Remote Graphics Software

HP ZCentral Remote Boost, formerly known as HP Remote Graphics Software or HP RGS is a client-server remote desktop software developed by HP Inc. and initially launched in 2003.[1] HP RGS enables remote access to high-performance workstations (or virtual workstations[2]) from many different devices including other Workstations, PCs, Windows tablets, MacBooks and thin-clients.[3] The software is targeted at remote access to graphic intensive applications, Video editing and complex 3D models. Collaboration, or screen sharing, between multiple users, remote USB and sound, as well as Windows and Linux are also supported. HP markets RGS for "Real-Time Collaboration", "Workstation-Class Mobility" and "Remote Workers"[4]

Remote Graphics Software
Developer(s)HP Inc.
Stable release
7.7.1 / May 2020 (2020-05)
Operating systemRed Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, HP ThinPro, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and for the RGS receiver macOS 10.10, 10.11, 10.12
TypeRemote desktop software (client software and server software)
LicenseProprietary
Websitehp.com/go/rgs

In 2020 HP updated and re-branded RGS as part of the HP ZCentral Solution.[5] ZCentral Remote Boost was awarded an Engineering Emmy Award in 2020 for enabling TV productions around the world to make it to air despite teams being unable to access their usual studios.[6]

With HP RGS all the processing, including hardware-accelerated graphics with the latest OpenGL or DirectX rendering is done on the workstation and only compressed bitmap images (the screen) are sent to the client device. HP RGS is distinguished by its proprietary compression algorithms which allows for real-time transmission of complex 3D images and video, which traditional remote desktop protocols struggle with. This opens up the use of remote desktops and thin clients to graphics-intensive industries such as CAD, oil and gas exploration, animation, architecture engineering and construction which previously required local workstations.

Performance improvements in RGS 7.1 opened up even more demanding use cases including remoting 4K displays, delivering 60 frames per second, or remote desktop sessions of 3D CAD applications with peak bandwidth usage under 3 Mbit/s.[7][8][9] In 2014 HP released RGS 7.0 which brought remote workstation use cases to tablet devices.[10] The remote desktop tool has shown resilience against latency and packet loss when compared to Citrix HDX 3D or Teradici's PCoiP.[11][12]

There are two components to the software, the sender (for the workstation or server) and the receiver (for the client device). The software supports OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX. The software is sold stand alone for servers, virtual machines and non HP Workstations. HP started including RGS with all of its desktop Z brand workstations starting with version 5.4.7 in 2011.[13] RGS can be downloaded from HP and run on HP Z Workstations and ZBook mobile workstations for free. Other hardware requires a license for the HP RGS sender. The receiver is a free download for Windows, Linux and macOS clients.

An early version of the HP RGS video compression codec, is derived from a patented system developed by HP Labs and used in the NASA Mars Rover program.[14]

Industry Use Cases

HP Remote Graphics software is used in many industries including:

Oil and Gas

HP RGS is used for its performance with high visual fidelity and support for Linux-based applications. The massive amounts of data going into the visualizations make a server/client model ideal.[15]

Financial Traders

HP RGS stability and support for multiple high resolution displays and fast update rate have made it ideal for this market since the release of the HP Blade Workstation solution in 2006.[16]

Animation, TV, Film and Special Effects

HP RGS support for remote video editing, Linux-based applications, real time collaboration and visual fidelity have made it ideal for TV, film and animation studios.[17][18]

Architecture Engineering and Construction

HP RGS is used for collaboration to enable subject matter experts to work on various projects around the globe. Centralizing large data sets and remoting the pixels allows users to spend more time working and less time loading the project for the day.[19]

Product Design

HP RGS is used to collaborate on design projects and enable remote workers.[20]

Education

Engineering and Animation programs get the same benefits as their professional counterparts with the added benefit of allowing students to access the expensive applications from home 24/7.[21][22]

Versions

The HP RGS release notes are posted at www.hp.com/go/rgs

Date Version Major features added
October

2020

 Remote Boost 2020.1 Technology preview for enhanced Wacom support on Windows, macOS, RHEL and Ubuntu Receivers connecting to Windows and Linux Senders. hardware acceleration for AVC mode with GeForce (in addition to Quadro) graphics cards). Greater admin control over which users can access Senders.
May

2020

 RGS 7.7.1 RHEL 7.8 support. ThinPro 7.x support. HP Velocity now supported on MacOS Receivers. Frame rate improvement to reduce stutter for video playback. Additional properties to set display resolution and layout of sender.
March

