Gaming over Remote Desktop (RDP)

[gamernw]

Hi Folks,

I have PC at home with a GPU and adequate horsepower to play Microsoft Flight Simulator and War Thunder. My 7 year old son has a chromebook and I want to let him play games hosted on my PC in a virtual machine over Remote Desktop (RDP)

Is that possible. Two challenges I've encountered are getting the joystick (Logitec Extreme 3D pro) inputs getting passed over RDP and access to the GPU from the VM.

Has anyone gotten this configuration working and do you have any suggestions on how I might make this work

 

[Slasken]

It works fine in my experience. But you can use Steam as well, and it works better. Just log into your account on his PC, and you can just hit Stream.

 

[gamernw]

It works fine in my experience. But you can use Steam as well, and it works better. Just log into your account on his PC, and you can just hit Stream.

Have you also gotten this working over Windows Remote Desktop. Did you need to do anything special to make it all work

When I try it my Logitec extreme 3D pro joystick isn't visible within the VM running War Thunder and Flight Sim. i.e. even though I have the joystick connected to the system running my remote desktop client, the VM running the game doesn't "see " it.

Also the GPU is not available within the VM.

I used https://hardwaretester.com/ to test the availability of these resources within the VM.

I have not tried the streaming over Steam option yet. Can you confirm which option (Steam or RDP ) you've gotten working and also what your GPU and the joystick were

 

[BeardyHat]

RDP isn't likely to work very well and you'd probably encounter more issues if you managed to get your joystick to pass through.

I'd recommend giving Moonlight/Sunshine (Sunshine is Moonlight for AMD GPUs) a try, as it's specifically designed RDP to stream games via a local network connection. I use it to stream to my various devices, including my PS Vita; it works very well.

Install the Moonlight server itself on your gaming machine and then install the app on your Sons Chromebook

Moonlight Game Streaming: Play Your PC Games Remotely

Moonlight allows you to play your PC games remotely on almost any device.

moonlight-stream.org

Moonlight Game Streaming

Open-source client for NVIDIA GameStream

chrome.google.com

 

[gamernw]

RDP isn't likely to work very well and you'd probably encounter more issues if you managed to get your joystick to pass through.

I'd recommend giving Moonlight/Sunshine (Sunshine is Moonlight for AMD GPUs) a try, as it's specifically designed RDP to stream games via a local network connection. I use it to stream to my various devices, including my PS Vita; it works very well.

Install the Moonlight server itself on your gaming machine and then install the app on your Sons Chromebook

Moonlight Game Streaming: Play Your PC Games Remotely

Moonlight allows you to play your PC games remotely on almost any device.

moonlight-stream.org

Moonlight Game Streaming

Open-source client for NVIDIA GameStream

chrome.google.com

Thanks - btw to confirm / clarify. Do you run your moonlight server on bare metal or in a VM. Secondly is this something that works for all games or only some specific games

The scenario i was hoping to achieve is that while I am working on the primary PC (with the GPU) hosting the games my son can play on his chromebook

 

[ZedClampet]

If the games are on Steam, you're better off using Steam. Their system works with no hassle and no noticeable lag. I use it every day.

 

[BeardyHat]

Thanks - btw to confirm / clarify. Do you run your moonlight server on bare metal or in a VM. Secondly is this something that works for all games or only some specific games

The scenario i was hoping to achieve is that while I am working on the primary PC (with the GPU) hosting the games my son can play on his chromebook

Ok, I think I see what you mean.

I'm not exactly sure you can do what you're asking. while the game is running, the client that's receiving the stream would essentially need full control over the server that's running the game. So you'd be unable to actually use the PC while it's also playing a game and streaming it to your sons Chromebook.

You might look into something like GeForce Now, which will do what you're asking, but is a service unto itself, which you'll have to pay for separately.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/

Edit: I should say, to answer your first question: You'd run moonlight on the computer with the GPU to act as the server. From there, you'd connect to it with the Client (your Son's Chromebook) and then it would have control over your desktop GUI, where you could then launch whatever application you like, whether that's a game on Steam, Epic, etc or even something like Wordpad.

 

[gamernw]

Ok, I think I see what you mean.

I'm not exactly sure you can do what you're asking. while the game is running, the client that's receiving the stream would essentially need full control over the server that's running the game. So you'd be unable to actually use the PC while it's also playing a game and streaming it to your sons Chromebook.

You might look into something like GeForce Now, which will do what you're asking, but is a service unto itself, which you'll have to pay for separately.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/

Edit: I should say, to answer your first question: You'd run moonlight on the computer with the GPU to act as the server. From there, you'd connect to it with the Client (your Son's Chromebook) and then it would have control over your desktop GUI, where you could then launch whatever application you like, whether that's a game on Steam, Epic, etc or even something like Wordpad.

Got it, thanks.
I am trying to run the game in a virtual machine because I need to use my primary system for work while he is playing.

 

[BeardyHat]

Thanks - btw to confirm / clarify. Do you run your moonlight server on bare metal or in a VM. Secondly is this something that works for all games or only some specific games

The scenario i was hoping to achieve is that while I am working on the primary PC (with the GPU) hosting the games my son can play on his chromebook

Ok, I think I see what you mean. You don't intend to Stream the

Got it, thanks.
I am trying to run the game in a virtual machine because I need to use my primary system for work while he is playing.

That doesn't seem untenable.

I don't have any experience trying to provision a VM to take exclusive access over a GPU, but I see no reason you couldn't spin up a VM with whatever specs you want, install games and Moonlight and go from there.

Again, not sure how provisioning a GPU for it would work, but seems like something to experiment with. You could download VirtualBox and see what kind of hardware it allows you to provision, that seems like the first step towards what you want. After you've got the machine spun up, experiment with the games you want and see how it works. You may need an additional Windows license, however.

 

[gamernw]

Ok, I think I see what you mean. You don't intend to Stream the

That doesn't seem untenable.

I don't have any experience trying to provision a VM to take exclusive access over a GPU, but I see no reason you couldn't spin up a VM with whatever specs you want, install games and Moonlight and go from there.

Again, not sure how provisioning a GPU for it would work, but seems like something to experiment with. You could download VirtualBox and see what kind of hardware it allows you to provision, that seems like the first step towards what you want. After you've got the machine spun up, experiment with the games you want and see how it works. You may need an additional Windows license, however.

well yes, i tried spinning up a virtual machine using Hyper-V (the native virtualization solution in Windows) the GPU was not visible in the VM and i didn't see any option to enable it