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Can someone answer the question for me, why? What is the user case for this? Is it mostly for when you have an existing app that you want to access remotely? I

by throwaway2016a 9y ago

Can someone answer the question for me, why? What is the user case for this? Is it mostly for when you have an existing app that you want to access remotely? I'm not giving it a hard time, I legitimately can't see the user case and want to know.

billconan 9y ago
I wanted to do the same before. the idea was a platform for software as service. You see, not all software are ideal to be implemented with pure web technology, although the limitation is quickly going away. One example is expensive 3D modelling tools, such as Maya and 3D studio max. they are still desktop apps. They suffer from high piracy rate due to their prices. this is a negative feedback loop. You price them higher, you will have more people pirating them. So this streaming Qt thing is a solution for quickly making a conventional desktop app into a web service and you can charge people with subscription. This is a combination of the power of server machine and the convenience of the web. As web is not as capable as desktop app on 3D rendering, threading and direct accessing to GPU hardware. Streaming the software ui is a viable solution for SAAS already, for example, as I know, both office 365 and the online version of libreoffice use this approach. What I wanted to do was making a platform to make this easy. But I eventually gave up, because I think the biggest developers who would adopt this are heavy 3D graphics companies, and that narrows down to Adobe and Autodesk, as computer graphics is very labor intensive and monopolized. They both are big enough to develop their own solutions.
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  Thank you. You just helped me see a use case I didn't see before. To paraphrase. Hiding the bulk of the business logic from the client since with Javascript all your source is exposed.
  - billconan 9y ago
    yes. This enables thin client also. You can purchase a very cheap hardware, a chrome book, for example, to use professional 3D software or other power hungry software that need performant hardware.
    - RussianCow 9y ago
      I don't think this is true, as the browser is still executing the OpenGL calls via WebGL. This isn't a video streaming solution, it just allows WebGL rendering via the network, so you still need hardware capable of natively rendering the graphics.
      - billconan 9y ago
        what you said is not necessarily correct. they could render the opengl scene into a texture and send it over to webGL. they never mentioned that they don't support opengl 4.5 with this webgl backend, so I guess they achieved it by rendering the opengl 4.5 context into a texture map and send that texture map content to web. but this is just a guess.
- izacus 9y ago
  So legitimate users that paid good money for their licenses will now be forced to use a blocky slow streaming video solution instead of fast responsive interface on their Xeon/64GB RAM equipped workstations... AND pay perpetual monthly subscription for something they owned before? I see that going down well with your actually paying customers :) Remember, you're not gaining money when you're screwing over paying customers to hunt people who aren't going to pay anyway.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    It doesn't have to be the extreme opposite as you described. Plenty of apps benefit from some stuff being done on the client and the server.
  - billconan 9y ago
    the experience isn't as bad as you imagined. for example, you can try this first https://www.paperspace.com/gaming https://www.paperspace.com/gaming and then judge.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    It's not video streaming.
- spynxic 9y ago
  > But I eventually gave up, because I think the biggest developers who would adopt this are heavy 3D graphics companies Is lack of viable adoption by users the only reason you gave the project up?
- RussianCow 9y ago
  > This is a combination of the power of server machine and the convenience of the web. Just to clarify, Qt WebGL Streaming is not a video streaming solution, so the rendering still happens in the browser via WebGL. The hardware requirements to run a graphics app with this feature would be no lower than they would be to just run the Qt app natively, so the only benefit is the portability and accessibility of the web.
  - billconan 9y ago
    I was talking about the software streaming use case, not implementation details. If you search this page, you will find my other threads mentioning my approach, which was based on video streaming.
  - Crespyl 9y ago
    Though with applications not already designed to act as thin clients, it could potentially be useful. It doesn't take much horsepower to just open an application like Blender, but it might be useful to run it on a powerful server and access it from a lighter more power-efficient laptop.
- joezydeco 9y ago
  So this streaming Qt thing is a solution for quickly making a conventional desktop app into a web service... With really shitty interaction latency.
- malkia 9y ago
  To elaborate a bit more here: imagine a tool, which renders things in custom way (engine), but still can expose the rendering commands to WebGL. This way you can present, preview, annotate, comment, etc. a model, texture, game level if you say to 3rd party contractor and create a field for communication changes, visual diffs, notes, etc. 2-3 years ago I had to retrofit an existing game engine tools into a small size (was able to do it down to 1GB), and had to package this to each contractor. This might be better.
fulafel 9y ago
Qt is apparently used a lot in company-internal apps and other specialized tools. Now these can be offered remotely for mobile devices, or laptops not supported by the tool (eg Linux or Mac in a Windows shop). Less clunky than a remote desktop setup.

