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

I think we should just capture renders as video by using OpenAI Gym wrappers.Monitor and then display it within the Notebook.

Example:

Dependencies

!apt install python-opengl
!apt install ffmpeg
!apt install xvfb
!pip3 install pyvirtualdisplay

# Virtual display
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display

virtual_display = Display(visible=0, size=(1400, 900))
virtual_display.start()

Capture as video

import gym
from gym import wrappers

env = gym.make("SpaceInvaders-v0")
env = wrappers.Monitor(env, "/tmp/SpaceInvaders-v0")

for episode in range(2):
    observation = env.reset()
    step = 0
    total_reward = 0

    while True:
        step += 1
        env.render()
        action = env.action_space.sample()
        observation, reward, done, info = env.step(action)
        total_reward += reward
        if done:
            print("Episode: {0},\tSteps: {1},\tscore: {2}"
                  .format(episode, step, total_reward)
            )
            break
env.close()

Display within Notebook

import os
import io
import base64
from IPython.display import display, HTML

def ipython_show_video(path):
    """Show a video at `path` within IPython Notebook
    """
    if not os.path.isfile(path):
        raise NameError("Cannot access: {}".format(path))

    video = io.open(path, 'r+b').read()
    encoded = base64.b64encode(video)

    display(HTML(
        data="""
        
        """.format(encoded.decode('ascii'))
    ))

ipython_show_video("/tmp/SpaceInvaders-v0/openaigym.video.4.10822.video000000.mp4")

I hope it helps. ;)