i experimented for a month now by using amazon's amis for game streaming and here is what i found:
- otoys amis are the only ones that will stream sound, so those amis available from nvidia in the amazon market wouldn't work for this kind of cloud usage (believe me, been there - done that ...)
- i couldn't use firefox newer than stable or any other browsers (safari8 in yosemite, chrome beta/canary) with otoy's orbx.js browser streaming technology (which was the reason for me experimenting with other ways for connecting to the ami)
- i found that octane cloud workstation did work best (better than cloud desktop), cause it didn't come with restrictions for installing applications (like steam for an example)
- you can use other remote-desktop solutions like splashtop (streaming is great, however keyboard control or mouse control is horrible for gaming), or also googles remote desktop extension for chrome browsers (should also work in chrome os on chromebooks)
- i'm not exactly sure, otoy is going to like or deserve this, so i'm not going into details here, but let's say logmein hamachi, steam beta on your ami and your local machine does wonders when it comes to game streaming, it even let me use my local xbox 360 usb-controller ...
- the otoy gui (the screen you reach within the otoy's browser-streaming) is "online" immediatly after you started the ami, that means if you install splashtop, google chrome remote desktop, hamachi, steam so they would startup when windows boots, you would never ever again have a need for rdp or otoy's browser tech. you have to install the goods in the otoy-gui not in the admin-shell you would reach by microsoft rdp
- this combination worked wonders for games like dirt3, plattformers, adventures, ... i normaly wouldn't be able to play on my mac, especially valves technology for "inhome"
streaming is really working great, even at 1080p 60hz (i even were able to try 4k streaming with a not so hardware hungry game) - in theory, cause in reality the nvidia grid k520 card connected to all those gpu-accelerated ami's in amazon's market are comparable to a nvidia gtx660 at the moment, which simply is not powerful enough for games like battlefield4 in higher settings. i'm not exactly sure, but it also seemed like the stream wasn't hardware decoded, so i had the bandwith available but got "slow capture" alerts, which i guess, would mean that the stream was captured slower than the it could be sent over the net to the client
so to summarize this: game streaming is here (or let's say your own "onlive"), it simply works, the only culprit for me at the moment is the rather small performance of the nvidia card dedicated to the ami, having twice the power would give me the possibility to even play highend AAA titles in the cloud, if you are satisfied by with 720p and 30hz it should suffice already, of course if you have the bandwith available only