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Comment by remix2000 | Hacker News Reader

remix2000

But Sunshine _is_ headless, I would know if it weren't, I'm using it as such (albeit with a dummy plug, but that's just a hardware limitation).

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The selling point of Moonshine (and some of the Sunshine forks/descendants) is that it's headless without the need of a physical dummy plug.

Nvidia GPUs refuse to accelerate 3D w/o an output connected; if I had a Radeon, I wouldn't need the plug, it's just an Nvidia thing I believe.

Afaict, Moonshine relies on a separate graphical session running on your monitor and that's how it gets around that limitation of Nvidia GPUs. If I had a monitor plugged in to my box, Sunshine would work just as well.

It’s possible to make a fake display to avoid that; both Linux and Windows have this ability. No dummy plug is required (though it is simpler than software solutions).

I don't use the dummy plug for display, it's only that consumer nvidia gpus won't have working 3D acceleration if there is nothing physically connected to the card. My dummy plug doesn't support the resolutions I run games at anyway.

EDIT: Ok, correction, I bothered to go unplug the dummy plug and it still works. So I was wrong, Sunshine does not need a dummy plug at all, not even on Nvidia. Now it remains a mystery why I have one in the first place if it's useless after all…

Sunshine was significantly easier for me to get working using a dummy plug. I'm currently exploring other options but that's definitely the happy path.

ok, weird. Yeah, I saw this and thought "what's new, isn't that what moonlight/sunshine already is".

Is it just a new implementation? is that it?

[EDIT] all answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48976789

You're technically right, and I appreciate your comment, but it's funny to me to be like 'It is headless! It just needs a fake head!'

Now you try working with a fake in your head's place! :þ But yeah, real head (a monitor; doesn't have to be on) also works just as well, and even no head at all works, just won't accelerate 3D. Arbitrary resolutions also work. My only complaint with sunshine is that the webui authentication is really broken. Fortunately I don't need to go there much.

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