Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

workstream.paperspace.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 255 posts

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#241

Post by jplayer01 »

ShamelessC wrote: post #19
jsumrall wrote: post #9

Not a heavy user, but I've been using Paperspace a few times for gaming. They make it really easy. They have a "template" you spawn a new instance from, or use a blank windows install. Their template is handy since it has Steam and Parsec already installed. What they seem to be doing here is saying you don't need Parsec and can just use their browser implementation instead. Sounds great!

Is gaming well supported with controllers working over the air?

You'd want to install Parsec on the server, then controllers work automatically (generally). It works pretty well (though I had to stop using Paperspace because I couldn't afford the cost).

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#243

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

rvnx wrote: post #122
atian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also can't recommend them. Service is operational when working, but the times it isn't working as expected I don't have the patience to message support. Things just aren't straightforward. This was 2 years ago when I used them to run a couple of Windows apps for work.

I had issues with Paperspace too, switched over to Shadow. I pay +/- 14 USD per month for a computer with 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, GTX 1080, 256 GB SSD. No commitment. I'm not sure where is the good deal with Workstream ?

Unfortunately Shadow is unavailable in the UK until August. Apart from that, it's a way better deal than Workstream.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#244

Post by jplayer01 »

pkos98 wrote: post #185

I have to recommend https://shadow.tech ! It is a Windows VM intended specifically for (but not limited to) gaming! And it works extremely well, I am playing games on it for ~ 2 years by using their client app on Linux.

I only recently got mine last week and I love it. The CPU is a bit underpowered but the GPU is so much better than what I have in my PC and I’ve been able to play a bunch of more recent games that I wasn’t able to before. Also much prefer the freedom to install what I want over services like GFN or Stadia.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#246

Post by ericd »

KMnO4 wrote: post #214
ericd wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that pencil out? Is that shared? If it's dedicated, assuming a 3 year useful life, that comes out to ~$504, which barely covers the graphics card. I guess the 1080 is kind of old now, maybe that helps.

A couple points: 1. It advertises itself as a gaming service, not a 9-5+overtime service. Granted, some people do game for >8 hours per day, but those people probably own their own hardware. Which leads into... 2. Many people used cloud gaming services for casual play. It doesn’t make sense for someone to buy a gaming computer when all they want is the occasional PUBG match or to play a grand total of 15 hours of Far…

Ah makes sense, thanks. I'm guessing that if a number of people start using it for ML workloads, they're going to tamp down on that. Because holy crap, that's an awesome deal, $14/instance doesn't even pay for the power for a 24/7 ML workload.

But maybe the messaging will be enough to stop a significant number of people from jumping on that.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#247

Post by mistahchris »

frodprefect wrote: post #173
fataliss wrote: post #132

Anybody used it for gaming? I was a beta user of the Nvidia service which is dedicated to gaming and while overall acceptable, lag spikes would render the use of the platform really frustrating. Everything would be smooth for 30s and then "lag" or freeze for up to 1-2s and then resume. Fine if playing the sims, but when you are in a fight in fast paced games it's a deal breaker. To my knowledge, so far, no platform h…

I just tried for the last couple hours. Installed Steam then Fallout 4 and Grand Theft Auto 5. I tried to get GTA to start 5 times but it never would. Just black screen with music playing. Fallout would start but I couldn't aim with my mouse. I could walk and shoot but it would register mouse movement. Then accidentally hitting ESC would stop full screen and eventually crash to the point I had to hard restart the sys…

It sounds like you were using Paperspace's remote desktop. I find that if you connect to it with Parsec, none of the issues that you're describing apply.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#248

Post by manigandham »

t0astbread wrote: post #117
kim0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I'm not getting the main value prop from this. I'm mainly an ops person. Can you please explain what that service would look like?

Netlify (primarily) takes a git repo containing a program to generate a static site and turns that into a live running website that automatically updates when the generator repo changes. You don't have to think about configuration or security or updates and you don't have to maintain a server. Ideally this would be a service with the same ergonomics but the outcome isn't a hosted static website but a machine (somewhe…

This is what Platform-as-a-service (PAAS) is and has been around for a long time. Google's Appengine, Heroku, and many others offer it.

Since then we've seen "serverless" or functions-as-a-service (FAAS) which is just smaller bits of code (down to a single javascript function) but the same concept of everything else being managed by the provider. This is AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers, Google Cloud Functions, etc.

The latest offerings now take a Dockerfile or container image that you build, which means you can run anything on any stack while the provider manages the rest. Google Cloud Run, AWS Fargate, Azure Container Instances, Fly.io, Zeit Now, etc.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#249

Post by bonezie »

raywu wrote: post #116
dkobran wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the confusion here, we are in the midst of separating out the two products and this is not reflected everywhere yet. Under the CORE section of the interface, you'll find these instances and you can download the desktop app here: https://paperspace.com/download

How's native peripheral support? I've been looking for a cloud solution that would act as a virtual rig for VR. However, from everything I read there's hardware limitation on memory to support meaningful peripheral throughput. I'm curious about what you and DTE have come across!

What kind of VR hardware are you using? I'm working on a cloud based virtual computer solution that leverges google's additive GPUs (You can add as many as you want to facilitate what you need to do).

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#250

Post by raywu »

bonezie wrote: post #249
raywu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's native peripheral support? I've been looking for a cloud solution that would act as a virtual rig for VR. However, from everything I read there's hardware limitation on memory to support meaningful peripheral throughput. I'm curious about what you and DTE have come across!

What kind of VR hardware are you using? I'm working on a cloud based virtual computer solution that leverges google's additive GPUs (You can add as many as you want to facilitate what you need to do).

That sounds awesome! I don't have a VR rig set up and am looking to build a PC and have some spec I can share. How do you hook up VR peripheral with the cloud?
Post reply on HN