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Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

appetize.io

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Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#21

Post by B-n-c »

weiyin wrote: post #18
B-n-c wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand those are the web technologies, but how is this being run in the back? Tons of mac servers, with multiple IOS simulators on each? One running per user on the mac? Custom software to control and pass through to the socket? Care to shed any light as to an overview on how the backend works? I've always been curious since I first saw App.io

Hey B-n-c, You are pretty much spot on with everything you mentioned. Apparently app.io had some setup w/ VMs running on lightweight hypervisors ( https://macstadium.com/casestudies ), but we found we didn't have to have all that overhead to run multiple simulators per machine. And you're exactly right about the small piece of custom code to pass controls and send frames. We're big fans of socket.io - pretty powerful…

The one piece that puzzles me is how the frames are being captured from the iOS simulator. Are you launching multiples per user account, where each one is a different session at a different portion of the screen, and essentially screenshotting each? Or did you modify the simulator somehow and are hooking in to grab the screen, so that way its irrelevant of their position on screen?

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#22

Post by weiyin »

B-n-c wrote: post #21
weiyin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey B-n-c, You are pretty much spot on with everything you mentioned. Apparently app.io had some setup w/ VMs running on lightweight hypervisors ( https://macstadium.com/casestudies ), but we found we didn't have to have all that overhead to run multiple simulators per machine. And you're exactly right about the small piece of custom code to pass controls and send frames. We're big fans of socket.io - pretty powerful…

The one piece that puzzles me is how the frames are being captured from the iOS simulator. Are you launching multiples per user account, where each one is a different session at a different portion of the screen, and essentially screenshotting each? Or did you modify the simulator somehow and are hooking in to grab the screen, so that way its irrelevant of their position on screen? Thanks!

We wrote some custom OS X code to capture frames from individual processes. That way the simulators don't need to be positioned in any way or even visible. Cheers.

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#24

Post by weiyin »

cbhl wrote: post #16
TD-Linux wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to go that complicated. A WebM stream over HTTP is pretty easy and would work well for this.

It's worth noting that Chrome Remote Desktop uses VP8 (which is the video codec used in WebM): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/next-step-in-chrome-o... If you're having performance issues with it, you just have the video codec tuned wrong.

definitely a possibility :)

we'll check that out, thanks for the heads up.

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#25

Post by erjiang »

I'd be willing to pay money for this, seriously. I've followed you on Twitter - let me know if anything happens.

We were using and enjoying app.io[0] until they decided to pivot and stop serving us.

[0] they didn't support pinch gestures, which made using a map impossible

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#30

Post by B-n-c »

weiyin wrote: post #22
B-n-c wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one piece that puzzles me is how the frames are being captured from the iOS simulator. Are you launching multiples per user account, where each one is a different session at a different portion of the screen, and essentially screenshotting each? Or did you modify the simulator somehow and are hooking in to grab the screen, so that way its irrelevant of their position on screen? Thanks!

We wrote some custom OS X code to capture frames from individual processes. That way the simulators don't need to be positioned in any way or even visible. Cheers.

The other piece of magic you are doing is sending in the keystrokes / mouse movements. If you're running multiple iOS simulators on a Mac, how are the key presses / mouse movements not interfering with other users?
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