Creative Uses of VNC

I wondered what the limitations of VNC on RiscOS were using !Avalanche, my main system is a Mac Studio, so I looked online and saw performance wise the best server is, and came across VineVNC, and I believe !Avalanche only supports VNC Protocols 3.3 and 3.7 which you can set VineVNC to.

Well I’ve been remoting into my main system all day and decided to see if I could game via VNC, and plated Civilization VI via VNC with a framerate of what must be 2FPS, as it’s turnbased its not unplayable but definiately not as fluid as running directly on my main system.

I wondered what else people have done that would see creative for using VNC.

I usually do it the other way around: working on my remote RPi4 via RealVNC on the Windows PC. It works pretty well. Not exactly fluently, but certainly a lot more than 2FPS.

That would probably make more sense usage wise, than me doing it this way round

Like Paul I mainly run VNC servers on the RISC OS machines. This enables me to have more machines than monitors!

If it wasn’t for VNC allowing me to log in from all over the place I probably wouldn’t use RISC OS at all.

It could definitely do with a performance improvement though, even on the local LAN it is far slower than Linux on the same class of Pi.

Oh and fixing the bug where it always redraws the top line of the changed area after everything else.

I have to say I haven’t plugged my PC into a monitor in years, and whilst it’s not quite the same, I make extensive use of RDPClient for this.

Whilst it works reasonably well, it could do with an update, and getting sound working on modern hardware would be really useful.

I’m surprised it isn’t more widely used.

I have VNC installed on my Pi4, and usually use RISC OS connected to a 17” 2011 MacBook Pro (great screen, keyboard, and trackpad);

A benefit of this setup is that I keep a load of documents (RISC OS PRMs, ARM ARMs, FPA10 manual, and lots more) on the desktop of the MBP, and run VNC fullscreen, so I can then use the ‘switch between screens’ gesture on the MBP, and have several different documents / manuals open, and flip between them and RISC OS with a single trackpad gesture.

This is why I have been so excited to finally get a wifi solution (using ROD Stack on RPi4B) and trying to get wifi working on everything including the RPi400 (haven’t achieved this yet). Means the RISC OS boxen can be placed almost anywhere with a decent wifi signal and accessed remotely using VNC Server. But will also let me have a RISC OS ‘terminal’ (a DeskPiPro with RPi4b 4GB, although a Pi400 would be good too with its smaller overall footprint with inbuilt keyboard) in the shed/workshop that can access the PC in the office and its file store using Avalanche – IRIS Web Browser seems to be better at printing out technical pages than Firefox on the PC or Phone (usually via PDF back to the PC printer – the printers are all wifi linked too) so has found a use case in the workshop, eg printing out pages from the tractor service manual to then get oil/grease/dirt/etc on the paper and not the computer/keyboard/screen. I’m sure a tablet solution would work too but somehow paper still seems to work better in a grubby environment.

A particular use case I have been using whilst building / re-building some RISC OS systems:
Use the Win10 PC in the office to VNC into the RISC OS machine that is being built (once basic Wifi and VNCServer up and running) – work on and monitor the RISC OS system whilst doing other things on the PC. When get called into the house for meals with children etc I can then use RealVNC client on the Android phone into the Win10 box from the house (have a wifi link from the shed/workshop/office to the house – approx 50m) and check on the PC as well as see what is going on the RISC OS Box. Sometimes I VNC direct to the RISC OS box but others I VNC into the W10 box and observe the VNC session from the W10 box to the RISC OS system. And it all works on Wifi now – fantastic (except the RPi400)!
Android Phone uses the RealVNC client
W10 box uses the TightVNC server and the TightVNC client (W10 also uses RealVNC to access Remote Pi – see next post)
RISC OS Box uses VNCserver maintained/updated by Jeffrey Lee and Avalanche for the client

Another use case:
We have a remote property in the city (we are country based).
I have an automated sprinkler system there using the ‘Irrigation Caddy’ controllers (from Texas).
The sprinkler controller used to have access to a cloud server which one could remote control the unit anywhere using a web browser – however the company has gone bust and subsequently the cloud server is no longer active either.
I have a Wifi Router at the city site using a 4G mobile sim with a static IP address.
I have a RPi Zero there running an older edition of Raspberry Pi OS (newer versions of RPi OS have problems running web browsers on the zero), connecting to the router.
The RPiZero is running a VNCserver.
I connect to the RPiZero using RealVNC on the W10 box – and then access the Sprinkler controller via Chrome browser on RPi OS on the local LAN (city) and can set and control the sprinklers remotely.
It is a bit slow as the sprinkler controller on the Pi needs to use Chrome – have Netsurf on it too but netsurf doesn’t display the controller menu unfortunately – but it works.
Can also access the RPi Zero from my Android Phone.
I can access the RPi Zero when connected to the Local LAN with RISC OS as well using Avalanche (when physcialy present) – have not yet tried this remotely – will let you know if I can use the RO systems to access the remote Pi and then the sprinklers – a project for the weekend.