2020

 Remote Boost 2020.0 New major version with support for new broker, HP ZCentral Connect. New scaling of remote desktop window on receiver side without impacting resolution on sender side. Auto-Launch files supported on Linux and macOS. Borderless mode now supported on macOS. User interface adjusts to high DPI displays. Improvements to WACOM Cintiq and Intuos remoting on Linux to Linux connections.
January 2019 7.6 Decreased idle CPU usage on Linux senders using HP3. Increased performance for AVC on Windows 10 senders with Intel graphics. Added support for RHEL 6.10 and 7.6 and ThinPro 7.0. A new property has been added for resolution matching on Windows Senders with NVIDIA graphics without a physical display.
May 2018 7.5 Performance and bandwidth improvements: Bandwidth required for HP3 on Windows 10 is reduced. HP3 performance increase on Windows and Linux Sender. Experience controls Adaptive Image Quality is more responsive. Experience improvements: As of version 7.5, the operating system manages the HP RGS Receiver Window frame and scrollbars. The toolbar can be re-positioned horizontally by dragging the four dots at the left edge of the toolbar right or left. When the Receiver Window size is increased beyond the size of the Sender desktop, black bars will appear around the image. A new Hotkey, F, will fit the Receiver Window to the Sender desktop.
October 2017 7.4 Restarting the Linux Sender no longer requires a restart of the X Server. Added support for RHEL 7.4 and SUSE 12 SP3. The FLEXnet license server for floating licenses must be version 11.14 or later to support RGS 7.4. Standard and Trial licenses are not affected. The FLEXnet license server is included with the HP RGS package. 64 bit versions of the Sender and Receiver for Windows are now available. Future versions of RGS will deliver only the 64-bit Sender and Receiver. The 32 and 64-bit versions of RGS are compatible with each other. The 64-bit version of RGS is installed in C:\Program Files\HP by default. If the Windows 10 version is updated after installing HP RGS, Remote USB may stop working. You will need to uninstall and then reinstall HP RGS. As of RGS 7.4, separate RGS installers are provided for different Linux Distributions.
February 2017 7.3.2 HP added support for SUSE Linux® Enterprise 12.2 and HP ThinPro version 6. MaxImageUpdateRate now applies to AVC mode. In previous releases this setting only applied to HP3 (the default image codec). Smart card redirection on Windows receiver supports a wider range of smart card reader devices including virtual smart cards, (Requires RGS 7.3.2 or later on both sender and receiver. Smart card redirection is supported on the following senders: Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 and now RHEL 6, RHEL 7, and SUSE Linux® Enterprise 12. (Linux® support is new in 7.3.2.) Smart card redirection is supported on Windows receivers only. On Windows-based and ThinPro-based receivers, smart cards can be remoted using Remote USB.
October 2016 7.3.1 HP improved Windows sender performance when AMD and Intel graphics used. AVC mode performance improvements on Windows receivers. Improved resolution matching with Windows senders with NVidia graphics. New property to improve Velocity performance when connecting via VPN.
August 2016 7.3 (receiver for macOS) HP added an RGS receiver that runs native on macOS, allowing mac users to connect to Windows and Linux based workstations and virtual machines.
May 2016 7.2.3 Added Sender properties to more easily configure VMware virtual machine displays for use with NVIDIA GRID graphics
March 2016 7.2.2 Enabled a smart card to be used to authenticate on a receiver and sender simultaneously for Windows
November 2015 7.2.0 Added support for Windows 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.2, Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 12. Reduced the occurrence of receiver network connection warning screens. Other various fixes
April 2015 7.1.0 Improved performance with default HP3 codec, with higher framerate and/or higher screen resolution compared to 7.0. RGS HP3 can now use multiple CPU cores. WACOM tablet remoting with full functionality for Linux to Linux sessions. Improved audio experiences on Linux Advanced Video Compression (AVC) is now GPU accelerated on Linux sender systems with GRID capable nVidia graphics devices. AVC on Linux also supports multi-monitor. AVC has been updated to the latest GRID SDK from nVidia on Windows and Linux platforms. Support for RHEL 7. New tools to configure properties via a UI, avoiding the need to directly edit the corresponding text based files (rgsenderconfig and rgreceiverconfig).
September 2014 7.0.1 Added support for ThinPro 4.4 and 5.0. Added a sender property that allows ordering and selection of RGS license types. Easy Login functionality is no longer limited to certain hardware platforms.
June 2014 7.0 Upgraded HP Velocity to version 2.1 to further improved connectivity and packet loss protection. Traffic protected by HP Velocity now uses UDP, rather than TCP. A host of new tablet features has been introduced: Gesture-to-hotkey mapping. Users can assign a series of keystrokes to a gesture via the new gestures tab in the UI. Virtual Mouse. The virtual mouse allows for precise onscreen mouse control on a tablet. Zoom & Pan. Tablet users are able to zoom and pan around the sender desktop. Various improvements to the user interface for touch optimization and improved toolbar control.
April 2014 6.0.5 Added support for ThinPro 4.4 and new Bloomberg Keyboards. The use of the installer command line has changed. See the user guide for details.
March 2014 6.0.4 Added a sender property that allows collaboration without displaying a collaboration authorization dialog (see rgsenderconfig).
6.0.2 Added support for Advanced Video Compression in directory mode. Added support for RHEL 6.4. Enabled support for ThinPro 3.3, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3.
February 2013 6.0 RGS has a new UI look and feel. All UI components associated with RGS have been enhanced to improve aesthetics and usability. The RGS sender and receiver can be configured to encode screen updates with an H.264 codec. H.264 consumes less bandwidth when compared with legacy codecs in many situations. H.264 settings are available in the Performance tab of the Settings panel under "Advanced Video Compression". The RGS sender and receiver provide an install-time option to enable HP Velocity WAN optimization. This optimization provides improved network performance when packet loss and latency are present in the environment. Added support for Microsoft Windows 8 (desktop mode) for both Sender and Receiver.
June 2012 5.4.8 Added Linux Screen blanking. Support for SLED11 Sender. Support for RHEL6.2 Sender. IP address filtering. Linux Audio enhancements. ThinPro 4.1. Linux "easy login" equivalent.
October 2011 5.4.7 HP RGS now runs for free on HP Z Workstations and HP Mobile Workstations.
June 2011 5.4.6 The HP RGS Sender on Windows Vista and Windows 7 now supports Single Sign-On and Easy Login. The Windows Sender installer enforces prerequisites when enabling Single Sign-On or Easy Login on Windows XP. These are: enable Crtl-Alt-Del, disable Fast User Switching, and disable AutoLogon.
January 2011 5.4.5 Mouse control improvement in Altair Hyperworks, Linux Audio Support for RHEL 4 and 5. Linux supported in a Virtual Machine.
April 2010 5.4.0 Windows 7 support. Loss-less image codec. Smartcard reader support for Vista.
September 2009 5.3.0 Windows Vista sender support. Open platform RGS sender support for HP and non-HP Windows XP and Vista Desktops, Notebooks and Workstations. Text cut, copy, paste between Linux and Windows senders and receivers. Hot keys for session minimize and disconnect. Auto remote selected USB devices at session connection and auto return to access client on session disconnect. Local license file support
November 2008 5.2.0 Linux supports Norwegian keyboards. Windows Sender supports Traditional Chinese Korean and Russian Keyboards. Linux sender supports remote audio. Sender to sender cut and paste for Windows. Linux sender supports match receiver resolution. Receiver supports Windows Vista.
November 2003 HP Remote Workstation Support for remote connection to HP Personal Workstations and collaboration

