4 ms·

(Edit: to clarify the below is about their cloud offering user since I'm on Mac and don't have my own PC to stream from) I've been using Parsec to play games l

by blixt 8y ago

(Edit: to clarify the below is about their cloud offering user since I'm on Mac and don't have my own PC to stream from) I've been using Parsec to play games like No Man's Sky and it's really impressive technologically speaking, but the pricing model is a bit obtuse. It's made worse by the fact that the big cost for someone who doesn't game all that often is storage. Basically, you sign up to a VM with an impressive GPU and it runs games really well, and the streaming tech is top notch. But to run it all you need to pay for at least 50 GB of storage and you need to pay for it on a time basis, which means you're left with anxiety of leaving it turned off, as well as sudden deletion of your cloud PC if you're not paying attention. I wish they would come up with some kind of clever storage solution so that the basic Windows image is a shared (read only) storage component and the additional games are additional pluggable hard drives, also shared between users. This would mean you as the end user loses control of modding/patches for some games, but it could save so much storage. The save games etc would go on a tiny hard drive that you ultimately pay for (but I'd say Parsec should eat that cost to reduce anxiety and instead encourage a monthly subscription for any-time access). TL;DR: Parsec is awesome. I want to pay a fixed price and not be exposed to their tech stack costs, so I don't get FOMO when I'm not using it every day.

xigency 8y ago
This reminds me of a huge problem with Steam, which is the size and frequency of updates. For the very small number of first party games, like Half-Life or Counter-Strike, updates are cumulative smaller files that contain changes. So if there was an update to a game, it might be 1-2 GB. For the vast majority of titles on Steam, however, an update requires a full download of the latest version. So for most games it is a 25 GB or 50 GB download. Developers want to stay on top of bugs, so for an infrequent gamer playing on a weekly or monthly basis, opening Steam means queuing up 100 GB of downloads and a long wait to actually play games. The fact that this hasn't been solved yet shows that Valve isn't willing to invest in fixing it either through new technology or cooperation with developers, which is really sad. Optimistically, something you're describing for Parsec would be possible, but maybe it isn't realistic.
- bllguo 8y ago
  This is anecdotal of course, but I can't think of a single game that behaves like this, and my library is pretty sizable. Would be interested in an example. I also cannot see the justification on a technical level for why this behavior would exist. All in all I'm pretty confused by this comment, tbh
  - xigency 8y ago
    I've seen it with one or more of these games: GTA V Mortal Kombat X Metal Gear Solid 5 / GZ Doom The Witcher Final Fantasy
- xirdstl 8y ago
  I don't think this is correct. I use Steam and have a lot of games installed. When it does updates, they are not the size of the original downloads. Usually, much, much smaller.
  - Schoolmeister 8y ago
    Indeed. I've never needed a full game download just for a patch. Depending on the game and type of patch this is usually ~1GB.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Same here. I think what's being seen is that some things are easier to diff and update than others. If a game has a large file for map data that's indexed into, and update to any portions of it are delivered the most easily (where easily includes reliably) by updating the whole file. If that file is 2GB, then you have a 2GB download. If a game has lots of relatively little files, you could update multiple maps with a few tens of megabytes of downloads. An actual patch utility that goes in and applies binary diffs would be much more economical in terms of bandwidth, but then that complicates Steam's ability to confirm a game is in a good state with file checksums, and is much more likely to have odd errors as a diff somehow correctly applies to a file with an incorrect starting starting state.
  - xigency 8y ago
fneves 8y ago
Parsec is a tech/app, it's not a service as you think it is. They're basically making a bridge between cloud renting and their app, like an integration, you can't really say that parsec is expensive, they don't rent computing power at all :) Parsec as tech/app is indeed awesome! Together with Steam Link app, they're the best we currently have.
- blixt 8y ago
  I’m not saying it’s expensive, but that the service they’re offering is obtuse and anxiety inducing because you’re economically “punished” as soon as you stop playing. And they offer this service under their own brand and never leaving their site, so I don’t agree with your dismissal that this is just an integration. It’s a service they offer and they are taking my money for it. Money I gladly paid, I just wish the service I got was simplified.
  - fneves 8y ago
    Anyway, you see in their app Amazon and Paperspace, the prices are not decided by them. I'm not saying it's cheap, but paperspace it's the cheapest I've seen for cloud gaming. Anyway, my use of parsec is my home computer, so I don't really have the difficulties you're facing.
jon-wood 8y ago
If you’re using Steam most games support Steam Cloud for your save games, and with the server being on a gigabit link in a data centre (possibly the same one as Steam’s mirrors) it doesn’t take long to install. Given that you don’t have to worry too much about keeping storage you’re not using, just make sure to dump your non-cloud save games in Dropbox or something now and again.
- blixt 8y ago
  Sure but now we are talking even more time and effort to spin up/down a computer whenever I want to game for a little while. Installing a Windows VM from scratch and then No Man’s Sky is still probably 20-30 minutes from start to gameplay. And specifically in the case of NMS it’s terribly slow at first launch (not sure if it’s just compiling shaders or what).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
evilturnip 8y ago
I'd use Shadow for game streaming. Cheaper, unlimited stream time for a fixed monthly fee and the service is actually faster. https://shadow.tech/usen/ https://shadow.tech/usen/
- Schoolmeister 8y ago
  Do you have any idea about their latency? According to [1] Parsec only adds about 7ms, which is quite impressive. [1] https://blog.parsecgaming.com/testing-game-streaming-input-latency-on-parsec-with-diy-instructions-49ae838f45a7 https://blog.parsecgaming.com/testing-game-streaming-input-l...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - evilturnip 8y ago
    Depends on your connection to their datacenter. They have a West Coast and an East Coast. I live near NYC so I connect to their NJ datacenter. With my fiber optic, I get about 4-6ms.

