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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

#91
post #43

I am a GFN subscriber (and Stadia prior to that) so I am quite interested in this - GFN is great (I no longer have a gaming laptop and just use game streaming -90% from GFN and the rest via moonlight from a server in my loft/attic) but the major drawback is that you cannot access your entire game library. I presume it is a combination of a) compatibility but probably more likely b) contracts/business/legal. GFN does…

It's legal. They used to cover pretty much all of it then published came at them one after another to want a "deal". The moment they gain any kind of popularity, they're going to hit the same legal wall. As for using it for your own needs 1:1, I wish steam would expand it's steam to steam self streaming to cover usage out of local lan.

You can use Steam to stream over the internet. You have to enter a pairing code once on the remote machine, but after that you can play anything, you can even add a "non-steam game" to stream any application you want.

I do this all the time with my powerful work computer at the office while I'm at home. It works surprisingly well, actually.

The only shitty part is that they removed the ability for you to download a new game on the remote machine from your local steam client. The only way to do it now is with the steam app on your phone.

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

#92

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.

Peer-to-peer across networks is impossible unless you can punch a hole, i.e. UPnP. It's possible this isn't enabled and that could cause Parsec to have to fallback to a central server.

I mean, sure, but that doesn't mean that Parsec uses central servers by default, which was the entire point of the GP comment; that their servers are worse than Nvidia's.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't work due to the latency. If you want 30ms roundtrip, you need to be within ~3000km/1800 miles of the subscriber.

What if the gaming PCs were in orbit? You could have the orbit of the satellites track the sleeping times of populations, so that you don't have PCs above areas where nobody would use them. Starlink promises latency around 20-40ms, so I do wonder if this is possible. You would have far more distance between the client/server, but I would expect that routing would be greatly simplified.

Powering and cooling tens, hundreds of gaming PCs in orbit is beyond infeasible right now. RTGs can't produce that much power even if we had the plutonium. Solar panels are too big and heavy and don't work on the dark side of the planet. Batteries to complement the solar would also be prohibitively heavy.

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

#94
post #76
post #74

I was trying to find their actual streaming implementation in their codebase before giving up and checking their Discord. Apparently parts of their game streaming stack are being developed in private repos, and their subscription service is the only working version of this project. In its current state I wouldn’t call this project open-source.

If you’re interested in stuff like this, take a look at the looking-glass project. It uses shared memory to display frames from a VM running under a Linux host. I’m sure there’s a way to transmit those frames over a network if one was clever enough

> I’m sure there’s a way to transmit those frames over a network if one was clever enough

Something like Sunshine[1], coupled with Moonlight[2]?

[1] https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine

[2] https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt

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

#95

I am a GFN subscriber (and Stadia prior to that) so I am quite interested in this - GFN is great (I no longer have a gaming laptop and just use game streaming -90% from GFN and the rest via moonlight from a server in my loft/attic) but the major drawback is that you cannot access your entire game library. I presume it is a combination of a) compatibility but probably more likely b) contracts/business/legal. GFN does…

Tell me about the server in your attic. I’m in Florida and so putting tech in my attic seems like a bad idea. Is your attic/loft air conditioned? Do you live in a cold climate?

My RTX 3090 is literally unusable upstairs. I have it in a closet downstairs and that closet gets quite toasty, but I would imagine the Florida attic will take it to junction temp at idle.

I’ve also thought about putting some kind of ventilation system in an upstairs closet that pushes warm air into the attic but that too seems like it could be a bad idea.

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

#96
Just to tag along, we are building a P2P GeForce Now at https://borg.games . It is not open-source though (and neither is this Netris btw, streaming is not part of the source repo).

Only a couple hard coded games are currently available, but we are close to getting GOG.com support.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't work due to the latency. If you want 30ms roundtrip, you need to be within ~3000km/1800 miles of the subscriber.

What if the gaming PCs were in orbit? You could have the orbit of the satellites track the sleeping times of populations, so that you don't have PCs above areas where nobody would use them. Starlink promises latency around 20-40ms, so I do wonder if this is possible. You would have far more distance between the client/server, but I would expect that routing would be greatly simplified.

Starlink gets that latency by orbiting close to the Earth. At 525km, a Starlink bird completes one orbit in 95 minutes. For a twelve hour demand response orbit they'd have to be around 20000km high, more than one Earth diameter away, giving a far worse speed of light delay than just talking to a server one continent away.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the gaming PCs were in orbit? You could have the orbit of the satellites track the sleeping times of populations, so that you don't have PCs above areas where nobody would use them. Starlink promises latency around 20-40ms, so I do wonder if this is possible. You would have far more distance between the client/server, but I would expect that routing would be greatly simplified.

Powering and cooling tens, hundreds of gaming PCs in orbit is beyond infeasible right now. RTGs can't produce that much power even if we had the plutonium. Solar panels are too big and heavy and don't work on the dark side of the planet. Batteries to complement the solar would also be prohibitively heavy.

Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of hurdles, I was just wondering if the latency problem could by solved by having the computers in orbit.

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

#99
post #65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GeForce Now works great. I subscribed for a while to play Cyberpunk 2077 on a remote 4080 and it felt like playing on a local computer. But with much higher settings and framerate than I get on my local GeForce 1080. > Finally, there is no way in hell a working adult will find time to play 4+hours day, every day. Don't make the assumption that everyone live their lives exactly like you do.

A 1080 is 8 years old and wasn't a flagship, an equivalent card costs ~$100 currently... Also: that's 4 generations, not 2. It'd be a complete disaster if gfn couldn't beat that performance. I've attempted to use GFN several times too and can only conclude that you've never played at a decent setup if that felt like a local machine. The input latency is so high that anything with pvp is entirely unplayable (it adds a…

I have and love a steam deck, and used to have geforce now for about 18 months before I got a 3080 new rig. We might be playing incredibly different games in very different ways, and that's ok - but geforce now being beaten by steam deck is, again, taking a reasonable position way too far.

Geforce now lets me play cp2077 on ultra with all the ray tracing on high resolution 32" monitor. Steam deck can "play" cp2077 at 800 resolution if you don't mind a melting jet engine in your hands. They're both great for what they do and are, and they can make a powerful combo, but in terms of performance I don't see how they can possibly be compared :-/

Edit : did you by any chance only try the free / low tier version of geforce now?

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

#100
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 1080 is 8 years old and wasn't a flagship, an equivalent card costs ~$100 currently... Also: that's 4 generations, not 2. It'd be a complete disaster if gfn couldn't beat that performance. I've attempted to use GFN several times too and can only conclude that you've never played at a decent setup if that felt like a local machine. The input latency is so high that anything with pvp is entirely unplayable (it adds a…

I have and love a steam deck, and used to have geforce now for about 18 months before I got a 3080 new rig. We might be playing incredibly different games in very different ways, and that's ok - but geforce now being beaten by steam deck is, again, taking a reasonable position way too far. Geforce now lets me play cp2077 on ultra with all the ray tracing on high resolution 32" monitor. Steam deck can "play" cp2077 at…

No, Nvidia always gives out a 3 month free trial with every purchase. I tried it out when I bought a 3080 when it was released and a 4090 last year.

> cp2077

That's indeed a game that works well with GFN, witcher 3 and similar games too. Pretty sure you're still playing at 720p on GFN though, they're just using dlss for upsampling. You should be able to see the upsampled resolution in the settings of cyberpunk if I remember correctly. My sub ran out however, so no checking anymore

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