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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, is about to expand its cloud gaming service to the U.S. Customers who live in California can pre-order starting today, and they'll be able to access the service on February 15th. The rest of the U.S. will be able to subscribe later this summer.
Shadow is currently live in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent a gaming PC in a data center near you. You can then access this beefy computer using desktop and mobile apps as well as the company's own little box. It's a full-fledged Windows 10 instance — you can install Steam, Battle.net or whatever you want.
Behind the scene, each user gets a high-end dedicated Nvidia GPU. The company is currently using a mix of GeForce GTX 1080 and Quadro P5000. Shadow also gives you 8 threads on an Intel Xeon 2620 processor, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Overall, it represents 8.2 teraflops of computing power — as a comparison, Microsoft promises 6 teraflops with the Xbox One X.
In Europe, the service currently costs $54 per month, or $42 per month with a three-month commitment, or $36 if you're willing to pay for a year (€44.95/€34.95/€29.95). American customers will pay more or less the same thing for the cheapest tier — $34.95 per month for a one-year commitment.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/04/shadow-launches-its-cloud-computer-for-gamers-in-california/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday January 12 2018, @03:40PM (1 child)
Can kiddies under 18 rent these if they can't afford a1 gaming computer in their room?
Question: if a gaming computer is in a data center, then how would you get all of those frames per second on your local big screen? And latency? The 2nd to last paragraph of TFA addresses that, but the answer kind of defeats the purpose of this. How many people have good latency and bandwidth to the data center. Dense urban areas might be more likely to have this. But what about the lack of net neutrality?
Is it profitable to install crypto currency minors2 for the cost that those instances cost to rent?
The $42 / month rental takes about 3 years to buy a, say, $1,500 box, not considering interest. It seems a popular choice might be to use your college money to buy a superior gaming pc instead of getting an education. In a few months or a year when it becomes boring, you can be looking for some other form of entertainment. Assuming you actually have any college money these days. Ok, borrow money for college, and use that to buy gaming pc. Or for gambling. But I think you are supposed to use your bail money for gambling. Just sayin'.
1"a" or "another"
2because you can pay them less than miners
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 12 2018, @08:15PM
I have some experience with OnShape which is the same deal for 3-d CAD. I'd have a lot more experience with OnShape if its billing scheme were not so weird.
Its an unfair comparison in that OnShape has been around for awhile and this is a startup claim. However, in the past, via whatever magic witchcraft they're using, somehow doing 3-d CAD works fine in a browser.
WRT to awful connections onshape has a usable mobile phone app.
Probably CAD isn't quite as latency sensitive as first person shooters but its not going to be too distant either especially when rotating objects and doing linked animations and so forth.
Just saying in practice it doesn't seem to be an issue in recent history.