by blixt 8y ago

xigency 8y ago

This reminds me of a huge problem with Steam, which is the size and frequency of updates. For the very small number of first party games, like Half-Life or Counter-Strike, updates are cumulative smaller files that contain changes. So if there was an update to a game, it might be 1-2 GB. For the vast majority of titles on Steam, however, an update requires a full download of the latest version. So for most games it is a 25 GB or 50 GB download. Developers want to stay on top of bugs, so for an infrequent gamer playing on a weekly or monthly basis, opening Steam means queuing up 100 GB of downloads and a long wait to actually play games. The fact that this hasn't been solved yet shows that Valve isn't willing to invest in fixing it either through new technology or cooperation with developers, which is really sad. Optimistically, something you're describing for Parsec would be possible, but maybe it isn't realistic.

bllguo 8y ago
This is anecdotal of course, but I can't think of a single game that behaves like this, and my library is pretty sizable. Would be interested in an example. I also cannot see the justification on a technical level for why this behavior would exist. All in all I'm pretty confused by this comment, tbh
- xigency 8y ago
  I've seen it with one or more of these games: GTA V Mortal Kombat X Metal Gear Solid 5 / GZ Doom The Witcher Final Fantasy
xirdstl 8y ago
I don't think this is correct. I use Steam and have a lot of games installed. When it does updates, they are not the size of the original downloads. Usually, much, much smaller.
- Schoolmeister 8y ago
  Indeed. I've never needed a full game download just for a patch. Depending on the game and type of patch this is usually ~1GB.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Same here. I think what's being seen is that some things are easier to diff and update than others. If a game has a large file for map data that's indexed into, and update to any portions of it are delivered the most easily (where easily includes reliably) by updating the whole file. If that file is 2GB, then you have a 2GB download. If a game has lots of relatively little files, you could update multiple maps with a few tens of megabytes of downloads. An actual patch utility that goes in and applies binary diffs would be much more economical in terms of bandwidth, but then that complicates Steam's ability to confirm a game is in a good state with file checksums, and is much more likely to have odd errors as a diff somehow correctly applies to a file with an incorrect starting starting state.
- xigency 8y ago

fneves 8y ago

Parsec is a tech/app, it's not a service as you think it is. They're basically making a bridge between cloud renting and their app, like an integration, you can't really say that parsec is expensive, they don't rent computing power at all :) Parsec as tech/app is indeed awesome! Together with Steam Link app, they're the best we currently have.

blixt 8y ago
I’m not saying it’s expensive, but that the service they’re offering is obtuse and anxiety inducing because you’re economically “punished” as soon as you stop playing. And they offer this service under their own brand and never leaving their site, so I don’t agree with your dismissal that this is just an integration. It’s a service they offer and they are taking my money for it. Money I gladly paid, I just wish the service I got was simplified.
- fneves 8y ago
  Anyway, you see in their app Amazon and Paperspace, the prices are not decided by them. I'm not saying it's cheap, but paperspace it's the cheapest I've seen for cloud gaming. Anyway, my use of parsec is my home computer, so I don't really have the difficulties you're facing.

jon-wood 8y ago

If you’re using Steam most games support Steam Cloud for your save games, and with the server being on a gigabit link in a data centre (possibly the same one as Steam’s mirrors) it doesn’t take long to install. Given that you don’t have to worry too much about keeping storage you’re not using, just make sure to dump your non-cloud save games in Dropbox or something now and again.

blixt 8y ago
Sure but now we are talking even more time and effort to spin up/down a computer whenever I want to game for a little while. Installing a Windows VM from scratch and then No Man’s Sky is still probably 20-30 minutes from start to gameplay. And specifically in the case of NMS it’s terribly slow at first launch (not sure if it’s just compiling shaders or what).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

evilturnip 8y ago

I'd use Shadow for game streaming. Cheaper, unlimited stream time for a fixed monthly fee and the service is actually faster. https://shadow.tech/usen/ https://shadow.tech/usen/

Schoolmeister 8y ago
Do you have any idea about their latency? According to [1] Parsec only adds about 7ms, which is quite impressive. [1] https://blog.parsecgaming.com/testing-game-streaming-input-latency-on-parsec-with-diy-instructions-49ae838f45a7 https://blog.parsecgaming.com/testing-game-streaming-input-l...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- evilturnip 8y ago
  Depends on your connection to their datacenter. They have a West Coast and an East Coast. I live near NYC so I connect to their NJ datacenter. With my fiber optic, I get about 4-6ms.