Gaming and High End Graphic Workstations with Horizon

[BostonTechGuy]

Hello Community,

First off I have some personal and professional questions on remote gaming with different products from VMware.  My opening questions are going to be a bit off center for normal Horizon discussions.  However I believe that its has merit here.  I have also had long involved conversations with a number of high positioned VMware employees on this same topics both in the US and Europe with very strange and different answers.  High End VDI and remote gaming machines is a designed but still uncharted waters for VMware and wish to get the Community take on this.  What I want to do personally actually will be also a good "getting feet wet" for a large.. and expensive.. Proof of Concept of High End Linux Graphical VDIs for my client.  They have expressed real interest in this area. The cost is real for them and ROI is better with a VDI environment with shared graphic engines vs very expensive workstations for each employee.  The client is not in the gaming industry but the design and reasons are very closely related..

For the VMware Employees out there.. if you wanted a test case outside the gaming industry.. this is it.

SO....

Lets start with my personal challenge.

I have recently lost my home office.  I longer have really a place to setup my gaming rigs and rest of my servers except in my basement which is not ideal for a home office.  Finished basement is not really an option.  Moving my Vmware white box farms down there is a non issue.  My gaming machine now.. will have to go down there as well.  What am I looking for.. I want a scenarios when I can have my gaming machine located in my server rack in the basement and play my games on lesser spec'd hardware in the main house.. such as a laptop.  Obviously I want the same performance or at least near performance leverage a remote client.  I have been thinking for P2V my current gaming machine build, store it on my of my whitebox nodes, rebuild my gaming rig as a ESXi Host and then move the VM over to it.  Then leverage Horizon View to game with it from my laptop.  I am currently not interested in the STEAM options because I dont want to use my TV as a connection.  I want keyboard and mouse support. I am not looking to leverage multiple VMs off this box or the graphics card.  Straight through dedicated graphics.  One Client for the one box/card. No more. I also need to note that my video card is AMD not NVIDIA.  Is this an issue?  Can I get what I want from the VMware library of applications?  Should I actually look elsewhere? Different PCoIP technology perhaps?

EDIT: Adding this.. could I use GPU Pass-through as well?

Professional Challenge:

My client is looking to do a number of VDIs with high end graphics for their scientific base users.  They have huge graphical data and scans of "samples' that requires lots of real time rendering.  However they dont need it all the time they use a pc.  The scans are pharmaceutical and medical in nature.  So it has been suggest that we look to Horizon View and install high end graphics cards in a number of our hosts for this VDI farm.  Leverage vSGA and vDGA technologies.  Working with VMware to get the discussion going because it seems that everyone thinks they can do this.. but no one has been able to get case studies.  So my company is once again pushing the limits and actually doing something on the edge.. again.. VMware is interested in this because its the "NON-GAMING" scenario they have been looking for to leverage this type of technology.  There is a lot of $$$ involved in this POC.

I would like to get my personal system completed before we start the POC in the office.  Better feeling of what to expect and how it works.  Looking for any and all replies.

Thanks,
Boston Tech Guy