See also

References
  1. http://www.stpforum.com/public/showPage.html?page=424045
  2. http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Converged-Infrastructure/HP-extends-leading-Z-Workstation-family-into-virtualization/ba-p/160506#.U-0Z3vldV8E
  3. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/thin-clients/software-and-os.html
  4. http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2007/06/01/is-anyone-out-there-using-or-heard-of-hp-s-quot-remote-graphics-software-quot-rgs.aspx
  5. https://www.cadalyst.com/design-related-technologies/workstations/hp-claims-world-first-zcentral-remote-workstation-solution-
  6. https://press.hp.com/us/en/blogs/2020/show-must-go-on-hp-zcentral.html
  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaJJdQzudz0
  8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bdsehiqs5I
  9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuZRK15ttZE
  10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1R2HFw0ws
  11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOaXrrGqRNE
  12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtM1M6wtM8I
  13. Ed Washington, AWN (Feb 2013). "HP Launches Remote Graphics Software Redesign".
  14. HP (Jan 2004). "HP Labs technology used to send most accurate images possible".
  15. HP (May 2007). "Advantages and Implementation of HP Remote Graphics Software" (PDF).
  16. Jacqueline Emigh - Linux Planet (Dec 2006). "Heading Beyond Wall Street--HP's Linux-Enabled Blade Workstation".
  17. HP Australia (April 2014). "DreamWorks and HP RGS".
  18. Sam Greengard, Baseline (April 2013). "DreamWorks Takes a Picture-Perfect Approach to IT".
  19. Autodesk User Group International (April 2013). "AUGI Sponsor Spotlight: HP Remote Graphics Software".
  20. GPDIS-HP. "GPDIS Collaborate to innovate with product lifecycle management" (PDF).
  21. CSUN (2007). "HP RGS at CSUN College of Engineering and Computer Science".
  22. HP. "CSUN using HP RGS & Workstations".
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