![]() Unfortunately, many of these services often fall prey to latency, which can render the whole experience unplayable.īlade’s Shadow cloud computer service look to avoid that by only offering Shadow in areas where it has data centers to ensure the lowest possible latency. This means you don’t need to buy your own high-end gaming PC, and can enjoy the latest titles on an older and less capable machine. You simply rent a virtual PC from the cloud, while your own mouse, keyboard, or controller input is sent to the server. The allure of cloud gaming is simple enough to understand. Sorry, this post got much longer than I intended, but I hope someone got some useful information out of it.Blade thinks it has figured out cloud gaming with its Shadow cloud PC serviceĬloud-based game streaming is a notoriously tough nut to crack, but French startup Blade thinks it just may have figured out how. It’s only $5/mo, but it’s a pain if you use the workshop. And all your mod settings and gameplay settings are reset every time. It would take around 15-20 mins to get into a game when I played, and I would say around 20% of the time, GFN would crash during loading. So, you have to re-download all your mods and assets every time you played CS, and Steam has to revalidate your CS install every time, too. You are basically issued a new virtual PC ever time you load up. However, GFN is a pain in the ass if you use the Steam workshop. Last thing: I was using GeForce Now, and I actually achieved very similar gameplay results. Shadow does say that your computer is locked by your login credentials, but I still don’t put anything sensitive on there. I still use my home desktop for work and it runs fine for that. I would need to use shadow for 8-10 years for the equivalent cost of a new computer I would want to invest in. I assume they will upgrade machines over time, but maybe that is optimistic. But, for $15/mo or $144/year, I don’t think it’s a bad deal. I’ll probably use this for at least a year, and see where the world is after the pandemic. My city currently has around 100k population, and the CPU sits around 50% usage during gameplay, with around 9GB of RAM usage, and 10-15% of the GPU being used. It takes about 3 mins for shadow to boot CS up. I have about 60 mods and hundreds of assets in my game. Their site says 1080GTX or better, and the Quadro P5000 is not better (for gaming), but it’s more than sufficient for CS with all the graphic settings turned up, and I’m even running a couple graphic enhancing mods. Not stellar specs, but much better than my 10 year old (primarily for work) desktop. They essentially split the processor and reduced the clock speed for the virtualization. The virtual computer I was issued runs a 2014 model Xeon E5-2667 v3 processor with 4 cores, 8 threads at 2.50Ghz, 12GB of 2400mHz RAM, and an Nvidia Quadro P5000. I am usually downloading around 30Mbps when playing CS. So, the value proposition might be reduced if you have a data cap. ![]() If you have an internet plan with a data cap, be warned, Shadow will use a lot. I run CS at 1920x1080, so I reduced my resolution of the stream to 1080 on the Shadow side. My home internet connection is 300/30, and that seems to be more than sufficient to run Shadow without any degradation of a 1080 stream, and probably a 1440 stream. But, as many of you know, latency isn’t a huge issue with CS. There are about 13 (I believe) states that are not optimized and they will warn you prior to ordering if your state is not optimized. To be fair, they did warn me when I signed up that I may experience issues due to Arizona not being an optimized state. I assume I’m using a Los Angeles based data center, and while I get very good DL/UL speeds, my latency is around 30ms. A couple of caveats: I live in Arizona, where they do not currently have a data center. So, I signed up for Shadow, and so far, it’s been great. My old computer just couldn’t handle Cities Skylines anymore, and with everything going on in the world, dropping a couple grand on new PC wasn’t the most prudent decision. I just recently signed up for Shadow Tech’s cloud pc service, and while I’ve only had for it week, I thought I would share my experience here since Cities Skylines is the primary reason I signed up for it. ![]()
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