Hi All,

I fell out of love with Flight Simulator in the mid-00s after my PC was never fast enough to run the sims well. I felt like I was always behind the curve of tech specs and the latest simulator requirements. But wanted to share a success story for those of you who might be interested in knowing how well X-Plane runs on Shadow.

In the last year I've returned to flightsimming, though this time using X-Plane 11 on the Shadow streaming PC platform (https://shadow.tech). When first researching it, the specs seemed decent enough, and when I compared the price of it against my dream rig, I could happily get five years of use out of Shadow (assuming they're still around in 5 years) for the same price — also noting their claim that the system is never out of date, as it's continuously upgraded. The potential for high latency was a concern, but I figured I'd give it a try and see how it went. I'd been happy with the results up to March, and then, what with being stuck at home for the last month, I decided to see how much more I could push this streaming setup.

I stream everything from Shadow to my 2010 iMac (with a 27" screen). I'm now able to connect my old CH Products rudder pedals, Saitek throttle and my new Alpha yoke to the Shadow PC using VirtualHere software. Shadow provides its own cloud USB peripheral feature, but it's been a bit flakey the past month or so.

I decided the other day that I wanted to see if my dream of a (poor-man's) home cockpit would be a step too far for shadow. A lot of these extra tools run on iPad but require a wifi connection. Thanks to ZeroTier One (I've heard Hamachi will also work) I've been able to connect a couple of tablets to my Shadow PC, and today I was able to take a flight using the RemoteFlight suite of apps, and I also managed to hook up Stratus Insight EFB on my other iPad, giving me an almost complete setup.

For reference, my flying lately has been using the Default C172 (with REP) and Orbx TrueEarth Washington State (SD). I've also done a lot of flying with the Zibo 737, and performance is also pretty good, though not as fast of course as in the Cessna. Figures below relate to the Cessna.

Performance is good, and miles ahead of what I could ever get locally. I'm currently on the Shadow Boost system (their lowest spec, with 12GB ram, a Xeon processor and a GTX 1080 GPU), and I'm getting 40-55 FPS in the sim (which also translates to 40-55 on my screen from the streamed PC) when running at the native 2560x1440 resolution of my iMac (non-Retina display). When the skies are cloudier, and the scenery is more complex, I'm seeing things drop sometimes as low as 25 FPS, but this is rare, and it's still completely usable even then. My X-Plane graphics settings are pretty out, except for water reflections (on level 2 or 3 max) and anti-aliasing.

My only complaint so far is that of storage space. 256GB of SSD doesn't get you very far for flight simulation, but I do have the Shadow Ultra on pre-order (faster processor, 16GB ram and an RTX 2080!!) which comes with 500GB of SSD, and optional extra storage should be available to the masses soon.

Shadow has worked out as a really good option for me. I'm lucky that I live quite near to the datacenter where my Shadow PC is located, and I get reliable a 300mbps internet for not much money (thank you, Netherlands!), but for anyone wondering whether it's worth investigating, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a try!

 

I gave Shadow a test run 18 months ago and it seemed solid. It's ideal for slow-paced stuff such as flight simulation. I just wish they'd let you rent a really strong CPU, such as a 9900.

Awesome writeup.  I'm just braindead when it comes to how this is possible lol.

Do you mind sharing a ballpark cost per month to stream like this?

4 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Awesome writeup.  I'm just braindead when it comes to how this is possible lol.

Do you mind sharing a ballpark cost per month to stream like this?

Thanks — I hoped it might be useful to others looking for alternatives to a really expensive rig.

• So, monthly I pay €14.99 (about $15) for the Shadow Boost service.
• The VirtualHere license (to run multiple USB devices over the cloud) was a one-time fee of $49.
• ZeroTier One is free for personal use.

Later in the summer when I get upgraded to the Shadow Ultra setup the price will go up to €25 per month (at the discounted yearly price), which is what I based the 5-years of use for the price of a dream PC on.

 

Interesting.

Do you actually install the sim on the shadow PC along with addons?  I'm intrigued by this concept and it might come in handy when the new MSFS comes out as well.  Upgrading my PC every few years just to run flight sims may not be the best way to go.

I do not that dual monitors are not supported at this time which might be an issue for me.

 

Edited April 22, 20206 yr by ricka47

 

2 hours ago, ricka47 said:

 

Do you actually install the sim on the shadow PC along with addons?

 

Yes. You get access to a full version of Windows. So you can download and install whatever you like, just as you would on your local PC. 
 

2 hours ago, ricka47 said:

I do not that dual monitors are not supported at this time which might be an issue for me.

 

Yeah, that’s a drawback, but if you can connect an external display via USB then it would allow multiple monitors. I’ve not tried this so myself though, and I don’t know if simply using an hdmi to usb converter is enough to make this work?

Thanks for the responses.  This is certainly something to consider before I do the next big PC upgrade.