this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Self hosted cloud gaming solution to allow friends to play their games on my computer? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by seonwoolee@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Because I see some serious drawbacks, this is honestly more of a thought experiment than something I actually intend on deploying but I am curious if there are ways around the drawbacks or if I just misunderstand.

I know you can use moonlight and sunshine to self host a cloud gaming solution. But AFAICT it is only intended for someone playing their own games on their own computer

What I'm interested in is allowing friends to play their games that they have purchased on my computer, which runs windows.

The drawbacks I see are I can't play games on my computer while they're playing, requiring trust that my friends and I don't mess with each others game accounts, and a constant need to log in and out of accounts

If I install and run sunshine on my main user account, then anybody who I set up with a sunshine account will be able to play as me any game I already own. They could log me out of their steam/ubisoft/whatever, and then log into their own account. If they forget to log out after they're done, then I could potentially play as them (not that I intend to)

If I create a separate windows account per sunshine account, then they could avoid having to log in and out of their game accounts. But then I would have to manually log into the windows account for them. And ultimately I could still play the game as them

Are there any other solutions? I know there's no way to get around me not being able to play if they're playing. And ultimately I don't see how anything would be able to prevent me from playing games as my friends if they leave themselves sign in, since I have admin privileges on my computer. But is there any way to avoid having to constantly log in and out?

Are there other self hosted cloud gaming solutions that would work better for this?

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[–] lgb111@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Haven’t tried to mysef but you should be able to use Easy GPU PV to make a vm that your friends can play in without interrupting you.

[–] gentoorax@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Craft computing did several videos on YouTube for "cloud gaming" servers. Maybe check that out.

[–] Squid_At_Work@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I am going to treat this as a thought experiment and not something you are actually going to make an effort to do.

Utilizing enterprise hardware and software you could standup a GPU accelerated Virtual desktop environment. Lookup VMWare Horizon View. About 10 years ago we tested a new VDI server by playing a CS:GO lan game on a clients server that was 100ish miles from us in a datacenter. It let eight players all run over 100fps with no noticable latency. We accessed them via Teradici zero clients.

[–] AnxietyBytes@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

CS:GO uses Source engine which is more CPU dependent than GPU though. It'll depend on what games OP plans to host. I think this is more along the lines of what OP is after though.

[–] Byolock@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Actually you could remove most of the drawbacks if you split up your gpu (there are multiple technologies which enable you to do that, but your gpu would need to support at least one of them) and give each of your friends a virtual machine to play on. That way everyone could play at the same time. Though you get a new drawback : the experience would certainly be very limited if you share the GPU resources with multiple VMs. I think VRAM is fixed so if you have 16gb of vram and two virtual machines each with 5GB of VRAM you got yourself 6GB left, no matter if someone is actually playing on one of the VMs.

[–] smegheadkryten@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could set up each of them a Steam-headless docker container. I use one on my nas to game on a very low end laptop.

[–] seonwoolee@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ooh this is interesting. My gaming computer only runs windows currently but since I wouldn't be able to game when my friends used it I could just reboot into Linux when I'm not using it.

Seems like it needs a dedicated gpu so only one person could use it at a time but that's fine

[–] smegheadkryten@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

My gaming computer only runs windows currently but since I wouldn't be able to game when my friends used it I could just reboot into Linux when I'm not using it.

I personally run it on a linux system, but If you wanted to I don't see why you couldn't just run docker on your windows install (Make sure you follow the wsl 2 guide, and not the hyper-v one. Docker for Windows doesn't support gpu passthrough on hyper-v). As for the gpu issue while I've never tried gaming simultaneously, I do have several docker containers accessing 1 gpu. So it might be worth a shot to see if they could all, or at least a couple, could play off of the one gpu, but it would depend on how heavy the games you're playing are of course.