Just a concept at this point. My TTRPG group has been toying with adding digital tools to our game sessions and it got me thinking after I saw Wendell’s SR-IOV video. I was thinking a server in a room, with Virtual stations at the table, foldup screens at each seat station and a large screen, under glass top. GM, up to 6 Players and large screen, so system would have to run up to 8 Virtual machines.
Not hard core gaming, just Roll20 or Fantasy grounds type VTTs.
My father and I could craft the table part np, just need to know if and how hard/much it would be to do this using virtual machines.
Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Gamma World etc.
There would be individual monitors for character sheet and choosing actions in the Virtual table top.
Game master station would be for pulling up resources, so ultra wide, or possibly 3 screens to simulate a game master screen, but also so the GM can see the Virtual table top and manage the NPCs.
Another perspective: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a digital system that actually improved a d&d game. My experience has been that it just adds complications and distractions
Definitely post pictures of whatever you end up with, though! Would be awesome to see something implemented well
For now it is a mind project, but I am putting together a testing machine and I will try and learn how to use SR-IOV on it. I just need to figure out the design and requirements to run that many virtual machines at once.
Cheapest functional, stable option would be the one they choose I am sure. Small shop, but trying to provide space for local gamers. The option for ones who can come in and those unable to come in, is why the digital even came up.
I just wanted to try to learn SR-IOV and this sounded like a great goal to try and reach.
What if someone with a Nivida 3000 or 40000 wants to use a virtual GPU unlock? What is he to do?
Why can’t Nividia 3000 and 4000 graphic cards be split?
So are you speaking of using thin clients to connect to VMs? I do think Keyboard Mouse and Monitor for each player and Keyboard, Mouse and Muli Monitor (4) for the GM are a must.
Does it have to be done on a single GPU?
Buy cheap used cards and do something similar to 4 Gamers, 1 CPU.
Each player will have their own gpu, and the whole thing will be based on one cpu and virtualization.
but its the Mainboard PCIe slots and Lanes that make the trouble.
I would say 3 Player one GM so 4 VMs each has its on GPU… that means the GPUs must be single slots and low power and use very few PCIE Lanes.
or go BIG AMD Epyc, BIG Board many PCIE Lanes, BIG Money, BIG powerdraw, BIG Case
or Buy one GPU like maybe one with much VRAM do the VGPU hack and use cheaper thin clients with IGPUs as Parsec devices
both ways are viable
For the Pen and Paper Adventures, i would Go the parsec Route all day
No Problems with Video Output
No Problems with USB
Technicly cheap
From the base Variant
13th gen and IGPU sriov
to
13th gen and IGPU and 2000series VGPU Hack
Very small Investment
Good parsec Clients are N4000 Based devices.
1080p60hz or rudimentary 4K60hz
There are Mini PCs and Mini Laptops out there for around 40-80€ a pop
i want a Main PC/server with all the VMs those VM’s have Parsec installed.
Parsec is an in House streaming Applikation. It captures the frames encodes them and send the “Video” “USB” stream to an thin client, that client decodes the streams and manages the inputs.
The Thinclient is an fully working Windows or Linux maschine with Parsec installed.
pls connect the whole clients over LAN and a switch.
on the Thin client is connected a Monitor a Keyboard and a sound device.
So yes we are talking every Player has its own Monitor its own Keyboard its own Sound
the GM can have depends on the Thinclients display output options more than one Display
a good option for player clients re older All in one PC a few of them have touch displays, you need a good 1080P/60hz encode/decode capability on those maschines.