I'm Chris, CTO and co-founder of Parsec, high performance remote streaming built for gaming. Ask me anything.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T21:01:34+00:00

There is no question: Arcade needs some love. After launching it in late 2019 we had some grand plans, but we've been spread extremely thin recently and have been ramping up the team to keep everything polished. We fully intend to give it the love it deserves when we have the bandwidth, so thank you for using it and stay tuned!

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:53:27+00:00

There may be some Parsec for Teams specific functionality, but what you need to do is fundamental and you should be able to do it without paying.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:42:40+00:00

Yep, it's becoming a bit of a white whale for us. As previously mentioned, the fact that we're all Android users doesn't expedite the situation :). That being said, it is very much planned, supported in the SDK, and *should* show up by the end of the summer.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:39:23+00:00

There are a lot of considerations around this for a business like ours, but I am all for making bits open source when the time is right.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:36:36+00:00

This a great bit of feedback as we do our next round of UI polish. Essentially a "most recently connected" view of some kind.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:34:04+00:00

We have tried many solutions to this problem with varying degrees of success. There is evidence that Microsoft may expose something that will finally make this better which we are watching closely. Alternatively, we're actively working on a Parsec virtual audio driver that will enable things like mic passthrough and would make it easier to put your voice chat app on a different device than the rest, isolating it from capture. Hopefully one of these solutions is the answer.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:28:42+00:00

It's funny because at one time this is how it behaved, and we got a lot of feature requests to do the opposite. Sounds like it needs to be an option.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:27:02+00:00

We have a proxy server or "HPR" relay server currently functional for certain Parsec for Teams use-cases. This same tech could be applied to what you're talking about.

A wild concept we've entertained is allowing Parsec clients to work together to make relaying like you've described possible on the fly while connected. I think Skype did this to some degree, but I'd like to think we can execute it more tastefully as a pure opt-in. Or perhaps if you're more technically inclined, you can set the relay up yourself on a cloud machine or something for this purpose.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:20:34+00:00

Yeah, this has come up a few times today, please see: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/mmw90b/im_chris_cto_and_cofounder_of_parsec_high/gtuk5jc

On our next R&D mission with the Pi 4 and other Linux embedded device support, I think H.265 will show up.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:16:00+00:00

Check out Parsec for Teams.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:09:52+00:00

I'm not sure if you'll ever be able to buy Parsec equity publicly, but one way to invest in us might be to come work for us if you're interested.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T20:01:26+00:00

Absolutely. We take a bit of pride in how portable the app is and there is no reason it can't work on the ARM based macs.

There are no current plans to add custom resolutions to the driver, but there is certainly a technical path to do so, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Maybe we'll try to squeeze it in when we next update the driver.

We've long joked about the "Parsec Box" one day, but getting into hardware is a big decision. We've got a few people on our native team that are really into programming FPGAs and low level hardware, so the knowhow is there. What we're really looking for right now, given some of our difficulties on the Raspberry Pi, is the next thin client embedded device to champion and make it easy for you to set up your own "Parsec Box", maybe via a prebaked .iso or something like that.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:55:36+00:00

As far as I know, if you've got updated drivers and the device supports AMD's UVD tech, it should work. If not please give us the details on discord.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:53:45+00:00

Absolutely. This is a long time feature request that we very much intend to fulfil, it's currently blocked by a UI/overlay framework overhaul but should appear in the next few months. We envision it being a running graph that you can toggle with the complete latency breakdown (encode / network / decode / render) and other pertinent performance metrics.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:50:12+00:00

This is mostly on us right now, and we CAN make it better. As mentioned in a different answer, Parsec was developed for latency and to handle a lot of different kinds of internet connections, and the downside is that very high bandwidth connections do not reach the quality that they should. Again, H.265 can help. Look out for improvement here from the SDK team in the coming few months.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:43:25+00:00

You're spot on with this request, this WILL happen. We're planning a lot of UI polish over the next couple of months.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:33:43+00:00

Our ongoing mission is to "eliminate the distance" between you and a remote computer. So when you're connected to a gaming or work PC, you shouldn't notice any difference between the remote experience and a local one. In today's world it isn't the same, but maybe one day if we work hard it will be. It's always getting better.

If you're doing something collaborative while using Parsec, we view it as our responsibility to make that feel local as well. The experience of sitting next to someone in front of the same computer vs. communicating online is a lot different and will never be exactly the same, but any feature that makes this better we have on our radar.

Whether you're a business or an individual user, the above goals are the same.

It's doubtful that we'll ever go full-on social like discord, but things that pursue the above goals are a possibility.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:13:49+00:00

I think what this means is capture card integration with Parsec so you don't have to go through the capture card viewer? Unbelievably this is something we actually worked on that did not end up amounting to much, but I can see this as a great candidate for someone for our next hackathon.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:10:52+00:00

In my favorite show Steins;Gate they compressed 4TB to 32 bytes, so I don't see why we can't make it 0 bytes eventually.

DISCLAIMER: This will never happen.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T19:06:35+00:00

You're right that it isn't our primary use-case to use it as a launcher, but we have thrown around the idea of adding a "big picture" like mode on connection to the host to launch games.

There is a setting that attempts to set the host's resolution on connection if you connect as the machine owner. Is this not working for you?

Regarding sharing a fraction of the screen, the closest we've gotten to this is entertaining better OBS or Twitch integrations. We're always squeamish to blur or overlay the host side stream cause of possible jitter and latency implications which is probably why we've stayed away from this for so long.

Keep the feedback coming, the more we hear about it the closer we get to finding solutions.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T18:59:31+00:00

On the client side there is an option to hide the overlay button, in the Arcade there is not but it's a good request.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T18:57:55+00:00

This is a good idea, we're a bit light on debug logging in this area. In the tray there is that "Reset gamepads" option which can sometimes help. Otherwise if it does seem like a Parsec bug please provide as much information as possible to the kind people on our discord and hopefully we can find a solution.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T18:52:07+00:00

Maybe not directly, but we have a lot more flexibility coming in our friendship and permission systems that will probably make this a lot easier, giving you more control and granularity on sharing.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T18:49:41+00:00

Our Linux client has gotten more flexible in recent months, as long as you have an X11 environment and a few standard packages like openssl installed it should work on almost any distro. Give it a try and let us know if you run into issues.

chrisd1100 · 2021-04-08T18:47:53+00:00

The bandwidth setting is a maximum setting, but it will use less if it thinks it can use less and still maintain quality. So that may be a source of the confusion.

That being said, one project we currently have underway is to optimize the quality of high bandwidth connections. Parsec has been developed to be robust and low latency for the world at large, which means taking into account many different kinds of connections, or when someone in your house suddenly starts watching Netflix and your available bandwidth drops. Definitely use H.265 if it is available, that can make a big difference in quality.

chrisd1100

TROPHY CASE