As mentioned in a few of the comments here the gold standards for desktop streaming are Teradici, HP RGS (now zcentral remote boost), and NiceDCV (acquired by amazon). All are limited to Windows or Linux (sorry macOS you'll have to use something like Jump although teradici did just announce they are working on a macOS product for release this year: https://connect.teradici.com/blog/macos-release). Parsec recently came out with a Teams offering that is pretty slick.
There are also some interesting application streaming services out there like fra.me, cameyo, aws appstream, etc..
Fundamentally remote workstations come down to interactivity. If you assume a 60Hz monitor (60 cycles a second), whenever I move my mouse or interact with an application I need all the computation and draw calls to happen on the computer and return/display the modified pixels in 16ms. So that's all sorts of latency but when you are talking about a remote computing environment the largest component will be your network latency. Now humans are incredibly adaptable and so you can go beyond that but the further you get from 16ms the more your brain will have to compensate for the delay. Data can travel around 122 miles per millisecond (2/3rds C). But with all the network switches and things in between it is not a "google maps" type calculation.
Remote workstations have a few advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages include easy provisioning, secure access to data and assets, centralized backups, access to high speed networking for large data sets, easy system config updates (add storage, add gpus, etc..), opex not capex, global systems deployment without going through customs, immutable desktops, etc..
Cons include expensive ($1000/month for a windows workstation. Linux is much cheaper but Adobe and Avid make Linux hard for some creative workflows), limited to hardware provided by cloud provider (quadro's not geforce, slower clock speeds affect single threaded applications, inability for other addon cards like BlackMagic / AJA), limitations for working with HDR, high resolution (beyond 4k), multichannel audio, multiple monitors, VR headsets, require a stable and consistent connection, etc..
For certain creative applications the flexibility of remote workstations is really great. For example if you need to access 100TB of raw video footage and 3d assets. For others (for example where you are painting on a canvas, need to hook up a peripheral like a wacom tablet, or need to hook up a VR headset), they can be non optimal depending on the user, video drivers, application, etc..
There is also an emerging hybrid coming out which leverages browser native applications so you get the local interactivity but offload the processing and assets to a backend in the cloud. Things like Storyboarder, Photopea, or the Blackbird Editor.
Teradici got there start over a decade ago primarily shipping ASICs that would connect to the video out of your GPU via physical cable, encode, and then stream over IP to a zero client (Wyse, eVGA, 10zig) that had another ASIC that would decode. Popular in the military and other areas where you want to provide a terminal. They excelled over other stuff like NX based tools or RDP for a couple reasons:
1) Full screen video playback
2) Optimized protocol for crisp text gives it an edge over the others that are x264/x265 streaming. Teradici will actually dynamically modify their stream based on what you are doing. So working in a DCC you get their crisp text goodness, but if you switch to full screen video they will switch over to x264/265
3) USB bridging for peripheral support
4) Local termination of the mouse cursor. So while draw calls may be delayed (think a trailing line when drawing), the mouse cursor is snappy which helps with latency adaptation.
The most recent version has gone all software and is actually what powers AWS Workspaces product. They also now support 4k and 10 bit color with their Ultra product. Audio is still limited to stereo.
NiceDCV was acquired by Amazon a while back and while it is "free" for ec2 instances, and does support 7.1 audio on Windows, there are some things it doesn't do as great some of the others.
Parsec was originally focused on the remote gaming space and I remember reading about it on reddit years ago where people were using it with Paperspace to run games remotely. Their newish Teams product is pretty cool moves them from a single user type use case to definitely worth a look for enterprise deployments
Great write-up. I was just watching a small presentation for their cloud access tech which you can also use to expose on-premise physical and virtual desktops. Big limitation mentioned was that physical Linux-based desktops are not supported (for both their standard agent and the graphical one).
There are also some interesting application streaming services out there like fra.me, cameyo, aws appstream, etc..
Fundamentally remote workstations come down to interactivity. If you assume a 60Hz monitor (60 cycles a second), whenever I move my mouse or interact with an application I need all the computation and draw calls to happen on the computer and return/display the modified pixels in 16ms. So that's all sorts of latency but when you are talking about a remote computing environment the largest component will be your network latency. Now humans are incredibly adaptable and so you can go beyond that but the further you get from 16ms the more your brain will have to compensate for the delay. Data can travel around 122 miles per millisecond (2/3rds C). But with all the network switches and things in between it is not a "google maps" type calculation.
Remote workstations have a few advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages include easy provisioning, secure access to data and assets, centralized backups, access to high speed networking for large data sets, easy system config updates (add storage, add gpus, etc..), opex not capex, global systems deployment without going through customs, immutable desktops, etc..
Cons include expensive ($1000/month for a windows workstation. Linux is much cheaper but Adobe and Avid make Linux hard for some creative workflows), limited to hardware provided by cloud provider (quadro's not geforce, slower clock speeds affect single threaded applications, inability for other addon cards like BlackMagic / AJA), limitations for working with HDR, high resolution (beyond 4k), multichannel audio, multiple monitors, VR headsets, require a stable and consistent connection, etc..
For certain creative applications the flexibility of remote workstations is really great. For example if you need to access 100TB of raw video footage and 3d assets. For others (for example where you are painting on a canvas, need to hook up a peripheral like a wacom tablet, or need to hook up a VR headset), they can be non optimal depending on the user, video drivers, application, etc..
There is also an emerging hybrid coming out which leverages browser native applications so you get the local interactivity but offload the processing and assets to a backend in the cloud. Things like Storyboarder, Photopea, or the Blackbird Editor.
Teradici got there start over a decade ago primarily shipping ASICs that would connect to the video out of your GPU via physical cable, encode, and then stream over IP to a zero client (Wyse, eVGA, 10zig) that had another ASIC that would decode. Popular in the military and other areas where you want to provide a terminal. They excelled over other stuff like NX based tools or RDP for a couple reasons: 1) Full screen video playback 2) Optimized protocol for crisp text gives it an edge over the others that are x264/x265 streaming. Teradici will actually dynamically modify their stream based on what you are doing. So working in a DCC you get their crisp text goodness, but if you switch to full screen video they will switch over to x264/265 3) USB bridging for peripheral support 4) Local termination of the mouse cursor. So while draw calls may be delayed (think a trailing line when drawing), the mouse cursor is snappy which helps with latency adaptation.
The most recent version has gone all software and is actually what powers AWS Workspaces product. They also now support 4k and 10 bit color with their Ultra product. Audio is still limited to stereo.
NiceDCV was acquired by Amazon a while back and while it is "free" for ec2 instances, and does support 7.1 audio on Windows, there are some things it doesn't do as great some of the others.
Parsec was originally focused on the remote gaming space and I remember reading about it on reddit years ago where people were using it with Paperspace to run games remotely. Their newish Teams product is pretty cool moves them from a single user type use case to definitely worth a look for enterprise deployments