So, primarily to get away from my desktop (see my previous post below) – the solution appears to be resorting to Cloud computing in some shape or form.
Gaming Entertainment
The biggest issue currently, that will dissuade me the most from becoming a citizen of the cloud is that I won’t be able to play games with my low-spec terminal (in this case, in my room, it’ll be a 2012 Mac Mini).
Luckily for me; I actually stumbled across a wonderful solution! Parsec.tv – an amazing, free, 1080p 60fps cloud gaming application. Steam In-Home Streaming has never worked well for me, but this evening I gave it a go with a brand new release Sea of Thieves!
The experiment worked spectacularly – the quality of the game is more than adequate. My Laptop (off-site) reached on average about 40fps; and the input lag was more than acceptable for adventuring, fighting the undead and firing cannons to deal with opposing pirate crews.
The image quality was great – it was slightly higher than an average 60fps 1080p Twitch stream. Here’s a couple of example screenshots:
The strange blue ‘honeycomb’ icon in the top-left, is Parsec’s hot-spot; you can click that to disconnect/connect with the host machine; or you can recalibrate your gamepad controller – which gets input into the host machine as an XBOX Controller.
There was only one real concern – my laptop reaching 95 degrees in CPU temperature (Speedfan told me it was 88 degrees, but NZXT Cam monitoring told me it was 95). It looks like I’ll need a laptop cooling pad 🙁
Movies & Media Entertainment
The other thing I’d like to do, is somehow migrate my personal media collection, into the cloud. Something that’ll let me stream no matter where I am, should I be on holidays, or working.
Cue, Plex Media Server – a system so consistently awesome in delivering movies and shows across both a network and the internet, with built in media conversion and on-the-fly media management, I can’t really see myself needing any other system to deliver access to my collection of media to friends and family.
Whilst the quality isn’t terribly awesome (it’s slightly worse than Netflix is), it delivers a more than watchable result provided the source files themselves are of a high quality.
Here’s an example of one of my favourites, Kingsman: The Secret Service:
As you can see, it’s a little murky, but still delivers on the visuals enough. The source file isn’t in a 1080p resolution, but it is still clear enough to watch!
So, all in all – we got through all the fun stuff; being a netizen of the Cloud is a doable thing in Australia – provided you have a 1Gbit internet connection, I suppose.
I’m aware that I’m in an extremely fortunate position to be able to do this; and will continue my experiments and foray into being more integrated into The Cloud™ in time for when the NBN reaches (if ever) my residence.
I’m going to be updating this blog again shortly with some thoughts about being both a “Cloudygamer” and a “Low Spec Gamer” to better handle and optimise my graphical usage; so please stay tuned!
Some Interesting Reading
Since the start of the year, I’ve been working towards making the technology and capabilities of the tech I use in my every day life, a whole lot more comfortable and less cluttered.
I’ve been looking into a minimalist lifestyle after realizing whilst trying to plan on moving out – that I have way too much crap in my life to accommodate such a move.
There’s a pretty simple rule/goal I keep in mind now with each of the gadgets, tech or ideas I have:
It should, as seamlessly as possible, integrate into my everyday life and tasks. I shouldn’t have to worry about how I’m doing something, or if I can do something.
And the best way I can think of that, is to no longer be tied to a desk in order to do all the programming, design, development, gaming and media consumption.
It would enable me to have a much more enriched quality of life, being able to go out, and adventure around, and when it all gets a bit much, I can just reach through the internet and hug the comfort of my favourite IDE, or enjoy something from my personal, (and carefully) curated media collection.
I’m going to need to join The Cloud™. I’ll be calling this experiment, “Project Cloud Citizen“!
Sounds alright – and I think, very doable if you were based in North America, Western Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore or Scandinavia. Coincidentally, friends in all those regions are the ones who talked to me about this.
It’s a way more difficult thing to achieve in Australia, where traditionally, the concept of a decent upload speed for data sharing and enrichment, hasn’t existed until the arrival of Netflix, and even then, leaders of society in Australia still think it’s just next-gen TV.
Getting away from the office desk at home
As it currently stands, I’m fortunate enough to work at an office that allows me to keep a laptop present in the office, that in theory, is connected at all times.
This laptop isn’t a snooze in terms of specs:
- Gigabyte Aero 14
- Intel i7-7700HQ
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
- Kingston 16GB (1 x 16GB)
- Gigabyte P64v7 Motherboard
- 500GB SSD (TS512GMTS800)
- Windows 10 Home
Why do this?
Reason #1
I want to be untethered from the restrictions of only being able to show friends & family games, or media that would be accessible within my home office.
I’d like to be able to develop code and access a remote system that is my own without having to carry around or go through an elaborate setup process.
Nowadays, more than ever, a combination of my iPad Pro and Samsung Note 8 cover all my usage that isn’t coding, or gaming. And even then, they begin to encroach on coding, and sometimes gaming!
Reason #2
Where I use my PC at home is an oven with my current PC setup; no joke, I run an incredibly complicated setup that I think is overkill for pretty much everybody except the most hardcore of PC gamers.
It’s messy, it’s finicky, it’s expensive as all heck and it provides the best damn gaming experience I’ve had the pleasure of using.
But in the sweltering Australian summer, it’s untenable with my neighbour’s air conditioning exhaust being about a metre away from my window, and the combined heat of my PC + 3 monitors, and consoles + TV, it becomes somewhat unhealthy, if not overly sweaty.
This is cheaper than buying air-conditioning myself
Reason #3
On a personal level, I feel like the majority of the time that I don’t want to go somewhere or spend time elsewhere outside of the haven I’ve built at home, is because I feel like I don’t have the access to my files and work to tinker with as I go along.
Coding and tinkering with various web projects has become an almost safety blanket to what I do.
The first test
Over the course of a weekend, I went ahead and did some very rudimentary testing of some functions I’d be performing.
Of course; a speed test is in order:
I’m pretty content with the speeds! My main concern was the upload speed of my laptop; which as you can see, can more than handle the 1080p streaming I was intending to do with it.
I’m surprised the USB 3.0 to Ethernet dongle I was using didn’t crap out! (cheers to my mate: Matt for providing the adapter)
Note to self though, in the future I’ll need to take photos or screenshots of my screen streaming for image quality comparisons (I know streaming will always be worse in terms of visual acuity, but by how much is worth quantifying)
Gaming
Over the weekend, I used a combination of TeamViewer, Hamachi and Steam In-Home Streaming to get a few games going. The image quality felt something akin to watching a twitch stream; there was occasional ribboning of colours in fast-moving games, but aside from that, it worked flawlessly. The almost low-spec restrictions of the laptop forced me to consider playing some of the more indie games in my backlog too.
Rocket League, Hammerwatch, Torchlight all got a go – and I have to say, the only times the frames or input stuttered were more the lack of power behind the laptop and its unoptimised configurations (they were all set to high settings etc.).
Media
Plex had a couple of movies I played to both a friend and myself (Kingsman is a great movie!) simultaneously.
The quality was superb, and stress on the laptop was more than manageable!
Productivity
Admittedly, I did this through TeamViewer, which is rubbish for such situations anyway. However, it was acceptable! There was some input lag, but that’s more TeamViewer’s crappiness as opposed to any other laptop issues. This I expect, should be resolved with proper Remote Desktop access (I’ll need to change to Windows 10 Pro).
Overall, I think the first test was a success, and it’s time to start planning a serious configuration for this application!
I’ll try to keep it well documented 😛