Gaming in vmware Horizon

[Rand__]

Edit:

Will play around a bit more...
And remembered I have an older 7970 somewhere to test this out


------------------------------

Hi,
I am looking for a gaming solution for Horizon view - just for me so dedicated passthrough is ok.

I tried passing a GTX 1080 through but little success so am considering getting some other hopefully cheap hardware for this and leave the GTX 1080 for heavy gaming or sell it off.

I got so far that it installed drivers ok but the card always had exclamation mark in device manager, nothing i did has helped. I have not tried modifying /etc/vmware/esx.conf to be honest, might give that a try if it is really expected to help... but tried most of the rest.
Edit: Just realized its the 43 error - so will dig around some more any play with the options

So I am looking for alternatives/recommendations which
1. will provide enough performance to play at Full HD (might negate all the cheaper quadro models +Grid)
2. will work (negates most of the consumer Nvidia cards I assume from my 1080 experience)

This might leave AMD's offerings I assume - have they been used on ESX/Horizon (PCoIP) with acceptable 3D performance?

Thx

 

[RyC]

If you're really looking to play games using Horizon, it's not going to be cheap. I'm assuming you want to use thin/zero clients, otherwise just find a consumer GPU that will passthrough successfully and skip using Horizon. There's not a significant benefit to using Horizon if you want a single VM with a single GPU passed through, unless you specifically want zero client/remote access.

The issues are two-fold: you have to spend a lot more money on a Quadro/AMD equivalent (FirePro, Radeon Pro?). Quadro cards are not well suited for playing games, so even if you spend $1000+ on a nice Quadro, the fps is probably going to be disappointing considering the amount of money it costs.

I believe you can just plug into the video output on the Quadro and skip the zero client, but it's a lot of money for disappointing gaming performance.

More annoyingly, if you want to use zero clients, you're going to be limited by the PCoIP encoder. There's no way around it, the software encoder can't seem to handle more than 30fps, and less if there's a lot of motion, such as in games. You may have to get a PCoIP hardware encoder, which is another couple hundred (hopefully cheaper on eBay). Finally, if you play any kind of first person shooter, it's not going to work with zero clients at all. The mouse tracking needs to be switched from "absolute" to "relative" to even get the camera to move correctly, but the mouse performance becomes so terrible, it's unplayable. I'm not sure the if situation has improved any with VMware's new Blast protocol either.

It may be cheaper to find another motherboard or GPU that will passthrough correctly.

 

[Rand__]

That does not sound very convincing to me following this path... I use Zero's for daily stuff (at home) and it would have been nice to just log in to another VM to play a game (and potentially share the vm if somebody else wants to play).

So assuming I get graphics card passthrough working with either the 1080 or an AMD consumer card then it will still be horribly slow on fast paced action?
I might be able live with that if it means local PC for Doom and ZC for Civ et al. But if I can't even get Civ6 to run then I guess I should drop the idea and just stick to the local pc.

 

[RyC]

Horizon doesn't work at all with consumer cards, so even if you got passthrough working, you would have to hook the monitor directly to it and wouldn't be able to use a zero client.

Civ might be OK on a zero client. The vDGA compatibility list seems like it hasn't been updated in a while (no maxwell or pascal quadros are on it yet). It appears some kepler quadros (K4000, K5000) are compatible and are only $200-$300 or so on eBay, but the K4000 is only about equivalent to a GTX 750 or less in gaming performance.

 

[Rand__]

Yes, those quadro's do not seem up to the job. I remember Quadro's in my old Dell Laptop where totally sufficient, but they seem to have been left behind (on purpose probably).
Ok, thanks again.
Given the performance values I have seen for K1/K2 it will not make sense to shell out a ton of money for those either, and the newer ones all seem to require a license (which was not too expensive but a hassle to cope with), so I think I'll bury this idea :/

 

[Rand__]

Any idea re the gaming performance of the AMD lineup? ie. AMD FirePro S7100X/S7150?

Edit: Found a passmark result of 6276 vs 11976 of a gtx1080 of the 7150
PassMark Software - Video Card (GPU) Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

 

[Rand__]

Horizon doesn't work at all with consumer cards, so even if you got passthrough working, you would have to hook the monitor directly to it and wouldn't be able to use a zero client.

Revisiting this topic - do you know whether a workstation card would improve this situation?
Can't find too much details on these, but they look like they take the output signal of a graphics card and make them available via PCoIP ...
Not sure re latency & all o/c

 

[Jeggs101]

Since I did my Ubuntu Ryzen desktop, it's not hard to setup X11 and get VNC access.

What VMware and Citrix have is good compression.

Another option you have is to pass-through the consumer GPU and use Steam in-home streaming. That'll give you OK latency on the LAN. I don't think you'll become a champion Battlefield or other multiplayer FPS with streaming. For other types of games it'll be fine.

 

[Rand__]

Yes I have seen that, will have to take a look. Not sure what client device I need for that though

 

[OBasel]

If you've got a Windows or Linux laptop it's fine.

 

[Rand__]

Ok - the idea was to get rid of the win boxes and to go thin client only So that wont work with Steam then.
So steam is a fall back plan. I assume a pi 1 will not be sufficient for steam ?

 

[RyC]

Revisiting this topic - do you know whether a workstation card would improve this situation?
Can't find too much details on these, but they look like they take the output signal of a graphics card and make them available via PCoIP ...
Not sure re latency & all o/c

Yes, a PCoIP hardware encoder (which takes the output of a graphics card) should get you above 30fps, but IIRC you still have to use an approved Quadro/FirePro card

 

[Rand__]

So how does that depend on the graphics card then?
I won't be able to get a cheapo quadro and run a game in 30fps with this card would I

 

[Rand__]

Ok, still trying to understand how this works
If somebody can confirm:
1. Usually a remote host card is used with a physical workstation instead of a virtual one. So I can use any GPU, convert its output to PCoIP and use thin client software/hw to access it. This means this solution is similar to running Audio/Video/USB to Ethernet adapters, with better quality
2. This might be used for vm assuming I setup the vm in a way that I'd output everything "locally" - eg following the procedure in Troubleshooting GPU passthrough ESXi 6.5 - unclear about USB

 

[RyC]

Ah yes if you aren't virtualizing then a PCoIP encoder card should work with most any GPU


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Rand__]

Thanks. Picked up a card and will give it a try.
Work station cards don't seem to be state of the art any more (most info is 2 yrs old) but if this works - who cares

 

[Rand__]

So, one step further - workstation card and a GTX1080 on a native W2k12 installation


Will run a Steam Game next... If that works I will give virtualized Win a try

 

[herby]

So, one step further - workstation card and a GTX1080 on a native W2k12 installation
View attachment 5770

Will run a Steam Game next... If that works I will give virtualized Win a try

Just a heads up VAC anti-cheat software doesn't like hypervisors, at least not in Counter Strike GO
Virtual Desktop/GPU Passthough, Not for Valve Games

 

[Rand__]

Right, almost forgot that, thanks for the reminder

 

[Rand__]

So quick round of Doom - no issues except minor lag on intro video.
Looks usable to me
O/c this is not real "Gaming in Horizon" but at least Gaming from Thin Client.

So if Steam is picky with vm's - does anyone know whether Origin is too?

Basically I guess one might have 3 types of environments
Steam -> no VM - Steam Streaming maybe a solution to access from VDI Session
Origin -> VM possible ?
no DRM system or Windows level -> VM possible