Any of you guys mess with Shadow?

[KarsusTG]

https://shadow.tech/usen

I have been messing with it for a while now and it seems to be working fantastic for me. You get 8 Xeon cores, 12gb of ram, and either a 1080 or P5000 card dedicated to your system. Solidworks seems to run well for my needs and games play just like it was on my system. I have used the linux client, android client, and now the windows client and all seems well. It might be a good option for you guys that need high end AAA but want to be on linux.

Here is a review I found on youtube. Not terribly fond of this guy, but he does a good enough job really.

 

[Frobozz]

https://shadow.tech/usen

I have been messing with it for a while now and it seems to be working fantastic for me. You get 8 Xeon cores, 12gb of ram, and either a 1080 or P5000 card dedicated to your system. Solidworks seems to run well for my needs and games play just like it was on my system. I have used the linux client, android client, and now the windows client and all seems well. It might be a good option for you guys that need high end AAA but want to be on linux.

Here is a review I found on youtube. Not terribly fond of this guy, but he does a good enough job really.

I feel similar about Linus. His video presentation annoys the crap out of me at times, but somehow he finds interesting things to show/share so I keep watching.

Aside from that, I feel like this video puts a pin in where mainstream consumer computing is ultimately trying to go. $420/year ($290 /yr for their christmas rate) for a thin client you don't have to maintain or upgrade on your own. Some have been saying it for years, but I think tech is finally coming together fast enough that an entirely rented computing experience is not too much further off.

Which personally, I think is crap for anyone wanting to learn in computing and am happy to be the old man shouting at clouds about. For mindless entertainment or "just another computing resource", I might actually be onboard. If they bump their hardware offerings pretty regularly, then compared to budgeting for refreshing your own hardware, it could be pretty enticing.

 

[B00nie]

I feel similar about Linus. His video presentation annoys the crap out of me at times, but somehow he finds interesting things to show/share so I keep watching.

Aside from that, I feel like this video puts a pin in where mainstream consumer computing is ultimately trying to go. $420/year ($290 /yr for their christmas rate) for a thin client you don't have to maintain or upgrade on your own. Some have been saying it for years, but I think tech is finally coming together fast enough that an entirely rented computing experience is not too much further off.

Which personally, I think is crap for anyone wanting to learn in computing and am happy to be the old man shouting at clouds about. For mindless entertainment or "just another computing resource", I might actually be onboard. If they bump their hardware offerings pretty regularly, then compared to budgeting for refreshing your own hardware, it could be pretty enticing.

Thin clients are the next step of enslaving people. Think about it - you don't own or control anything. You're just paying to play by someone elses rules.

 

[KarsusTG]

Thin clients are the next step of enslaving people. Think about it - you don't own or control anything. You're just paying to play by someone elses rules.

I think most of us will always have our own machines, but this honestly just makes sense. $300/year, even over 3 years doesn't even remotely come close to specing a pc with a $1700 video card and a decent board. Especially if I can keep my sensitive data on my own NAS and process it on my own machine, but do the heavy lifting of less sensitive projects/data on a remote machine I don't have to clean every 2 weeks and maintain for the long haul. Hell this allows me to run massive image processing on my chromebook from a coffee shop.

 

[B00nie]

I think most of us will always have our own machines, but this honestly just makes sense. $300/year, even over 3 years doesn't even remotely come close to specing a pc with a $1700 video card and a decent board. Especially if I can keep my sensitive data on my own NAS and process it on my own machine, but do the heavy lifting of less sensitive projects/data on a remote machine I don't have to clean every 2 weeks and maintain for the long haul. Hell this allows me to run massive image processing on my chromebook from a coffee shop.

I'm fairly certain the thin client experience will not be up to par. Just hte added network latency will be a killer and how are they going to stream/run full hd / 4k intensive gaming graphics to thousands of clients? I don't believe it for a second. It might also lead to another GPU shortage, raising our prices as if Bitdumb is not enough.

 

[GNUse_the_force]

I'm fairly certain the thin client experience will not be up to par. Just hte added network latency will be a killer and how are they going to stream/run full hd / 4k intensive gaming graphics to thousands of clients? I don't believe it for a second. It might also lead to another GPU shortage, raising our prices as if Bitdumb is not enough.

Eventually Millions, perhaps hundreds of millions. Guess that means offline gaming wouldn't be possible in the event of a network outage.

 

[Frobozz]

Eventually Millions, perhaps hundreds of millions. Guess that means offline gaming wouldn't be possible in the event of a network outage.

This is where all the cloud marketing err.. datacenter engineering will save the business plan because "It'll never be down."

