[HN Gopher] Run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2 (2...
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Run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2 (2015)
Author : tosh
Score : 125 points
Date : 2020-02-09 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| MrGilbert wrote:
| I have a gaming / home server at home. Using Unraid, it serves a
| gaming vm, a NAS, smart home (with home-assistant and Node-RED),
| Ad-Blocking (secondary Pi-Hole), a media server (Plex) and a
| Unifi-Controller.
|
| It's based on a Gigabyte x470 and a Ryzen 5 2600. The rig is
| watercooled (using ZMT tubing), which makes it super silent (and
| I don't need a heater in my office any longer. It's amazing how
| efficient watercooling is - yet, the heat still has to go
| somewhere).
|
| The gpu is a Sapphire Pulse Vega 56. All in all, the complete rig
| consumes 80 watts in idle, and 130 watts when I'm using the
| gaming vm for surfing. When gaming on it, consumption can go up
| to a reasonable 500ish watts.
|
| I'm also using a Thinkpad x230 as my ,,roadwarrior".
|
| While ,,the cloud" might be cheaper, I love to have everything
| ,,at home".
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364748
|
| also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864534
| shog_hn wrote:
| This is a nice article to prove it can be done, but honestly I
| would rather setup a dedicated gaming rig. If you're serious
| about gaming you'll soon rack enough hours where your EC2 Spot
| costs exceed the initial investment in your own hardware.
|
| Also the open UDP and TCP to 0.0.0.0/0 in the security group made
| me cringe. At least set it to your current IP /32 and perhaps set
| a script that watches your public IP and updates the SG
| automatically when it changes.
| ghouse wrote:
| The paradigm pendulum continues to swing back and forth between
| geographically centralized and distributed computing.
| mentos wrote:
| Game developer here, I'd love to have a cloud gaming PC as a
| workstation for development. Anyone know of any
| companies/services that offer this?
| letharion wrote:
| I'm immediately drawn to the idea of trying to build such a
| service. I'll get this started on Friday, I know I have some
| time over then. :D
| cjbconnor wrote:
| https://shadow.tech offers such a service
| [deleted]
| littldr wrote:
| You may want to try http://shadow.tech/
|
| Reasonable prices and works very smooth.
| toast0 wrote:
| I haven't used it, but I think this might work
| https://aws.amazon.com/products/end-user-computing/desktop-a...
| tommsy64 wrote:
| Parsec[1] is a Discord-like game-streaming host and client.
| I've used it a little and it seems to work just as well or
| better than Steam Stream or GeForce Now. Furthermore, it has
| virtually no setup and works across WAN without a VPN.
|
| [1] https://parsecgaming.com/features/
| marvion wrote:
| https://www.paperspace.com/ does exactly this.
|
| Tried it for gaming and it was a great experience. Gaming only
| works if you are near their data centers though - afaik US and
| NL; got a high latency in Germany, but that's not the their
| fault. You'll find 10$ referral codes online to try it for
| free.
| benologist wrote:
| You could use EC2 but Geforce Now has left beta and announced
| pricing and it is much cheaper at $5/month.
|
| Doing this on-premise is also pretty tantalizing - I watched a
| video recently of Linus Tech Tips where he built a 64 core
| Threadripper and used virtual machines to replace four physical
| computers in his home including two players simultaneously
| gaming.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvzeZCZluJ0
| arendtio wrote:
| Still now Linux client with Geforce Now.
|
| I wonder if using Wireguard could improve the performance of a
| custom solution.
| gruez wrote:
| >Doing this on-premise is also pretty tantalizing - I watched a
| video recently of Linus Tech Tips where he built a 64 core
| Threadripper and used virtual machines to replace four physical
| computers in his home including two players simultaneously
| gaming.
|
| so basically a mainframe? I can't imagine it's economically
| viable though. a 64 core threadripper costs more than eight
| ryzen 3700x and clocks lower.
| benologist wrote:
| I don't even know what his build ran at in total, but he had
| $1700 (x2!) USB repeaters using fiber optic to directly
| connect USB peripherals all through his house, half a
| terabyte of ram and 4 GPUS. I think you could build a lesser
| machine to cover most household computing needs.
|
| I don't think the core speed would matter much - Steam
| reports 37% of gamers are using 3ghz-and-below processors so
| they may be mediocre but still competent:
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > and clocks lower
|
| And that's the core problem, isn't it? Aren't games notorious
| for being mostly sequential workloads?
