> in sunshine/moonlight such as you still have monitor output

Apollo[1] fixes this problem really neatly - there's a "Virtual Desktop" option that adds a virtual desktop, and you can disable all the local monitors while in this session so that a local person doesn't see your desktop while you're remoted into it (just remember to lock after you end your session!).

I believe it also preserves monitor layouts when starting/ending sessions.

I used Sunshine and had a bunch of hacks in the startup/teardown scripts to get the same behavior but it was really brittle. Apollo makes this work out of the box.

[1] https://github.com/ClassicOldSong/Apollo

That doesn't compare to RDP where remote windows act just like local windows in that you can resize them and drag them between monitors, they're not constrained to just being on a virtual desktop.

That requires remoteapp I believe, not regular remote desktop.

RemoteApp is basically RDP for one single desktop app running on the remote server but launched and run to appear like a local app. It's improved a lot over the past decade+

There's an extra interesting feature there where the remoteapp windows are aware of each other. It's a niche use case, but the remote side counts as one session, so apps can interact and automation/accessibility mostly works as expected. Although the local system still sees the remote apps as opaque rectangle rather than widgets.

>Apollo[1] fixes this problem really neatly - there's a "Virtual Desktop" option that adds a virtual desktop, and you can disable all the local monitors while in this session so that a local person doesn't see your desktop while you're remoted into it (just remember to lock after you end your session!).

Does that mean someone with physical access can take control while you're logged in?

Yes - afaik all of the "game streaming" solutions (Sunshine, Apollo, and probably others) derive from Nvidia's GameStream tech which just mirrors the local display remotely.

I haven't use them, so please bear my illiteracy around these. Does this mean, it actually creates a local session, not a remote and headless session to serve? If that's the case, it feels like it's just TeamViewer or Remote Assist session where you hop in to an existing session. Or do I misunderstand the concept?

So Sunshine and Apollo are continuations of Nvidia's EOL'd GameStream tech, which is designed to mirror the local display to a device. It doesn't really have the concept of a "user session", it allows you to mirror the currently running local session remotely.

> If that's the case, it feels like it's just TeamViewer or Remote Assist session where you hop in to an existing session

Yes, it's pretty much that, but optimized for A/V latency and game inputs (games that "trap" the mouse in fullscreen are well supported and controller inputs are passed through).

I haven't really used TeamViewer/Remote Assist heavily, but I wager if you wanted to game with those tools it would be a worse experience than something like Sunshine.