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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

#31

Post by nullify88 »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #8
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.

I get better latency and frame rate than GeForce Now on a 2660 using moonlight. Using h.265 or AV1 is necessary. I'm not familiar with Presec, but I'll bet it's defaulting to h.264.

I'm not sure you would use h265 for "better latency" as the encoding overhead is greater than that compared to h264. Sure, h265 requires less bandwidth but it also is a slower encoder. AV1 is supposedly a fast encoder but hardware to encode it is limited to the recent generation.

Capture method can have a big effect on latency and technologies like the Desktop Duplication API or NV FBC are also necessary for achieving lower latencies by minimising data transfer between cpu and the gpu when capturing and encoding.

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

#32

Post by consp »

chenxi9649 wrote: post #3

This is super cool! A few questions: 1. just how low is the latency? "Netris delivers a zero-latency gaming experience that won't eat up your data plan." What does this mean? Wouldn't the latency be at least from my computer, to Netris server, to the game server? I would assume you can't play FPS/MOBA games on these? 2. "10,000+ games supported" "games that come with their own launchers are not yet supported" I'm cur…

> games that come with their own launchers are not yet supported

Please let this be the nail in the coffin for those extra clicks and annoying "Log in with our service now" for games which have no online stuff whatsoever (take2 is notorious for this)

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

#33

Post by brnt »

i5heu wrote: post #28
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 ...…

.328 and they are complaining! Bah!

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

#34

Post by komali2 »

langarus wrote: post #9
komali2 wrote: post #4

Beautiful, and agpl3 too! Can't wait to try it. I think self hosted game streaming is a field that could use a lot more attention, from consumers as well. I set up moonlight/sunshine on my pc and now I can play cyberpunk on my 3080 machine from basically anywhere in the country, on my phone! Just got some gamesir controller thing to turn it into a sort of Nintendo switch type device and away I go. Actually, I have ba…

Really nice. What is your latency?

I'm not sure how to objectively measure this but if you have an idea I'm happy to give it a try and let you know!

For the record I live in Taiwan and apparently we have some of the best internet access in the world. And, I get 5g basically everywhere in the country, even when I'm deep in the mountains.

But subjectively I can say the latency is usually unnoticeable at like 30mpbs, though I'm sure a pro fps gamer would notice. The latency from the Bluetooth controller is far worse. What is a little annoying is the I think compression artifacts? Whatever it is that causes blockiness when I move my camera around, that isn't really visible on static objects.

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

#35

Post by komali2 »

samspenc wrote: post #10
komali2 wrote: post #4

Beautiful, and agpl3 too! Can't wait to try it. I think self hosted game streaming is a field that could use a lot more attention, from consumers as well. I set up moonlight/sunshine on my pc and now I can play cyberpunk on my 3080 machine from basically anywhere in the country, on my phone! Just got some gamesir controller thing to turn it into a sort of Nintendo switch type device and away I go. Actually, I have ba…

"and agpl3 too!" If you don't mind, I'm curious what you mean by this :) most service hosting providers I'm aware of (and worked with in the past) run away from AGPL3 software due to the viral nature of the license.

I'm a rabid FOSS evangelist and anticapitalist. If businesses hate it, I typically like it ;) but I also personally believe FOSS, even "viral" licenses (honestly I haven't seen evidence of this in practice though I hear it a lot about GPL), can lead to successful capitalist efforts. For example I believe that FOSS code leads to greater innovations that various organizations can capitalize on and drive profit through. SaaS hosting comes to mind, my co-op self hosts almost all of our saas, however there's one or two that are mission critical enough that we just fork over the cash to the experts to host.

In this case, there's already closed source solutions, such as stadia and GFN. Stadia shut down and took everyone's games with it (luckily offering refunds). Pure capitalist ventures are demonstrably unsustainable and don't serve the needs of the greater populace. But FOSS doesn't have that problem - if someone offers to host a FOSS GFN, you can pay to use their computers, that's really awesome! If they shut down their business, someone else can take it up, or you can host your own! Also awesome. I think there's valid business models there. I have a decently powerful gaming machine but I still pay for GFN for when I want to try a 4090 or when they have better throughput to my location.

Also recently Nvidia stopped supporting the API that self hosting option Moonlight uses, forcing the development of a pure FOSS protocol, thus leading to Sunshine (iirc), a similar self hostable game streaming server. Clearly the corporations don't care if we like things, they'll just shut them down (stadia, every other google product ever), so if these corpos come up with something people clearly like, it's a very good idea to build a FOSS version so we can keep having the thing when the corporation determines the profits won't reach several billion so it's not worth supporting (also some other company can then offer the service and simply make millions instead! Everyone wins)

Sorry I'm on my phone so it's a disorganized rant. I'm also a big user and hoster but I'm relatively ignorant so I might have gotten some terms wrong.

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

#36

Post by WithinReason »

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.

In my experience if both sides are wireless the connection quality is terrible, no matter how good the signal is.

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

#37

Post by manmal »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #8
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.

I get better latency and frame rate than GeForce Now on a 2660 using moonlight. Using h.265 or AV1 is necessary. I'm not familiar with Presec, but I'll bet it's defaulting to h.264.

I’m getting a stable 5ms latency over ethernet with Sunshine + Moonlight (forced HW en & decoding). WIFI adds a few ms and you need a good router & mostly idle access point for perfectly smooth 4K. For FPS like L4D2 I do get better results (aim) running locally, but I ascribe that to the mouse acceleration weirdness which I never managed to configure _just right_.

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

#38

Post by killingtime74 »

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…

I also enjoy Parsec at home (and for non gaming remote desktop). For some reason outside of home (I'm travelling to a city 10ms away) it's not as good

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

#39

Post by KronisLV »

i5heu wrote: post #28
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 ...…

> considering an RTX 4080 has 320W alone

> having to buy a 1300€ GPU, that one would have to replace every year

Feels like gamers are quite the demanding audience, instead of getting something like Intel Arc A380 (or something that supports AV1), upscaling from 720p/1080p using framegen and running games on medium settings. That might make the equation work out better, though perhaps not if the industry pushes for more and more complex graphics all the darn time, while the engines themselves are capable of scaling back all the way to mobile devices.

I probably have lower standards in that regard, I wouldn't expect to max out graphics when trying to play games on a MacBook or a netbook or something, due to the smaller screen anyways, it feels like modern game graphics are so noisy you can hardly make things out well. Nowadays I mostly play indie games that aren't super graphically complex, yet still are lovely experiences.

That said, my current GPU is actually an Arc A580 (replaced my old RX 580) and it's been pretty good since I got ReBAR working, and 1080p at 60 fps is the sweet spot for me (except slightly higher framerates like 72 fps feel better in VR).

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