billconan 9y ago

I wanted to do the same before. the idea was a platform for software as service. You see, not all software are ideal to be implemented with pure web technology, although the limitation is quickly going away. One example is expensive 3D modelling tools, such as Maya and 3D studio max. they are still desktop apps. They suffer from high piracy rate due to their prices. this is a negative feedback loop. You price them higher, you will have more people pirating them. So this streaming Qt thing is a solution for quickly making a conventional desktop app into a web service and you can charge people with subscription. This is a combination of the power of server machine and the convenience of the web. As web is not as capable as desktop app on 3D rendering, threading and direct accessing to GPU hardware. Streaming the software ui is a viable solution for SAAS already, for example, as I know, both office 365 and the online version of libreoffice use this approach. What I wanted to do was making a platform to make this easy. But I eventually gave up, because I think the biggest developers who would adopt this are heavy 3D graphics companies, and that narrows down to Adobe and Autodesk, as computer graphics is very labor intensive and monopolized. They both are big enough to develop their own solutions.

throwaway2016a 9y ago
Thank you. You just helped me see a use case I didn't see before. To paraphrase. Hiding the bulk of the business logic from the client since with Javascript all your source is exposed.
- billconan 9y ago
  yes. This enables thin client also. You can purchase a very cheap hardware, a chrome book, for example, to use professional 3D software or other power hungry software that need performant hardware.
  - RussianCow 9y ago
    I don't think this is true, as the browser is still executing the OpenGL calls via WebGL. This isn't a video streaming solution, it just allows WebGL rendering via the network, so you still need hardware capable of natively rendering the graphics.
    - billconan 9y ago
      what you said is not necessarily correct. they could render the opengl scene into a texture and send it over to webGL. they never mentioned that they don't support opengl 4.5 with this webgl backend, so I guess they achieved it by rendering the opengl 4.5 context into a texture map and send that texture map content to web. but this is just a guess.
izacus 9y ago
So legitimate users that paid good money for their licenses will now be forced to use a blocky slow streaming video solution instead of fast responsive interface on their Xeon/64GB RAM equipped workstations... AND pay perpetual monthly subscription for something they owned before? I see that going down well with your actually paying customers :) Remember, you're not gaining money when you're screwing over paying customers to hunt people who aren't going to pay anyway.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  It doesn't have to be the extreme opposite as you described. Plenty of apps benefit from some stuff being done on the client and the server.
- billconan 9y ago
  the experience isn't as bad as you imagined. for example, you can try this first https://www.paperspace.com/gaming https://www.paperspace.com/gaming and then judge.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  It's not video streaming.
spynxic 9y ago
> But I eventually gave up, because I think the biggest developers who would adopt this are heavy 3D graphics companies Is lack of viable adoption by users the only reason you gave the project up?
RussianCow 9y ago
> This is a combination of the power of server machine and the convenience of the web. Just to clarify, Qt WebGL Streaming is not a video streaming solution, so the rendering still happens in the browser via WebGL. The hardware requirements to run a graphics app with this feature would be no lower than they would be to just run the Qt app natively, so the only benefit is the portability and accessibility of the web.
- billconan 9y ago
  I was talking about the software streaming use case, not implementation details. If you search this page, you will find my other threads mentioning my approach, which was based on video streaming.
- Crespyl 9y ago
  Though with applications not already designed to act as thin clients, it could potentially be useful. It doesn't take much horsepower to just open an application like Blender, but it might be useful to run it on a powerful server and access it from a lighter more power-efficient laptop.
joezydeco 9y ago
So this streaming Qt thing is a solution for quickly making a conventional desktop app into a web service... With really shitty interaction latency.
malkia 9y ago
To elaborate a bit more here: imagine a tool, which renders things in custom way (engine), but still can expose the rendering commands to WebGL. This way you can present, preview, annotate, comment, etc. a model, texture, game level if you say to 3rd party contractor and create a field for communication changes, visual diffs, notes, etc. 2-3 years ago I had to retrofit an existing game engine tools into a small size (was able to do it down to 1GB), and had to package this to each contractor. This might be better.

fulafel 9y ago

Qt is apparently used a lot in company-internal apps and other specialized tools. Now these can be offered remotely for mobile devices, or laptops not supported by the tool (eg Linux or Mac in a Windows shop). Less clunky than a remote desktop setup.