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Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

looking-glass.io

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Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#211
post #194
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's inevitable. It makes no sense for Windows to be the PC gaming platform; it's only inertia.

It makes sense for almost every user and developer, due to better graphics support from GPU vendors and from Microsoft for Windows.

Well of course, but that's only popularity and inertia. There's no technical reason to prefer Windows over Linux as a gaming platform.

Edit: oh, I just rephrased grandparent comment, sorry.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#212
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Server-side solutions don't catch all cheats. They can block actions that are impossible according to the game rules but they cannot prevent clients from disclosing too much information to the player about other players, or automating actions that are technically possible, like using aimbots.

This is what Valorant does and just does not work. People saying "yeah game dev are lazy, why not everything is done server side" this is really a naive view of game dev. The short version is that you can't have a great experience for online games if you try to create a client as a dumb terminal.

I didn't mean to say they're lazy. I generally dislike the studios but developers there are brillant, usually.

I was thinking that studios were being cheap. Why invest in a proper server infrastructure if you can make clients install abusive software... Maybe I'm wrong but it always looked to me that way.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#213
post #174

Malwarebytes blocks this domain as a trojan, that's a false positive though, isn't it?

Indeed, AV vendors flag LG because the windows executable we host: 1) It's not a signed executable (FOSS project, signing is a PITA without corporate sponsorship) 2) Microsoft Defender flagged the exe for wanting admin privs 3) Google were dumb and flagged us because MS did 4) All other AV vendors flagged us because google flagged our website. We had to put the exe into a password protected zip to stop Google flaggin…

Alright, good to know! Will send a report :)

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Server-side solutions don't catch all cheats. They can block actions that are impossible according to the game rules but they cannot prevent clients from disclosing too much information to the player about other players, or automating actions that are technically possible, like using aimbots.

You can definitely handle some of those situations server side (the key word being "some") with enough engineering effort. In regards to player positions: check which player locations are occluded and wouldn't be visible through the geometry, then only send the valid ones for each player. Of course, doing this on high tick servers could prove to be computationally intensive. In regards to aimbots: the clients already…

>Attach some mouse movement metrics and from that you'll sometimes be able to infer the most naive aimbots instantly.

see? even you do not believe that this will work

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-cheat measures end up blocking mostly the well-meaning players. I know it's sometimes too costly, but game studios should invest more on server-side security measures and mostly distrust the clients.

But distrusting the client doesn’t solve the problem. If a user can see through a wall locally how can ‘distrusting’ anything fix that? What is there to distrust? All inputs are genuine.

Then the server should never send them information on what's behind the wall.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#219
post #88

What would be the best solution (Performance wise) if one is only after running Photoshop + Office? Looking for a solution which is easy to install and configure.

Not PS/Office (more of a dev workflow - VS, Intellij, DB admin tools), but I've personally found that straight KVM with the default virtual hardware is good enough. The last big adjustment I made was getting a dedicated SSD for the Windows VM and using it instead of the native file images.

Totally stable - 8hrs per day over the last 16 months with 1 hiccup - and no performance complaints. I'm not doing anything graphically intensive though so virtual display hardware isn't a bottleneck.

Most of my gaming is just Proton on the host system these days.

Re: Looking Glass: Run a Windows VM on Linux in a window with native performance

#220
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some cheats use a VM environment to hide from detection as they can act on the VM from outside of it. The solution though is not to ban VMs, but to push vendors like AMD and Intel to enable access to, and enforce usage of technologies like SEV if running inside a VM. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.6/virt/kvm/amd-memory-enc...

I wrote this another comment, but instead of getting too much into an arms race, studios should invest more on server-side anti-cheat mechanisms. You could correlate community feedback and some machine learning, while also picking easy-to-catch impossible actions.

> instead of getting too much into an arms race, studios should invest more on server-side anti-cheat mechanisms

End offline AAA gaming?

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