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| > the core problem
|
| I see what you did there.
| stordoff wrote:
| I'd be interested to know if this has changed recently -
| the Xbox One and PS4 are both 1.6GHz/1.75GHz 8-core
| machines.
| gravypod wrote:
| If you live with 2 or 3 other SWEs this is an attractive
| option. You have enough PCIe lanes to pack in 4 GPUs. You
| have enough spare horse power to also host basic home
| services like a file server, gitlab instance, home automation
| stuff, vpn, etc.
|
| I think personally I'd opt for building four or five separate
| machines and managing them as a cluster though.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > If you live with 2 or 3 other SWEs this is an attractive
| option.
|
| In some sort of software engineering commune?
| closeparen wrote:
| Most 2 and 3 bedroom apartments in San Francisco are
| software engineering communes, yes.
| gravypod wrote:
| I've heard of a few people living like this, especially
| in areas with very high rent. I'm assuming it's not
| extremely uncommon and it doesn't sound like the worst
| way to live.
| kortilla wrote:
| Why would this be attractive to SWEs? Seems like something
| that would be more relevant to gamers.
|
| Half of the SWEs I work with don't game.
| kemotep wrote:
| The parent comment was likely referring to using the
| clients as workstations, not necessarily gaming
| computers. Though the cost of this server and the fiber
| optic usb peripherals is crazy. One of those fiber usb
| repeaters costs as much as a high end computer.
| jmakov wrote:
| So is Steam so optimized or how come VNC/x2go is still reloading
| the screen so slowly?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I believe they use the GPU for video encoding, while most
| Remote Desktop solutions are CPU-only. Also, I wouldn't be
| surprised if the encoding used by Steam is lossy, which is fine
| for games and fast-moving video but would be completely
| unusable for text.
| Havoc wrote:
| > <50ms
|
| I don't think that's gonna be much fun. Especially not if you're
| used to playing on a powerful local machine
| p1necone wrote:
| My experience is that anything with direct camera control via
| mouse doesn't feel good unless you're streaming from a machine
| on a local network, but if you're using a controller it's not
| really noticeable.
| stordoff wrote:
| It's probably going to vary from user to user - even
| streaming on my local network (1Gbps wired), playing with a
| controller feels less than great.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I've tried Playstation Now on a PS4 with a 1Gbps enterprise-
| grade fibre connection and the latency was definitely
| noticeable, despite single-digit pings. I'm starting to think
| the latency from the video encoding/decoding could be a bigger
| issue than the network itself.
| dsissitka wrote:
| > I'm starting to think the latency from the video
| encoding/decoding could be a bigger issue than the network
| itself.
|
| It depends on the setup but encoding and decoding combined
| can be done in less than 7 ms (1 frame at 144 fps) on good
| hardware:
|
| https://blog.parsecgaming.com/testing-game-streaming-
| input-l...
|
| Last year on more modest hardware I would regularly see
| around 12 ms (1 frame at 83 fps).
| anaisbetts wrote:
| If you're thinking about doing this, it's actually way easier
| with Parsec, there are even scripts to set it up for you -
| https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Parsec-Cloud-Preparat....
| It'll also set up an auto-shutdown script that prevents you from
| leaving it on and racking up a huge bill
| Aeolun wrote:
| Parsec stopped providing the machines though. So now it's
| actually quite inconvenient.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I have a comparison between NVIDIA's service and an equivalent
| setup on Azure here:
|
| https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2018/09/30/1600
|
| The setup I used is here:
|
| https://github.com/ecalder6/azure-gaming
|
| ...and has been kept up to date (it was annotated last month, and
| the config is stable).
| gnerix wrote:
| > EUR1.4 an hour for the CPU/GPU alone, plus a couple more Euro
| for hard disk usage and long-term storage (usage was pretty
| high during setup, which accounts at least for half the amount)
|
| The Azure solution sounds much more expensive than the prices
| quoted in the article
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Using a commercial service like Google Stadia would be far
| cheaper than this no?
| myhf wrote:
| This still seems like a better option than Stadia or GeForce Now,
| because it should support all PC games (including store-exclusive
| titles like Satisfactory, Untitled Goose Game, and The Outer
| Worlds).
| CapacitorSet wrote:
| >$0.11/hr Spot instance of a g2.2xlarge
|
| I'm not an AWS user, but don't spot instances risk being shut
| down/paused/etc at any moment? It seems like a bad solution for
| remote gaming.
| jophde wrote:
| Or just spend $500 one time on a local rig one time that can max
| out 1080p at 100+frames instead of paying more per year for less.