And if your home connection goes out there's always "Don't you all have phones?!"

 

[GNUse_the_force]

This is where all the cloud marketing err.. datacenter engineering will save the business plan because "It'll never be down."

And if your home connection goes out there's always "Don't you all have phones?!"

ohh I agree. But remember this isn't about you having a better experience, because it is already the best with edge hardware. It's about total software, information control and profit (sorry to sound cynical but it is what it is ).

 

[Frobozz]

ohh I agree. But remember this isn't about you having a better experience, because it is already the best with edge hardware. It's about total software, information control and profit (sorry to sound cynical but it is what it is ).

My comment was somewhat tongue in cheek. I think we're all mostly in the same space about it. It's really the convergence of a few initiatives. Most everyone has seen the success of the subscription model with Netflix, Office 365, and Amazon webservices as examples of infrastructure as a service, software as a service, and content as a service. A great example of this is traditional software offerings pivoting to that model as well such as Adobe Creative Cloud and EA's Origin Access. If they can provide the experience from the desktop to the datacenter, they can lock you into even more trickling of money from your wallet. Even peripheral things like the 'right to repair' are adding influence into the direction everything is going.

On a tech point of view, it's really pretty awesome. You no longer have to wrestle with choosing an overpriced video card, or worrying about the 9 year old WD drive you still have spinning in your garage. You buy the tier of gaming resources you want and you can play HD AAA titles from any potato capable of running the client. The amount of technology advances needed to get us to this point from the mid 2000s is honestly awe inspiring.
Being able to stick a workstation spec'd desktop in the cloud and dynamically attach storage from other services to do <heavy processing project> from a chromebook at Starbucks? That's just cool. #thefutureisnow

From the pragmatic/skeptical side, it's pretty scary. First, the obvious is that no one cares about your data more than you do. Next up is the lock in that you will find yourself in. The more you build workflows around other peoples non-free tech, the more attached you are to them. Each of these services are a CEO scandal or Enron creative accounting story away from shutting their doors and taking your data with it. When you rent everything, you own nothing.

The next tragedy is in learning. The more technology moves behind the UX for the masses, the less points of learning there are for people. Being able to look under the hood is invaluable and is a secondary industry all in its own. From a gaming POV, look at Quake Champions. It's big failure compared to its lineage is that it's not accessible to tinker with. There's no mod tools, map tool kits, etc... You just blocked a bunch of people interested in programming, 3d modeling, and game design from expanding their minds and entering the industry. At the moment, they may go elsewhere, but then again, this could have been >the< spark. It's kinda what's always sucked (in my eyes) about consoles.

So, in summary. I think things like the Shadow are freakin sweet. However, I'm not happy about it furthering computing as a service because I think the user ultimately loses. Then again, maybe I'm wrong and it'll grow up to be as ubiquitous as keeping your money in the bank, and I'm the old man burying cans in the yard.

 

[KarsusTG]

I'm fairly certain the thin client experience will not be up to par. Just hte added network latency will be a killer and how are they going to stream/run full hd / 4k intensive gaming graphics to thousands of clients? I don't believe it for a second. It might also lead to another GPU shortage, raising our prices as if Bitdumb is not enough.

I don't know about that. Playing path of exile, I honestly cannot tell the difference between my laptop and the shadow client. All in all, it's only adding 4-5ms and I cannot see how you can tell the difference between them. I know people often swear they can tell the difference between 101 and 105fps, but the truth is I simply don't believe them and this is really no different. It certainly isn't going to effect me playing endless legend or similar games...

On a tech point of view, it's really pretty awesome. You no longer have to wrestle with choosing an overpriced video card, or worrying about the 9 year old WD drive you still have spinning in your garage. You buy the tier of gaming resources you want and you can play HD AAA titles from any potato capable of running the client. The amount of technology advances needed to get us to this point from the mid 2000s is honestly awe inspiring.
Being able to stick a workstation spec'd desktop in the cloud and dynamically attach storage from other services to do <heavy processing project> from a chromebook at Starbucks? That's just cool. #thefutureisnow

Hell ya it is. Modern data centers are a marvel of modern engineering to say the least.

From the pragmatic/skeptical side, it's pretty scary. First, the obvious is that no one cares about your data more than you do. Next up is the lock in that you will find yourself in. The more you build workflows around other peoples non-free tech, the more attached you are to them. Each of these services are a CEO scandal or Enron creative accounting story away from shutting their doors and taking your data with it. When you rent everything, you own nothing.

