Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features
github.com
github.com
In its current state I wouldn’t call this project open-source.
Brief slide in english : https://conf.kde.org/event/5/contributions/147/attachments/7...
More detailed overview (in french) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVgvBulXcDA&t=3368s
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
Something like Sunshine[1], coupled with Moonlight[2]?
GFN does have an integration with Microsoft's game service too, which offers a rolling library of new games to try - if netris does not support anything apart from steam then that will be a shame as I won't be able to access the MS games .
Still despite that, I'm interested to see how this one goes! I am in the sign-up queue and wait with interest.
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.
They've done that with their Steam Link apps in 2019: https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/14/18266000/steam-link-anywhe...
The initial pairing has to be done on lan I believe, but will work afterwards through Steam. I remember trying it with a Raspberry Pi even. Steam itself will also work as a client and not require the initial pairing setup.
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.
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.
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.
NVidia is getting the cost advantages of being the manufacturer.
Renting out rack mounted gamer PCs costs more than users are willing to pay for it. Users pay by the month, but server costs are per hour of use. As a business, this only works if users don't use it much, like a gym. Or users face severe limits on how much time they can use. Most of the early "cloud gaming" companies are gone, because the business model didn't work for them.
For a sense of what it really costs, see Shadow PC. They charge $30 - $40 per month, after the first month intro price.
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.
These GPUs are not valuable enough to timeshare via orbiting satellites!
But IMHO the biggest appeal to GFN in Germany is temperature. In Germany there are no air conditioners in normal households and even in apartments with more then 2k a month rent there are none. So it is quite luxurious to game while not having 0.5kW blasting into your room.
My building has solar on the roof and a collective agreement with e.on precisely to try to control the insane costs.
> 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).
This isn't something you can just do. I mean, it almost is (look at apps like Lossless Scaling, Magpie) but it's always most optimally implemented by the game itself.
Just because the buzzword exists doesn't mean the problem is solved.
There's no reason why you couldn't have the game be upscaled to whatever the stream resolution is from something a bit more performance friendly, with the quality still being good enough (given that some video artifacts will be there anyways) and things like text/UI being legible.
I'm regards to frame generation, it seems that eventually whatever Nvidia is doing with DLSS 3 will find its way into other vendors' products in a comparable alternative form. Once game engines like Unity/Unreal/Godot get support for the upscalers out of the box, I think the technology will be even more commonplace.
That's nice, but doesn't really fix the issue of them not being available in every game, or it varying which one even is available.
> There's no reason why you couldn't have the game be upscaled to whatever the stream resolution is from something a bit more performance friendly, with the quality still being good enough (given that some video artifacts will be there anyways) and things like text/UI being legible.
If you're just going to upscale the final image without any internal cooperation from the game, there is no reason to upscale a 720p game and stream 1080p when you could simply stream 720p instead and have the client do the upscaling, unless of course you are using an upscaler that chokes on video artifacts (in which case you probably shouldn't even have video artifacts, it's 2024 and H265/AV1 exist).
> Once game engines like Unity/Unreal/Godot get support for the upscalers out of the box, I think the technology will be even more commonplace.
Don't they all already support it out of the box? It just needs cooperation from the game dev, like I said.
For example, Pacific Drive uses UE4, not even UE5, and still supports DLSS. It almost works fine, except displays (such as the ones in the car and garage) flicker and shimmer under DLSS because the devs didn't implement them in a way that works with the upscaler.
This can't just be solved by the engine, since DLSS integrates multiple different views of the game (depth buffer, motion buffer, etc) and the dev needs to make sure all of these views are faithful to the effects they're actually showing on-screen, else bugs like that will just happen.
That specific problem could be solved by running the game at native-720 and then using a naïve upscaler such as FSR on the output framebuffer, but that's going to be a significant visual tradeoff compared to if DLSS were implemented correctly. Upscaling isn't magic, but FSR (upscaling the final render output) is even less magic than DLSS (upscaling multiple intermediate artifacts).
And games often omit settings from their menus, even those that work perfectly well in the engine itself. Having upscaling implemented by the engine doesn't necessarily mean the dev cares enough to implement the setting for it and test it.
The flagships usually get refreshed every 2+ years, not yearly. If you're switching yearly, then every second change is gonna be a performance downgrade.
Furthermore, the flagship of last generation is usually at least on par with the card below the new flagship, so you'd have top of the line performance for at least 2 generations, which is 3-5 years. The 4080 specifically has worse performance then a 3090 unless you're using dlss/upsampling. Which most people on high budget systems don't want as it increases latency.
Your napkin math wrt the energy doesn't really make sense either, your card only draws so much power if it's actually on full load. My 4090 is usually mostly idle.
My MacBook pro actually draws more then my desktop PC with a 4090 if both are idle (that's because the MacBook has an integrated display which offsets the higher power draw of the desktop components). At least according to the measurements of my smart plugs that measure energy drain at the plug/wall
Finally, there is no way in hell a working adult will find time to play 4+hours day, every day.
Overall I'd say you've no idea what you're talking about and are just rationalizing and in denial. The performance you get from cloud gaming providers is terrible, worse then a budget PC which costs 1k in it's entirely. And you'll still have it at the end, while the cloud gaming subscriber will have nothing after the sub ends.
> 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.
