Being a Part of the Cloud

So, primarily to get away from my desktop (see my previous post below) - the solution appears to be resorting to Cloud computing in some shape or form.

Gaming Entertainment #

The biggest issue currently, that will dissuade me the most from becoming a citizen of the cloud is that I won’t be able to play games with my low-spec terminal (in this case, in my room, it’ll be a 2012 Mac Mini).

Luckily for me; I actually stumbled across a wonderful solution! Parsec.tv - an amazing, free, 1080p 60fps cloud gaming application. Steam In-Home Streaming has never worked well for me, but this evening I gave it a go with a brand new release Sea of Thieves!

The experiment worked spectacularly - the quality of the game is more than adequate. My Laptop (off-site) reached on average about 40fps; and the input lag was more than acceptable for adventuring, fighting the undead and firing cannons to deal with opposing pirate crews.

The image quality was great - it was slightly higher than an average 60fps 1080p Twitch stream. Here’s a couple of example screenshots:

seaofthieves01.jpg

seaofthieves02.jpg

The strange blue ‘honeycomb’ icon in the top-left, is Parsec’s hot-spot; you can click that to disconnect/connect with the host machine; or you can recalibrate your gamepad controller - which gets input into the host machine as an XBOX Controller.

There was only one real concern - my laptop reaching 95 degrees in CPU temperature (Speedfan told me it was 88 degrees, but NZXT Cam monitoring told me it was 95). It looks like I’ll need a laptop cooling pad :(

Movies & Media Entertainment #

The other thing I’d like to do, is somehow migrate my personal media collection, into the cloud. Something that’ll let me stream no matter where I am, should I be on holidays, or working.

Cue, Plex Media Server - a system so consistently awesome in delivering movies and shows across both a network and the internet, with built in media conversion and on-the-fly media management, I can’t really see myself needing any other system to deliver access to my collection of media to friends and family.

Whilst the quality isn’t terribly awesome (it’s slightly worse than Netflix is), it delivers a more than watchable result provided the source files themselves are of a high quality.

Here’s an example of one of my favourites, Kingsman: The Secret Service:

1080p-movie-plex.jpg

As you can see, it’s a little murky, but still delivers on the visuals enough. The source file isn’t in a 1080p resolution, but it is still clear enough to watch!

So, all in all - we got through all the fun stuff; being a netizen of the Cloud is a doable thing in Australia - provided you have a 1Gbit internet connection, I suppose.

I’m aware that I’m in an extremely fortunate position to be able to do this; and will continue my experiments and foray into being more integrated into The Cloud™ in time for when the NBN reaches (if ever) my residence.

I’m going to be updating this blog again shortly with some thoughts about being both a “Cloudygamer” and a “Low Spec Gamer” to better handle and optimise my graphical usage; so please stay tuned!

Some Interesting Reading #
 
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