This is true, but I don't believe that you should be processing critical and sensitive information in the cloud anyway. I think cloud storage is perfectly acceptable, especially for backups, but should be in the form of an encrypted container. For a few hours every week or two of gaming, schoolwork, and things of that nature, I really don't see a problem with it.

The next tragedy is in learning. The more technology moves behind the UX for the masses, the less points of learning there are for people. Being able to look under the hood is invaluable and is a secondary industry all in its own. From a gaming POV, look at Quake Champions. It's big failure compared to its lineage is that it's not accessible to tinker with. There's no mod tools, map tool kits, etc... You just blocked a bunch of people interested in programming, 3d modeling, and game design from expanding their minds and entering the industry. At the moment, they may go elsewhere, but then again, this could have been >the< spark. It's kinda what's always sucked (in my eyes) about consoles.

So, in summary. I think things like the Shadow are freakin sweet. However, I'm not happy about it furthering computing as a service because I think the user ultimately loses. Then again, maybe I'm wrong and it'll grow up to be as ubiquitous as keeping your money in the bank, and I'm the old man burying cans in the yard.

Ya, but we are already past that point already. I have kids (and yes I call them kids) in some of my classes that think setting up a raspberry pi is hard core and even running Linux makes you on par with the neckbeards of old. The simple truth is no matter what, they will never have the frustration of dealing with dip switches for expansion slots boards, figuring out how to rebuild db25 and db37 cables to pass timing back from a modem to a router through a bulk encryption device, or really ANY DCE/DTE knowledge for that matter. Or having the basic knowledge that we gained from dealing with bb systems. Hell, in my systems architecture class almost nobody in the room even knew what an rs232 port was...

Honestly, this ship has already sailed. Especially since the first instinct is to turn to youtube or uncle google for a quick answer / explanation.

 

[ManofGod]

Sorry but, I am not going to do game streaming, now or ever. I have 3 computers that I could potentially all game on with their own monitors, mechanical keyboards and gaming mice. Also, I have a Althlon 5350 system that I reused with a 2TB hard drive and installed Mint on it. (Not really using it much at all but, it is there if I want too.) Point is, why would I want to stream games when I cannot even have flying cars in a real skyway or hoverboards yet?

 

[Frobozz]

Sorry but, I am not going to do game streaming, now or ever. I have 3 computers that I could potentially all game on with their own monitors, mechanical keyboards and gaming mice. Also, I have a Althlon 5350 system that I reused with a 2TB hard drive and installed Mint on it. (Not really using it much at all but, it is there if I want too.) Point is, why would I want to stream games when I cannot even have flying cars in a real skyway or hoverboards yet?

I'm actually kinda surprised to see that statement from you. (and I don't mean that in any type of sarcastic/attacking way) I figured you'd be in the "I'll do whatever if I get to play the game I want to play." camp. No doubt some of these things (game streaming services) will have exclusives once they gain traction. You could look to Epic's store launch or just the normal console exclusives for an example of how effective the companies feel those are.

 

[Mazzspeed]

I couldn't give a damn regarding the method used to play games, the thing I'm most opposed to is the greed fueled notion of an overpriced subscription model.

 

[B00nie]

I don't know about that. Playing path of exile, I honestly cannot tell the difference between my laptop and the shadow client. All in all, it's only adding 4-5ms and I cannot see how you can tell the difference between them. I know people often swear they can tell the difference between 101 and 105fps, but the truth is I simply don't believe them and this is really no different. It certainly isn't going to effect me playing endless legend or similar games...




Hell ya it is. Modern data centers are a marvel of modern engineering to say the least.



This is true, but I don't believe that you should be processing critical and sensitive information in the cloud anyway. I think cloud storage is perfectly acceptable, especially for backups, but should be in the form of an encrypted container. For a few hours every week or two of gaming, schoolwork, and things of that nature, I really don't see a problem with it.




Ya, but we are already past that point already. I have kids (and yes I call them kids) in some of my classes that think setting up a raspberry pi is hard core and even running Linux makes you on par with the neckbeards of old. The simple truth is no matter what, they will never have the frustration of dealing with dip switches for expansion slots boards, figuring out how to rebuild db25 and db37 cables to pass timing back from a modem to a router through a bulk encryption device, or really ANY DCE/DTE knowledge for that matter. Or having the basic knowledge that we gained from dealing with bb systems. Hell, in my systems architecture class almost nobody in the room even knew what an rs232 port was...

Honestly, this ship has already sailed. Especially since the first instinct is to turn to youtube or uncle google for a quick answer / explanation.

I have a ping of 17-25ms typically and this you can see clearly already even if the server doesn't lag at all. Which it will with the load it will have.