|
| I know this is for private use but the only point of game
| streaming is so that companies can put ads in stream.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > the only point of game streaming is so that companies can put
| ads in stream
|
| I don't want to own gaming hardware - I don't want the space
| taken up, the hassle of the upgrades, and I'm a super-super-
| casual gamer so I don't want to invest in anything. It sounds
| perfect for me and I can't wait for it to be working well!
| crazygringo wrote:
| Or maybe you're in a small apartment without space for a
| desktop and don't have time to game that often so this is
| actually a better, _more_ cost-effective solution?
|
| Everybody's needs are different -- there's no reason to dismiss
| this.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I find it hard to imagine I'll ever live in an apartment
| where I won't _make_ space for a desktop.
|
| But my experience with cloud gaming on EC2 has been pretty
| great too, as I'm getting older I feel less and less inclined
| to shell out for a new video card every two years.
| jophde wrote:
| As long as you are fine with 1080p cards from 5+ years ago
| are fun. 4k is generally not worth it.
| jophde wrote:
| Everyone going to this would ruin games. These streaming
| services will always have compression artifacts or jitter
| which kills immersion. Worse they will be more expensive over
| time than hardware. Even worse your games can get deleted and
| you won't own anything. Worse there will he ads put into the
| stream.
| detaro wrote:
| And then lug the local rig around the country for the
| occasional game?
| jophde wrote:
| You can build a 1080p rig that is about as big as a Nintendo
| Switch.
| detaro wrote:
| Now I'm curious: GPs ~$500, lets say max double the volume
| of a Switch + Dock, even if we exclude the screen and input
| devices seems like a quite tall order.
|
| You can build some fairly impressive SFF PCs, but even an
| InWin Chopin breaks that volume budget if I've done the
| math right, and it's not a cheap hobby. They to me feel
| like a class above this.
| ldoughty wrote:
| Perhaps, but this article is ridiculous and great.
|
| There are a FEW legitimate reasons to go this route, but not
| many good ones, but I have to commend this article for true
| hacker spirit. It's lovely!
| marvion wrote:
| Jup. Tried DIY cloudgaming a few times, almost signed up for
| shadow/Google, but then just bought a 200$ card and now I'm
| able to play all games, from any store I want, for next 2-3
| years.
|
| In case of AWS/cloud it's not just gaming but also always
| thinking about aws/technical stuff..
|
| If you can afford to buy all games on steam and have 1gig
| internet - go ahead and use a cloudgaming service. But you'll
| see the video compression and you won't be able to play the
| great game you once bought at humblebundle.
| benologist wrote:
| I have an eGPU and I find Geforce Now to be more convenient
| when I want to stream to TV, and when I don't want to reboot
| into Windows which is often. It's actually so convenient I
| often wonder if I could just use a Shield TV for PC gaming,
| the only downside is several of my favorite games are not yet
| playable on Geforce Now.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| I have a similar setup and use SteamLink to stream to my
| shield for a lot of games. Works a treat for most of my
| games which are on Steam anyway.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think the biggest thing that stadia is trying to enable is
| being able to play all games on non-windows systems. You
| could play a desktop game on your android phone or even on
| your Chromebook.
| jophde wrote:
| I run a linux desktop with windows installed as a kvm guest
| with GPU passthrough which gives near bare metal
| performance.
| cle wrote:
| My son plays about 6 hours of BeamNG and X-Plane a week. It's
| much cheaper (and faster) for him to play on an EC2 instance
| with Parsec at $.50/hr than to invest the money and space in an
| equivalent gaming rig. And he can play it wherever we go.
|
| Setup details: I use Paperspace since it has an image with
| everything already configured (doing this is surprisingly
| tricky, I was never able to get GPU drivers installed and
| configured myself after hours of trying and also trying various
| AMIs). It has auto-shutdown after an hour of inactivity. I use
| VirtualHere to forward a joystick to the host, and Parsec for
| streaming. It works great, and I pay $.50/hr plus $5/mo for
| storage. Over WiFi with the cheapest Comcast plan, the latency
| is about 30 ms, which is fine for those games.
| friedman23 wrote:
| Have you tried alternatives like stadia and gefore now? I'm
| curious to hear your thoughts. I have a gaming pc with a
| 4770k and a 1080ti. I was considering upgrading it with the
| excuse that it would be my ML workstation (this is the lie I
| tell myself) but with things like colab pro coming out I'm
| considering if the future (for my use case) will just be
| renting hardware.
