How to run OpenAI Gym .render() over a server

Question

I am running a python 2.7 script on a p2.xlarge AWS server through Jupyter (Ubuntu 14.04). I would like to be able to render my simulations.

Minimal working example<

Answer 1

There's also this solution using pyvirtualdisplay (an Xvfb wrapper). One thing I like about this solution is you can launch it from inside your script, instead of having to wrap it at launch:

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
display = Display(visible=0, size=(1400, 900))
display.start()

Answer 2

I avoided the issues with using matplotlib by simply using PIL, Python Image Library:

import gym, PIL
env = gym.make('SpaceInvaders-v0')
array = env.reset()
PIL.Image.fromarray(env.render(mode='rgb_array'))

I found that I didn't need to set the XV frame buffer.

Answer 3

I encountered the same problem and stumbled upon the answers here. Mixing them helped me to solve the problem.

Here's a step by step solution:

Install the following:

apt-get install -y python-opengl xvfb

Start your jupyter notebook via the following command:

xvfb-run -s "-screen 0 1400x900x24" jupyter notebook

Inside the notebook:

import gym
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline

env = gym.make('MountainCar-v0') # insert your favorite environment
env.reset()
plt.imshow(env.render(mode='rgb_array')

Now you can put the same thing in a loop to render it multiple times.

from IPython import display

for _ in range(100):
    plt.imshow(env.render(mode='rgb_array'))
    display.display(plt.gcf())
    display.clear_output(wait=True)
    action = env.action_space.sample()
    env.step(action)

Hope this works for anyone else still facing an issue. Thanks to Andrews and Nathan for their answers.

Answer 4

This might be a complete workaround, but I used a docker image with a desktop environment, and it works great. The docker image is at https://hub.docker.com/r/dorowu/ubuntu-desktop-lxde-vnc/

The command to run is

docker run -p 6080:80 dorowu/ubuntu-desktop-lxde-vnc

Then browse http://127.0.0.1:6080/ to access the Ubuntu desktop.

Below are a gif showing it the Mario bros gym environment running and being rendered. As you can see, it is fairly responsive and smooth.

Answer 5

Not sure how to post images in the comment so here is the error I got trying to use @Andrew Schreiber's solution:

Answer 6

Referencing my other answer here: Display OpenAI gym in Jupyter notebook only

I made a quick working example here which you could fork: https://kyso.io/eoin/openai-gym-jupyter with two examples of rendering in Jupyter - one as an mp4, and another as a realtime gif.

The .mp4 example is quite simple.

import gym
from gym import wrappers

env = gym.make('SpaceInvaders-v0')
env = wrappers.Monitor(env, "./gym-results", force=True)
env.reset()
for _ in range(1000):
    action = env.action_space.sample()
    observation, reward, done, info = env.step(action)
    if done: break
env.close()

Then in a new cell Jupyter cell, or download it from the server onto some place where you can view the video.

import io
import base64
from IPython.display import HTML

video = io.open('./gym-results/openaigym.video.%s.video000000.mp4' % env.file_infix, 'r+b').read()
encoded = base64.b64encode(video)
HTML(data='''
    <video width="360" height="auto" alt="test" controls><source src="data:video/mp4;base64,{0}" type="video/mp4" /></video>'''
.format(encoded.decode('ascii')))

If your on a server with public access you could run python -m http.server in the gym-results folder and just watch the videos there.