I am a student in polytechnic school and I’m currenctly working on my thesis project. For my thesis, I am trying to host virtual machines with GPU passthrough to be used as gaming systems. However, I am running into some issues, like anti-cheat to name one, and would be interested knowing how services like Geforce Now have managed around this issue. Is there information available about the Geforce Now server environment, like the host OS, number of VMs per server, GPUs used, anti-cheat and so on? I don’t have any problems that need fixing, but I would like to include a chapter about these in my thesis and further my understanding in this topic. Thank You.
Hi there @Mooli and (belated) welcome to our NVIDIA developer forums.
Sadly much of the information you are looking for is proprietary and not shared publicly.
The OS is a custom OS based on Linux that runs the VMs, and the GPUs used are whatever we need them to be. The FAQs on GeForce Now explain more about what kind of GPU performance level you will receive on the client side. But the server side is highly dynamic and hybrid to accommodate a highly scalable system.
That was the response I was afraid to receive but still the most sensible, regarding the subject.
I will look into the links you provided for me. Thank you for those.
I do understand that the technology and its implementation is private information, but would you be able to answer me this. Does Nvidia make co-operation with other companies like for example Valve to get the game ownership and Steam client on Geforce Now? For example, when playing a Steam game on GeForce Now, I am only able to launch that one game on steam, all other games on my Steam account are hidden somehow. This is just to get an idea how deeply integrated the system is.
Yes, the team that owns GeForce Now works with Valve to allow a smooth gaming experience. And any limitation you see is according to how Steam works. I am not aware that you could play two different games concurrently if you try launching them from the Steam client.
Similarly with other Launchers, as the underlying system is not entirely acting as a standard Windows Desktop environment. That is maybe a small bit I can disclose since it is public knowledge as far as I know. If there would be simply a Windows VM with Launchers installed, there would be too many security risks involved. So while the GFN Launcher looks and acts very proprietary, it has to adhere to the rules and constraints of the original Game Launchers.
So it seems that there is quite a lot of work that has been done to integrate GeForce Now and game launchers (and everything else). This confirms my belief that it is basically impossible to recreate something even remotely similar at home. I will take this new knowledge into account when writing my thesis. Thank you for your time.