| cle wrote:
| I did try GeForce Now, since it has BeamNG. From what I
| could tell, it was about the same as Paperspace, except I
| didn't have access to the underlying OS so I couldn't
| install mods outside of Steam. It doesn't have X-Plane.
| It's slightly cheaper and easier to use since you don't
| have to manage the lifecycle of a host.
|
| And Stadia doesn't have either game.
|
| If you run your own host, you can play whatever game you
| want, and mod it however you feel like. Otherwise, you're
| stuck with whatever curated stuff the platform provides.
| jophde wrote:
| You really don't beed an upgrade for games.
| Deimorz wrote:
| There are about 10 major game streaming services available now,
| and none of them inject any advertising as far as I know.
|
| Which ones are you referring to?
| acd wrote:
| Its good for occasional cloud gaming. Otherwise I hope the PC
| game industry will remain alla carte dinner instead of all you
| can eat buffet cloud gaming. Reason being income sent to the game
| industry its healthier to pay for computer games directly to the
| developers.
| bigdict wrote:
| It's "a la carte". If you want to be extra fancy, you include
| the accent on the "a".
| dmos62 wrote:
| A la carte is French, and alla carta is Italian. Alla carte
| is both :)
| smartsystems wrote:
| Yeah, do not do this. You'll end up with a $1000 bill from Amazon
| becuase you forgot to shut it down and discover very quickly they
| don't care at all once they already have your money.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| FWIW, I did that once for an unrelated project and they ate the
| 1200 bill for a running EC2.
|
| I dunno if they'd eat that cost again, and I wouldn't try it on
| purpose.
|
| But keep in mind that they have an incentive to do this: it's
| the cost of acquiring users without scaring them about a
| possibly humongous bill.
|
| I now have better billing alarms set.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| They should just add an "shutdown at cost x option" for
| private users at least..
| awinder wrote:
| https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/tutorials/control-
| you...
|
| Under section 4, anyone can set up an aws cost budget
| arianestrasse wrote:
| Yes, you can set up a budget but it's only used for
| alerting. The services will happily keep running and
| building up to that 1k bill if you miss the alerts or
| don't react to them.
| [deleted]
| thaeli wrote:
| Those alerts can invoke a Lambda that shuts the service
| down, which is a ridiculously baroque solution but it's
| what you get.
| arianestrasse wrote:
| Wow, they really made it complex, didn't they? On one
| hand they advertise how anyone can spin up a VM and
| connect to it but you still need to do some serverless
| black magic to keep your budget in check. Anyway, thanks
| for the heads up. I'll definitely try that out.
| nostrebored wrote:
| You can set up billing alarms with thresholds which send
| you sms/email alerts
| bjornjajajaja wrote:
| Curious if it would be possible to do this setup with VR as well.
| archi42 wrote:
| I doubt it: For VR, latency and jitter are much more important
| than for other games. My GPU (old R9 290) has ~15ms delay in
| the encoder when using parsec for streaming. Add a few ms in
| the decoder (1ms), plus whatever the network/Internet adds to
| that. Compression artifacts on a flat game are also quite
| noticeable and the reason I did not yet put my desktop next to
| my home server and go fanless in the study room. Oh, and that's
| with 1080p/60Hz at 20MBit - my Vive has a higher resolution and
| refresh rate ;-)
| crummy wrote:
| I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible, but VR is
| extremely latency sensitive so I think the experience would
| suffer pretty badly.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I'm not sure, but cloud gaming seems to be one of the "new"
| overrated hypes.
|
| Based on that it's done before and didn't get that far ( Gaikai
| and OnLive ), but nobody seems to remember that.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Timing is important. The enemy is latency. Today you can get
| below 1ms network latency. But as networks latency has
| improved, latency from IO and most important - the screen, has
| gone up. So there is still work to do. You would basically need
| a custom made device that you plugin directly into your fiber
| outlet. Something like a VR helmet.
| tmerr wrote:
| Another way to view it is that like electric vehicles cloud
| gaming is not a question of if, but when.
|
| OnLive was released when most internet connections were still
| crummy, and before HD capable computers were embedded in TVs,
| smartphones and tablets. Despite all of that it still worked
| pretty well, but at that time I thought if I can run the game
| on my desktop why bother? Nowadays I don't have a gaming
| desktop capable of the newest games, so I think about it
| differently.
| detaro wrote:
| Where is it a "hype"? Opinion overall (users, press, ...) seems
| fairly mixed - but it does have some mainstream-ish appeal this
| time.
| ramon wrote:
| Lightsail for fixed pricing a month.
| Operyl wrote:
| Does Lightsail have GPU instances?
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