Working on cloud-based Mac gaming solution, would like to hear feedback

[Manuel Kiessling]

Cool. Let me know at any rate, I'll try it out again if successful.

Instances can now be launched in Sydney ("Australia" on GamingSolved), and I have also put some money on your account

Let me know how it works!
[doublepost=1498073183][/doublepost]

Potential pitfall here too. If I log in to my accounts and have my data loaded on the system, then you'd be liable for data protection. Is all data encrypted securely? If not, what if the servers got hacked and all the Steam profiles or whatever were to be accessible to some random bloke? Or if someone kept more sensitive data on the system

We are currently concentrating on Cloud Gaming (versus cloud-based CAD or similar) because it's a use case which is a lot simpler in terms of security. You wouldn't normally put sensitive data on a system if all you intend to do is play some games. We will also make clear in our Terms of Use that what you do with your remote desktop is your responsibility (which is just fair I guess because we give you full control over it and do not spy on what you are doing).
[doublepost=1498073408][/doublepost]

Heh...if only that were "typical" in the U.S.

--Eric

While we certainly wouldn't mind serving millions of users, we fully expect to provide a service which isn't for everyone. The state of the worldwide network infrastructure is something we simply have to take as a given - I'm pretty sure there are still more than enough potential users left - and hopefully (not only for us) network speeds will get better over time for more and more people.

 

[wubsylol]

Instances can now be launched in Sydney ("Australia" on GamingSolved), and I have also put some money on your account

Let me know how it works!

Good morning =P

I"ll give it a shot and let you know.

 

[wubsylol]

I gave Deus Ex: Mankind Divided a try. I currently have 10ms to AWS Sydney and there was still what I consider to be bad input latency. I'm not sure if this is something else at play, or whether I'm just crazy sensitive to it. I'll play around some more to see if I can solve this.

Graphical performance is, as expected, great! The cloud hardware is supreme powerful. Downloading a 30GB game took about as long as it took me to eat two pieces of toast, which was expected for AWS.

Frustratingly, running the "Start Xbox" thing on the desktop seems to have killed my cloud rig, leaving me unable to connect.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, with no way to shutdown cloud rigs from the control panel, all I can do is choose to shutdown the rig at the end of the current billable hour and wait.

Also, I think the shutdown mechanism is a little borked and seems based purely on rig startup time rather than billed time. I started up my rig and my account was debited at 7:25am. Remembering the mistake I made a few days ago, I immediately selected to end the current session automatically after the current billing hour, so the system told me the rig would automatically shutdown at 8:25am.

By 7:45, however, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I ran the "Start Xbox" thing on the desktop, which caused the rig to restart. I assume it did a full restart, as I can see from the account balance history that at 7:47am the rig became unavailable for remote connections, but then at 7:51 again became available.

Although I am unable to actually login to the rig, the account management page is now telling me that the rig will automatically shutdown at 8:51am, which is one hour after the most recent startup, rather than the end of the current billing hour.

At 8:25am, one hour after the initial startup, the account was debited again, meaning the cloud rig is set to automatically shutdown 1hr and 20 minutes after first startup.

The control panel needs a way to shutdown cloud rigs while they're running.

Edit: Annnnd, my account balance is back to $0. Cheers for the money you added!

 

[Manuel Kiessling]

I gave Deus Ex: Mankind Divided a try. I currently have 10ms to AWS Sydney and there was still what I consider to be bad input latency. I'm not sure if this is something else at play, or whether I'm just crazy sensitive to it. I'll play around some more to see if I can solve this.

Graphical performance is, as expected, great! The cloud hardware is supreme powerful. Downloading a 30GB game took about as long as it took me to eat two pieces of toast, which was expected for AWS.

Frustratingly, running the "Start Xbox" thing on the desktop seems to have killed my cloud rig, leaving me unable to connect.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, with no way to shutdown cloud rigs from the control panel, all I can do is choose to shutdown the rig at the end of the current billable hour and wait.

Also, I think the shutdown mechanism is a little borked and seems based purely on rig startup time rather than billed time. I started up my rig and my account was debited at 7:25am. Remembering the mistake I made a few days ago, I immediately selected to end the current session automatically after the current billing hour, so the system told me the rig would automatically shutdown at 8:25am.

By 7:45, however, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I ran the "Start Xbox" thing on the desktop, which caused the rig to restart. I assume it did a full restart, as I can see from the account balance history that at 7:47am the rig became unavailable for remote connections, but then at 7:51 again became available.

Although I am unable to actually login to the rig, the account management page is now telling me that the rig will automatically shutdown at 8:51am, which is one hour after the most recent startup, rather than the end of the current billing hour.

At 8:25am, one hour after the initial startup, the account was debited again, meaning the cloud rig is set to automatically shutdown 1hr and 20 minutes after first startup.

The control panel needs a way to shutdown cloud rigs while they're running.

Edit: Annnnd, my account balance is back to $0. Cheers for the money you added!

Thanks again for your time and the valuable feedback. At 10ms, I really expected a perfect experience, so we will investigate if something other than the network latency caused the bad experience. Or yes, maybe you are just crazy sensitive, who knows ;-)

The Xbox-Controller drivers and the enable/disable feature is intensely discussed in the team, and we are going to remove them completely for now because we believe that by far most Mac users do not own an Xbox controller for gaming and prefer playing games with mouse and keyboard instead.

Nevertheless, the platform does not yet handle manual reboots of instances correctly, including the billing logic. We will look into this and improve that.

Also, I will add a "Automatically remove the instance when cost protection shuts it down" option. Do you think this makes sense?