If you’re doing performance critical stuff like games or video, I strongly recommend installing the ROD TCP/IP stack for VNC use – it can dramatically increase the throughput (or at least, does for me). I’ve seen throughput figures in excess of 10+ MB/s although it’ll depend on the setup for sure. To be fair, I haven’t tried gaming via VNC, but I often test youtube for performance checks.

I also use Avalanche & vncserver on my RO boxes, and RealVNC on Win11 (and Android). One annoyance is that I have not found a way to pass a mouse menu button from Win11 (which has a touchpad with only two ‘buttons’) to RO. Does anyone have a solution to this? I would expect a 3-button USB mouse would work, but I do not have a spare to use ATM. I have also seen the vncserver config swap_adjust_menu, but I also use Adjust!

Has anyone tried RO over VNC on a Android phone or Tablet?

Has anyone tried RO over VNC on a Android phone or Tablet?

Yes, I have, from an Android Tablet using RealVNC. Works fine for occasional use – keyboard & mouse available on-screen.

“Has anyone tried RO over VNC on a Android phone or Tablet?”

Have also done this on iOS in the past – haven’t tried since WiFi became available in RISC OS, but I used a small USB powered wireless access point to link to the Pi using an iPad.

If you’re doing performance critical stuff like games or video, I strongly recommend installing the ROD TCP/IP stack for VNC use – it can dramatically increase the throughput…

I agree. I recently installed the ROD stack on my Pi4B and Avalanche’s performance displaying my Win11 laptop server’s screen on the RO desktop showed marked improvement: video on the laptop was viewably displayed for the first time.

Noted today when accessing my RPi 400 with a network cable (as WiFi only works for 20-30 mins max before starting to have problems and ultimately freezing the machine – although can still be CTRL-BREAK or ALT-BREAK out) using TightVNC Viewer from the W10 machine over gigabit networking, how fast it is. Had got used to the lag when using with Wifi on the 4B. Over cabled networking I can actually watch mpeg video on the VNC viewer on W10 that is playing on the RPI 400! OK not 100%, but still impressive, previously on WiFi the picture would generally not display. (Do have the RPi 400 clocked at 2000Mhz -using the ROD stack). Think this is the same as George’s observation but going the other direction.

This was a old thread! I have Xvfb running with a session on my headless linux pc. On top of that I have x11vnc that shares that virtual xserver. The result is a Xsession that don’t go away , and no need to display it on physical screen. I am running it in 800×600. Performance is ok on my Titanium.

May not be quite what the OP was thinking about, but RISC OS Pyromaniac offers a VNC server as one of its graphics implementations. This means that you can connect to a running sessions’s graphics presentation – either with input, or as purely observer.

Why might you do this ? Well, if you were presenting something to people, users could watch the session with the ‘read only’ settings, whilst you controlled the system. This was the way in which I demonstrated playing Rail28 from a remote cloud server in one of my presentations a couple of years ago.

But of course, that’s not the only thing you can do. In September last year I created an SSH server implementation of RISC OS Pyromaniac which allows arbitrary users to connect and have isolated environments which they can interact with in a terminal. You can SSH in to RISC OS, or SCP files in and out, and you can connect to a VNC server that is unique to you.

A video of the SSH connection with VNC is here: https://share.gerph.org/s/LdNwqSp5Bxfkms2

It shows an SSH to a server and then running some graphical examples from the Jan Vibe archive.

More recently the SSH access has been integrated into the build environment that I’ve been working on. This allows you to build code and then execute it directly. And if you launch RISC OS with a `—vnc` argument, you get a VNC session in a similar way.

A video of the example is here: https://share.gerph.org/s/LSNRK4MVAcBjqO9

Again, I’ve used the Jan Vibe archive to show off the graphics working and demonstrate the environment. This is, I feel, pretty creative.