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Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

investors.unity.com

61–70 of 97 posts

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#61
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use parsec at home to run a gaming machine in a gaming room... and use the same machine as an art creation machine in another room, parsec is one of the few solutions that plays well with pressure and stylus, custom resolutions and even 120 hz (surprisingly useful when trying to have responsive UI in art apps) any of that going to change?

... trying to get a random backend engineer to publicly share and comment on company policy during an acquisition. An acquisition into a public company no less.

Why not?

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#62
post #22

In addition to using Parsec's tech for cloud-based gaming, I also foresee Unity using it to stream shared applications into multi-user mixed reality apps (for example, multiple users in AR or VR sharing a Windows desktop).

Isn't VR extremely latency sensitive? I remember reading Carmack's blog posts about needing to reduce input and screen lag even on local machines to make it bearable. It just seems to me like the least likely place for streaming to actually work.

You can use a locally rendered environment with quads that are displaying remotely rendered video of complex objects.

Microsoft has this service already and its called Remote Rendering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR1iaCcZPrU

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#63
post #9
post #2

Is there any way you ever make $320m back by selling a better performance version of teamviewer/remote desktop? Or is there some other play here - e.g. a Stadia/GeForce Now competitor?

Let me rephrase your question: can they sell three thousand more enterprise license seats by bundling this in? Because they’ll have made it back in a couple of years if they do.

An enterprise seat is $2400 a year per seat, no? At 3000 seats, isn't it closer to 40-50 years?

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#64
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a web client, but their desktop client was way better in every way.

Just because it's a desktop client doesn't mean it's not using webrtc. WebRTC is a much broader standard than "in-browser videoconferencing". The main thing is that it's an open(ish) standard built around peer-to-peer low latency connections, with a lot of software already built up around using it. [edit] Ah I guess I'm wrong they use a proprietary thing outside the browser after all that they call BUD. https://blog.…

I figured they got better video encode/decode with real hardware and not in the web. But it also makes sense they can do better networking the lower to metal they can get. I was using a 2011 mac air, and web client was worked but the app install was like magic.

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#65

Don't know why Unity is pursuing cloud, you're still going to need a good network speed. They'd be better served investing further in WebGL support, specifically in reducing the file binary size so we can have lightning fast load times for console-quality games running at near native performance in the browser. Shameless plug, my startup is working on exactly this at the moment but for Unreal Engine 4, but we have pl…

How long do you think it will be before "good network speed" is available widely enough to be profitable?

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#66

Don't know why Unity is pursuing cloud, you're still going to need a good network speed. They'd be better served investing further in WebGL support, specifically in reducing the file binary size so we can have lightning fast load times for console-quality games running at near native performance in the browser. Shameless plug, my startup is working on exactly this at the moment but for Unreal Engine 4, but we have pl…

Ten years ago I thought that people would stop installing random indie games onto their computers and just play these small games in the browser. It never happened, people trust Steam, Gog, Epic and Itch.io more than they trust the web. Instead the web became increasing bloated and the ads and tracking became unbearable.

When Unity do streaming, it wont be through a browser, it will be a dedicated app that users trust. (like Netflix).

The value proposition of streaming is not that its on the web, it's that you don't need expensive hardware.

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#67
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! When I read the title I only knew about https://hackage.haskell.org/package/parsec , and for a moment I was very confused …

Well, I read it and thought, “I loved Parsec on my TI-99 and the speech synthesis was amazing…but…$320MM?”

And here I was thinking some sort of FTL company. $320M seemed cheap.

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#68
post #15

I'm in a group for educators that use unity in the classroom and the most requested feature I've seen is having a way to utilize the tool from low power/cost devices like chromebooks. This seems right in line with that.

Our startup is working on Unity and Unreal Engine games and applications exporting to WebGL, targeting Chromebooks. Join our Discord if you're interested in learning more: https://discord.gg/zUSZ3T8

If a device is not fast enough to run those things natively it's even less likely to run them in sandboxed browser.

Re: Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

#69
post #65

Don't know why Unity is pursuing cloud, you're still going to need a good network speed. They'd be better served investing further in WebGL support, specifically in reducing the file binary size so we can have lightning fast load times for console-quality games running at near native performance in the browser. Shameless plug, my startup is working on exactly this at the moment but for Unreal Engine 4, but we have pl…

How long do you think it will be before "good network speed" is available widely enough to be profitable?

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