Enabling Lossless Compression for Omnissa Horizon Blast

You can activate the Horizon Blast display protocol to use an encoding approach called progressive build, or build-to-lossless. This feature provides a highly compressed initial image, called a lossy image, that is then progressively built to a full lossless state. Lossless mode ensures that every frame transmitted from the virtual desktop to the client is delivered without any visible quality loss or compression artifacts. A lossless state means that the image appears with the full fidelity intended.

To activate lossless compression for Horizon Blast, configure the corresponding setting on the agent machine:

• Windows agent: Activate the Build to Lossless GPO setting as described in Horizon Blast Policy Settings.

  Alternatively, you can set the EncoderBuildToLossless key to 1 in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Omnissa\Horizon\Blast\Config folder in the Windows registry on the agent machine. The default value is 0 (deactivated), which means that lossless compressed is turned off.

  Configuration changes to lossless compression take place immediately on the Windows desktop.

• Linux agent: Set the RemoteDisplay.buildToLossless configuration option to true in /etc/omnissa/config.

  Configuration changes to lossless compression take place after logging out and logging back in to the Linux desktop.

Note: Enabling lossless compression for Horizon Blast causes an increase in bandwidth and CPU usage.

Enabling Client-Side Lossless Indicator

End users might benefit from a visual client-side indicator (Lossless Indicator) that confirms lossless mode is enabled and active.

To enable the Lossless Indicator, update the client configuration file as shown below:

%APPDATA%\Omnissa\config.ini

RemoteDisplay.showLosslessIndicator=1

The lossless indicator, a subtle and unobtrusive colored line at the bottom of the window or application, can be customized in the same configuration file:

• Indicator thickness (up to 10 pixels):

  viewClient.losslessHeight=10

• Indicator color (ARGB value):

  viewClient.losslessColor=0x8800FF00