TextureMind Desktop

TMD version 0.4 is available in the download page. This is one of the most powerful release ever. The software has been optimized to achieve higher performance on low-end and high-end machines. Now it’s possible to change settings from tmdserver command line and to activate lossless compression (> tmdserver –lossless). This version was capable of streaming a full HD (1920×1080) at 50 fps using all the available 1 Gbps bandwidth with small CPU usage (about 5% on 16 units CPU). If your host machine allows it, you can stream a Full HD at 60 FPS or more with turbojpeg encoding. Now it’s possible to achieve also 120 FPS or more, if your host machine has enough power for handling it (remember that for now it’s software encoding / decoding, so you need a good client machine as well).

I’m working hard in these days to release version 0.4 beta with many improvements and news. This time, it will be possible to change settings from command line, so you will have the chance to tune the remote experience for your needs. You will be able to enable/disable quality updates, enable lossless encoding, limit the framerate and change quality. There are also many improvements to reach 120 FPS and more on high-end systems (the encoder will be still software with turbojpeg). The big news will be lossless encoding with QOI/LZ4 for the screen in movement, without the need for quality updates. This option is quite expensive and it can be used to probe networks with wide bandwidth (at least 1 Gbps) and low RTT.

TextureMind Desktop version 0.3 is available in the download page. Now you have higher framerate with jpeg compression and lossless quality update with QOI/LZ4 compression. No more huge logs. The log level is info by default and it can be changed to debug from command line. For the first time, the build is dynamic with all the component modules in *.dll files instead of a big *.exe file.

Outstanding news. I added a new codec which makes use of Quite Ok Image (QOI) format for lossless encoding. The encoded image is compressed also with LZ4 to save more space (but it can be optionally compressed with ZIP as well). The new codec is used mainly for quality updates but it is so fast that can be used also to stream lossless video streams with high bandwidth usage. The optimizations done at transport protocol level makes it possible to stream lossless videos in FullHD with high frame rate in a giga network with low CPU usage on middle/high-end hardware. Soon I will upload a video on youtube with a demo on a 1 Gbps network with lossless encoding and high frame rate.

Finally I added support for quality updates. For those who don’t know, quality updates are static areas in the screen which are updated to increment visual quality without impacting performance of moving pixels. The implementation is so optimized that didn’t touch the performance of before, maintaining scenarios with 60 fps in Full HD.

Even today I worked hard to fix some nasty bugs in version 0.2. In order:

• Random memory leaks with multiple clients connected to the same host machine
• Random gigantic logs produced by a mistake in flushing queues for async pattern

I also added the possibility to send frame updates with NULL payload for debugging.

Now you can download version 0.2.1 in download area with the patches applied.

Early versions of TextureMind Desktop won’t have h.264 or hevc encoding, because those codecs cost money and the software (at least initially) will be free. For hardware encoding, the choice will fall on AV1, which can be used freely. For software encoding, things get more complicated. AV1 would be a great choice for visual quality and bandwidth usage, but it is too slow to encode on low-powered machines, so it will be left as an option. On the other hand, TurboJpeg in fullscreen has proven to be a rocket, but it takes up too much bandwidth, so this choice will also be left as an option. VP9 could be a good alternative to the slower AV1 software encoding.
In conclusion, TMD will have AV1 in hardware, vp9 on mid-end machines and AV1 (optionally) on high-end GPU less machines. Hardware encoding will (at least initially) be supported via FFmpeg libraries, so it will cover several combinations, including NVidia, AMD, Intel Quick Sync, just to name a couple.

The very first version of TextureMind Desktop, now available in the download area. Since it is the first beta version, you may find some bug, crashes and lot of limitations. Note that the software is in continuous development, so most of them will be fixed as soon as possible. In the next version, there will be less limitations and more features implemented. Thanks.

Finally TextureMind Desktop (TMD) has its own website in texturemind.com domain. Here you can find all the updates, downloads, documentation, videos and more related to TMD software. Welcome!