6 ms·

I'm very curious what remote display tech they're using, as I've had trouble with latency even over a local network. I've tried VNC and NX, mostly with Linux se

I'm very curious what remote display tech they're using, as I've had trouble with latency even over a local network. I've tried VNC and NX, mostly with Linux servers and Mac clients.

akhilcacharya 6y ago
At an internship we heavily used Windows RDP over our local network - worked phenomenally well, basically 1:1 when connecting to our "home desk" desktop. I think RDP + very high bandwidth network is the best way to do it still.
lame88 6y ago
I was thinking the same thing as I was reading. Seems like feedback lag while drawing brush strokes would be frustrating for an artist. But then again, we have examples of surprisingly good response time in the game streaming world.
- mroche 6y ago
  Like anything it's going to heavily depend on latency to the workstation in question. With cloud providers that have reasonable region coverage, it's not really that bad. In our tests, ~40ms latency is the upper bound of where you want to be before artists start really complaining, and Teradici themselves suggest 25ms for optimal results. However, depending on the task said artist is doing, you can venture above that, though for Cintiq/pen displays it becomes pretty painful and a "live with it" type deal.
jbaiter 6y ago
Judging from the GIF, they're using AWS NICE DCV: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dcv/latest/adminguide/what-is-dcv.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dcv/latest/adminguide/what-is-dc...
Cullinet 6y ago
HP Remote Graphics is very popular and widely deployed in post production and artist graphics suites. Azure has been taking high end graphics workstation seats in the GFX and compositing and film production industry at a clip for close to a decade now. the hourly cost of running £30,000 worth of hardware is below £5ph, which pays for the hardware running 24/7/365 over 3 years, but is clearly a saving serving 5*8/7 active employees. [ed] and that's before factoring in floating licence economies.
mroche 6y ago
As stated in a sister comment, it looks like Netflix is using DVC NICE for their VMs. For the vast majority of this industry, the two larger players are Teradici with their PCoIP protocol (also licensed to VMware) and HP Remote Graphics Software (now known as ZCentral Remote Boost). Teradici is definitely the most widely used, but I know a couple of shops using RGS. NICE is an interesting project coming up in AWS, particularly since it's free for systems within the AWS cloud, and available outside of the cloud for a price. I don't have any HP RGS experience myself, but with Teradici it currently supports Windows and Linux hosts, with software clients for Windows, Linux, and macOS. They also have hardware solutions (zero-clients) available so end-user operating systems aren't needed. Those clients are provided by third-party OEMs (e.g. 10Zig, Dell, etc) using the Teradici supplied chips[0]. macOS host support is coming later this year[1]. The host support is split up into two different categories: hardware with the Remote Workstation Cards which have a hardware encoder on them (uses a PCIe slot) that you plug display output into, and their software agents (standard and graphics) that don't require hardware and encode on the CPU and/or GPU depending on the agent you're using. Teradici has also been fairly clear that software is the future of the product line, so the hostcards are not a good buy for long-term support. However they will be continuing the hardware clients with a "next-gen" zero-client coming out this summer with a boatload of new features over their older clients, but it's not really a zero-client in the truest definition of the word. [0] https://www.teradici.com/resource-center/product-service-finder/pcoip-zero-clients https://www.teradici.com/resource-center/product-service-fin... [1] https://connect.teradici.com/blog/macos-release https://connect.teradici.com/blog/macos-release
Miraste 6y ago
I don't know anything about NX, but VNC is terribly slow and outdated. Pretty much anything else will be faster.

I'm very curious what remote display tech they're using, as I've had trouble with latency even over a local network. I've tried VNC and NX, mostly with Linux servers and Mac clients.

akhilcacharya 6y ago

At an internship we heavily used Windows RDP over our local network - worked phenomenally well, basically 1:1 when connecting to our "home desk" desktop. I think RDP + very high bandwidth network is the best way to do it still.

lame88 6y ago

I was thinking the same thing as I was reading. Seems like feedback lag while drawing brush strokes would be frustrating for an artist. But then again, we have examples of surprisingly good response time in the game streaming world.

mroche 6y ago
Like anything it's going to heavily depend on latency to the workstation in question. With cloud providers that have reasonable region coverage, it's not really that bad. In our tests, ~40ms latency is the upper bound of where you want to be before artists start really complaining, and Teradici themselves suggest 25ms for optimal results. However, depending on the task said artist is doing, you can venture above that, though for Cintiq/pen displays it becomes pretty painful and a "live with it" type deal.

jbaiter 6y ago

Judging from the GIF, they're using AWS NICE DCV: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dcv/latest/adminguide/what-is-dcv.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dcv/latest/adminguide/what-is-dc...

Cullinet 6y ago

HP Remote Graphics is very popular and widely deployed in post production and artist graphics suites. Azure has been taking high end graphics workstation seats in the GFX and compositing and film production industry at a clip for close to a decade now. the hourly cost of running £30,000 worth of hardware is below £5ph, which pays for the hardware running 24/7/365 over 3 years, but is clearly a saving serving 5*8/7 active employees. [ed] and that's before factoring in floating licence economies.

mroche 6y ago

As stated in a sister comment, it looks like Netflix is using DVC NICE for their VMs. For the vast majority of this industry, the two larger players are Teradici with their PCoIP protocol (also licensed to VMware) and HP Remote Graphics Software (now known as ZCentral Remote Boost). Teradici is definitely the most widely used, but I know a couple of shops using RGS. NICE is an interesting project coming up in AWS, particularly since it's free for systems within the AWS cloud, and available outside of the cloud for a price. I don't have any HP RGS experience myself, but with Teradici it currently supports Windows and Linux hosts, with software clients for Windows, Linux, and macOS. They also have hardware solutions (zero-clients) available so end-user operating systems aren't needed. Those clients are provided by third-party OEMs (e.g. 10Zig, Dell, etc) using the Teradici supplied chips[0]. macOS host support is coming later this year[1]. The host support is split up into two different categories: hardware with the Remote Workstation Cards which have a hardware encoder on them (uses a PCIe slot) that you plug display output into, and their software agents (standard and graphics) that don't require hardware and encode on the CPU and/or GPU depending on the agent you're using. Teradici has also been fairly clear that software is the future of the product line, so the hostcards are not a good buy for long-term support. However they will be continuing the hardware clients with a "next-gen" zero-client coming out this summer with a boatload of new features over their older clients, but it's not really a zero-client in the truest definition of the word. [0] https://www.teradici.com/resource-center/product-service-finder/pcoip-zero-clients https://www.teradici.com/resource-center/product-service-fin... [1] https://connect.teradici.com/blog/macos-release https://connect.teradici.com/blog/macos-release

Miraste 6y ago

I don't know anything about NX, but VNC is terribly slow and outdated. Pretty much anything else will be faster.