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 at least 40-80ms).
Maybe the only thing you're paying is Scenematic single player? In that case, sure. It works well enough. Not worth the subscription as you'd get better performance and experience from a steam deck, but to each their own.
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?
> 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
Fwiw - Cp2077 ran at full res internally. I've played it both with and without dlss on GFNow. I believe when I started it was 2080 for first paid tier and 3080 for the top paid tier. Now the top paid tier is 4080.
Not only that, but there's evidence that more powerful cards can actually perform the same workloads as less powerful cards more efficiently. Of course, it's not going to be more efficient if you let it run at full tilt, but if, for example, you lower the power limit of a 3090 to 200W, it's still going to blow a 3060 Ti (also 200W) out of the water in terms of performance. Higher performance for the same power means you can also get the same performance at a lower power.
> Finally, there is no way in hell a working adult will find time to play 4+hours day, every day.
I work full-time and still get the hours of 5 PM to 12 AM to myself, which is 7 hours, and then I can still get 8 hours of sleep
Now! Neither one of us have spoken our assumptions out loud so let's do that - I play mostly single player games. There are people who mostly play pvp, cannot live without a 250hz screen and million dpi mouse, and those users likely won't enjoy cloud gaming. That does not mean "cloud gaming is terrible" overall but it may well be that "cloud gaming is terrible for high demanding pvp competitive usage " :).
I would also be surprised if they were only 5-1 on users still it’s probably not their most profitable venture.
The reason they're likely seeing latency issues is that Parsec doesn't have the localized servers that GeForce Now has. Servers closer to your location will always have lower latency.
This is a simple case of nVidia simply having more money, more servers, and better infrastructure than Parsec. Which isn't surprising given the scale and cashflow difference of the two companies.
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 have to say, I love the way Parsec works and allows you to use your whole library (since it doesn't stream the game, but it streams your whole desktop). But if there is ever a service that allows you to get the same thing including remote servers (since I travel), I would probably switch.
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.
- Make sure you run hardware acceleration, you can see if this is applied after opening a connection and checking the details. Without acceleration it will be terrible. This can either be as simple as enabling it or possibly you need the monitor below.
- Make sure a monitor is plugged in (there might be a way around this, but I just bought a $4 HDMI dummy instead of trying to figure out how to do this the software way)
Edit: formatting
Relays are involved only briefly initially.
If the actual communications between two clients is P2P then, by definition, the VPN is P2P. Because that's the actual part people are talking about when they talk about VPNs.
Parsec will discover servers on LAN and/or with a port open and display them as distinct entries in the connection list, usually positioned in front of the central server options.
So there's no default as you're always the one choosing.
Parsec displays computers to connect to. If a hole can be punched, it will use a P2P connection. If not, it automatically falls back to their STUN servers or the Parsec Relay server if you're on the Teams plan. There is no "server" to choose from. There aren't multiple entries for a single computer with different connection options. I don't know where you hallucinated all of these things but that's just not how Parsec works.
This article makes it quite clear that P2P is the default with a fallback to STUN: https://support.parsec.app/hc/en-us/articles/4440911373325-P...
I opened the app and looked at it. I distinctly remember there being multiple entries if a computer is on the local network. I don't have another computer on the network right now so I can't check.
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.
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 basically every emulator I could get my hands on as well, so my phone basically is a Nintendo switch so long as I have a decent internet connection. That's super cool to access my game library from any device that can run moonlight! (That's many devices btw. I recently found a moonlight client on the 3ds homebrew store. Haven't tried it yet but gives you an idea how absurdly widespread it is)
This stadia thing seems more about streaming through a browser so I'm really curious how things like Bluetooth controllers will work, whether there's onscreen controls available for mobile devices, that kind of thing. Will try it and find out! I REALLY love that it seems like I can share with my friends, as a jellyfin, audiobookshelf, konga, navidrome, and calibreweb / opds enthusiast, if I can add videogames to the mix that would be amazing. I already share my steam library through family sharing with some friends cause why not? Otherwise it's going to waste!
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.
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.
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 curious about the technical differences between steam games and games with their own launcher. I guess I was assuming that you're more or less just pixel streaming to me(?)
3. how does it compare to GeforceNOW? Would love to see one of those long charts with checklists.
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)
It's really easy to track that first one. But the second one is a pain in the rear.
I'm guessing that's the problem they're still trying to solve without manually inputting info for each individual game, or making the player do that.
Tracking child processes spawns/handles, or even resorting to polling for process name for a while, all should be fairly simple to implement…
I agree zero-latency sounds impossible. But why wouldn't the Netris server and the game server be the same machine? So that's 1 less latency hop.
--- Edit: here it is https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock
1. Do you plan to add AMD support?
2. What advantages does Metrics have over leaving a PC with Steam always on and then using Steam Remote Play?
It's cool that it's using Wine though. From these cloud services like Amazon's Luna or Geforce Now, none are running Linux, so this is interesting.
No idea why Stadia couldn't do the same and tried to reinvent the wheel with Windows ABI translation at some point before it shut down.
For video they can rely on VAAPI or Vulkan video (the latter might be behind on AV1 encoding options though) which can work on any GPU with video acceleration hardware.
Only a couple hard coded games are currently available, but we are close to getting GOG.com support.