🖥️ [Compatibility] Future Support for AMD and Intel GPUs

[Martinligabue]

Will AMD and Intel GPUs ever be supported by the project? Is this a feasible plan for one day, or will it be limited to Nvidia? The pros and cons are pretty obvious I think, while more GPUs would mean more options for self hosting, it would make it harder to test and code for all the different GPUs.

[wanjohiryan]

Hey @Martinligabue

Our project is currently deeply integrated with Nvidia technology, which plays a very crucial role in Netris' functionality.

Here's why:

1. Gamescope Integration: We use Gamescope because of its gamer-friendly features. It runs immediately within the container without the need for a traditional desktop environment. However, Gamescope requires a hardware-accelerated Xorg/Wayland environment with EGL/GLX compatibility, which we have achieved by using Nvidia GPUs. This has been beautifully done without needing the --privileged flag thanks to @ehfd 's work on docker-nvidia-glx .

2. Screen Recording and Encoding Capabilities: We use gpu-screen-recorder as the screen and audio recorder. Our use of the gpu-screen-recorder is critical for capturing game audio and video with low latency. Unlike other tools like ffmpeg or OBS, that first transfer data to the CPU, gpu-screen-recorder enables direct recording and encoding on the GPU. This efficiency, combined with capabilities to instantly replay and save the last few minutes of gameplay like nvidia shadowplay does (which will be used in a future feature State Share) makes it an important tool in our pipeline.

Given these requirements and the difficulty of supporting various GPUs, we are currently focusing primarily on Nvidia GPUs. While this decision may limit our project's compatibility with AMD and Intel GPUs, it allows us to get the maximum performance and reliability out of our tech-stack.

PS: If (or when) we can get Xorg/Wayland operating on an AMD/Intel GPU within a Docker container without the 'privileged' flag, we may reconsider this decision. That is the largest hurdle.

[Pandapip1]

Neither of those projects depend on having an NVIDIA GPU. Both gamescope and gpu-screen-recorder support AMD and Intel dGPUs using Mesa and VAAPI.

[wanjohiryan]

Hey, Nestri now supports AMD and Intel.

With a lot of help from @DatCaptainHorse it is now ready. Please pull the latest nightly image, please open an issue when you encounter any bugs.

[DatCaptainHorse]

@Martinligabue let me know if you face any troubles, there are some gotchas that aren't documented yet (like there's some required parameters for docker/podman)

[Martinligabue]

@DatCaptainHorse I think I'm not able to solve this error

Unable to find image 'ghcr.io/nestriness/nestri/server:nightly' locally
nightly: Pulling from nestriness/nestri/server
47248bd506cc: Pull complete 
(...)
71704b60fe73: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:4f4bc314586477d74971bb834cc3d79eb5e9ec9f8b113c9cb2ea395ab5338c36
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/nestriness/nestri/server:nightly
docker: Error response from daemon: could not select device driver "" with capabilities: [[gpu]].

[DatCaptainHorse]

@Martinligabue what's your docker run command looking like? Do note that --gpus all option is NVIDIA only.

[Martinligabue]

@DatCaptainHorse After removing the gpus it runs until the game execution, where it does not say anything and just gets me back to the cli prompt.

sudo docker run --device=/dev/dri --name nestri -it --entrypoint /bin/bash -e SESSION_ID=3d7VXvmIvj5ADPzI -v "$(pwd)":/game -p 8080:8080/udp --cap-add=SYS_NICE --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN ghcr.io/nestriness/nestri/server:nightly
---------
nestri@a6fbc1b8451b:/game/common/Mayonnaise Simulator$ nestri-proton -wr Mayonnaise\ Simulator.exe 
Creating default prefix: /home/nestri/.wine

After this I get the prompt back and can rerun the same previous command, but with no output anymore.
Isn't there a way to connect locally instead of going to nestri website? There might be some problems in the network that could make this harder to debug

[DatCaptainHorse]

@Martinligabue since you used --entrypoint /bin/bash the container is never able to start Xorg along with other things, meaning graphics can't be used. Run the container in 1 terminal and attach to it's bash terminal from 2nd one.