applied after opening a connection and checking the details. Without acceleration it will be terrible. This can either be as simple as enabling it or possibly you need the monitor below.

- Make sure a monitor is plugged in (there might be a way around this, but I just bought a $4 HDMI dummy instead of trying to figure out how to do this the software way)

Edit: formatting

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