Sanity Check - High Performance Gaming VM

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Franko

Weaksauce
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Jan 17, 2009
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My current gaming machine is getting long in the tooth and I am tempted by the portability of a laptop. However, I know that portability means that I have to compromise on performance.

Thus, I come to you all for your advice:

Is it possible for me to have a server (currently serving NAS and Virtualization duties) equipped with a high performance video card in my garage and remotely log into a gaming VM so that I can have my portability cake and eat it too?

Would the performance be sufficient (I usually play MMORPGS but will play first person shooters or MOBAS as well)

Is it affordable (as compared to just buying a gaming workstation and a separate laptop)?

Is it reasonable doable, or is super complicated?

I would like to hear your advice and thoughts

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
 
A similar concept might be something like the steam box. They work pretty well when hard wired. Essentially creates a h264 stream from main PC to the box. If you look out for a deal you can score one for $20. I would think that you could do steam streaming with a basic laptop as well to your main machine, and the Intel gpus do a pretty good job of h264 real time decode. Again main thing is probably going to be latency in the connection so probably best with a hardwired gigabit connection or maybe a fancy AC wireless.
Just my 2c though.
 
Franko said:
My current gaming machine is getting long in the tooth and I am tempted by the portability of a laptop. However, I know that portability means that I have to compromise on performance.

Thus, I come to you all for your advice:

Is it possible for me to have a server (currently serving NAS and Virtualization duties) equipped with a high performance video card in my garage and remotely log into a gaming VM so that I can have my portability cake and eat it too?

Would the performance be sufficient (I usually play MMORPGS but will play first person shooters or MOBAS as well)

Is it affordable (as compared to just buying a gaming workstation and a separate laptop)?

Is it reasonable doable, or is super complicated?

I would like to hear your advice and thoughts

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Click to expand...

If by remote you mean internet, then no.
 
Franko said:
My current gaming machine is getting long in the tooth and I am tempted by the portability of a laptop. However, I know that portability means that I have to compromise on performance.

Thus, I come to you all for your advice:

Is it possible for me to have a server (currently serving NAS and Virtualization duties) equipped with a high performance video card in my garage and remotely log into a gaming VM so that I can have my portability cake and eat it too?

Would the performance be sufficient (I usually play MMORPGS but will play first person shooters or MOBAS as well)

Is it affordable (as compared to just buying a gaming workstation and a separate laptop)?

Is it reasonable doable, or is super complicated?

I would like to hear your advice and thoughts

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Click to expand...
It is doable, but complicated. I've used both VMware ESXi and Proxmox KVM to set up gaming VMs, then stream them using Steam streaming. It even works for non-Steam games, but that can get a bit clumsy. Forget about doing it over the Internet. Gigabit is preferable, but I've gotten it working passably well over 2x2 802.11n. If you do wireless, and have other network users in your home be prepared for occasional lag or drops in image quality. Personally, I'd say MMORPGs or MOBAs would be OK, but I wouldn't try it with FPS games.

What OS is your server running? This won't work with Windows Server, but if you've got it running Linux or VMWare you may not need to reinstall.
 
I agree with Steam In Home Streaming - run Steam on your desktop, and your laptop. Just Select "Stream" instead of "Play" on your Steam client on the laptop. No SteamLink or Hypervisor required (although SteamLink is sweet for TV gaming). Also works cross-platform, so long as the machines can run Steam.

You can technically get it to work over the internet, but you will wish you hadn't taken the time, the latency and performance is awful unless your on the LAN with a good connection (preferably copper).
 
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The thought was to be able to play remotely while I was on the traveling away from home. From the above info it seems like that won't work.

Thanks for the help and info all.
 
Think of it this way - you're encoding, in real time, a full-resolution h.264 stream, compressing it as best you can (also in real time), shooting it across the 'net through whatever it goes through, and then decoding it, still in realtime, to view. No buffering allowed, obviously. This is non-trivial. For things where only parts of the screen are moving, the protocols will get creative and send lossy images for the parts that aren't and only encode the part that is moving in realtime, but of course determining that takes up processing power and adds a slight bit of lag. Plus speed of light getting the data to you (at best, obviously), and then decoding it at the same time... and then interpreting commands, sending them back, and responding.

We're getting there. Slowly and steadily. But right now, it's not really feasible for a serious game - you can do it within shouting distance of the system (especially fully wired), but distance? Harder. Much, much harder.
 
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