 

[zen]

I think you need to investigate that fully with an licensing attorney rather than just assume your reading of a game licence is correct.

Quoting myself here, but I really think this is still licence infringement.

 

[Manuel Kiessling]

Quoting myself here, but I really think this is still licence infringement.

Just fair. I think otherwise, but obviously only an attorney can give a definitive answer.

Here's why I, as a non-attorney, do not think it is an infringement:

- A Steam account belongs to one person

- Under their account, users are allowed to install and use games which they purchased via Steam on a computer of their choice

- Steam allows to use one account on multiple computers

- If you attempt to launch a game under your account but a game is running via Steam on another computer under the same account, the running game instance is shut down, thus Steam ensures that no matter on how many computers Steam is running with your account, games can be played only on one of these computers at any time

Maybe one important point was not made clear: Gaming: Solved. doesn't give you any games. It only lends you a computer. You must bring the games and pay for them.

 

[zen]

Just fair. I think otherwise, but obviously only an attorney can give a definitive answer.

Here's why I, as a non-attorney, do not think it is an infringement:

- A Steam account belongs to one person

- Under their account, users are allowed to install and use games which they purchased via Steam on a computer of their choice

- Steam allows to use one account on multiple computers

- If you attempt to launch a game under your account but a game is running via Steam on another computer under the same account, the running game instance is shut down, thus Steam ensures that no matter on how many computers Steam is running with your account, games can be played only on one of these computers at any time

Maybe one important point was not made clear: Gaming: Solved. doesn't give you any games. It only lends you a computer. You must bring the games and pay for them.

Which is all fair enough, but if you intend this to be a business, then you need to get legal advice.

 

[Manuel Kiessling]

Which is all fair enough, but if you intend this to be a business, then you need to get legal advice.

Fully agreed!

 

[wubsylol]

Also, I will add a "Automatically remove the instance when cost protection shuts it down" option. Do you think this makes sense?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. At what point would it shutdown the cloud rig?

 

[Manuel Kiessling]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. At what point would it shutdown the cloud rig?

It would still shut down at the end of the current billing hour, but also remove the system. This way, you can simply leave the site resting assured that you no longer pay, without the need to wait for the cost protection shutdown to remove your machine manually.

 

[wubsylol]

It would still shut down at the end of the current billing hour, but also remove the system. This way, you can simply leave the site resting assured that you no longer pay, without the need to wait for the cost protection shutdown to remove your machine manually.

Oh! Right, I get you! So you don't get hit with the storage cost? That's useful.

I do think it is somewhat of a stop-gap solution to the real issue of not being able to shutdown a rig from the control panel. I know little about the AWS backend, though, so this might be a hugely complex problem to solve.

 

[Manuel Kiessling]

Oh! Right, I get you! So you don't get hit with the storage cost? That's useful.

I do think it is somewhat of a stop-gap solution to the real issue of not being able to shutdown a rig from the control panel. I know little about the AWS backend, though, so this might be a hugely complex problem to solve.

It's not complex technically, the problem is something else: We want to have a very simple billing system where once you start a rig, you pay for 1 hour usage. AWS however handles things a bit different: When you launch a system, you are billed for 1 usage hour, but if you shut it down after 5 minutes and then launch it again, you are billed AGAIN for 1 usage hour although you are still within the 1 hour from the first launch. Which I find very irritating (and unfair, to be honest).

Now, the problem is: If we bill fairly (1 launch = 1 usage hour billed), but users start and stop and start and stop their instances during this 1 hour, then we are billed by AWS repeatedly, but our customer is not, so we are loosing money.

Which is why you cannot actively stop a machine, but instead can set the cost protection.

 

[casperes1996]

The Xbox-Controller drivers and the enable/disable feature is intensely discussed in the team, and we are going to remove them completely for now because we believe that by far most Mac users do not own an Xbox controller for gaming and prefer playing games with mouse and keyboard instead.

Obviously, I'm as an individual not necessarily. representative, but I hate mouse/keyboard. Always use either a Dualshock 4 or X1 controller. – They both work wonderfully under macOS too.

It's not complex technically, the problem is something else: We want to have a very simple billing system where once you start a rig, you pay for 1 hour usage. AWS however handles things a bit different: When you launch a system, you are billed for 1 usage hour, but if you shut it down after 5 minutes and then launch it again, you are billed AGAIN for 1 usage hour although you are still within the 1 hour from the first launch. Which I find very irritating (and unfair, to be honest).

Now, the problem is: If we bill fairly (1 launch = 1 usage hour billed), but users start and stop and start and stop their instances during this 1 hour, then we are billed by AWS repeatedly, but our customer is not, so we are loosing money.

Which is why you cannot actively stop a machine, but instead can set the cost protection.

I'm sure AWS has their reasons, but damn! That's ****!

 

[wubsylol]

It's not complex technically, the problem is something else: We want to have a very simple billing system where once you start a rig, you pay for 1 hour usage. AWS however handles things a bit different: When you launch a system, you are billed for 1 usage hour, but if you shut it down after 5 minutes and then launch it again, you are billed AGAIN for 1 usage hour although you are still within the 1 hour from the first launch. Which I find very irritating (and unfair, to be honest).

Now, the problem is: If we bill fairly (1 launch = 1 usage hour billed), but users start and stop and start and stop their instances during this 1 hour, then we are billed by AWS repeatedly, but our customer is not, so we are loosing money.

Which is why you cannot actively stop a machine, but instead can set the cost protection.

Ah, I see. I think this is still a problem you need to look at. I totally understand from your perspective, but rigs are inevitably going to crash and be unrecoverable, and customers aren't going to want to wait - or be charged more money - to get back into gaming.