anthony In house game streaming

[Kieeps]

So.... Seeing how far linux gaming has come in the past year i'w really really considered doing the switch from windows. 

I'w always used linux for everything else in my house but the lack of gaming support always made me go back to windows. I'w tried dual booting, but i always end up in windows in the end anyway...

 

But here comes the point of the post, and if Anthony is up for it, a video on the subject would be great :-P 

 

Anyway... What if the next pc i buy isn't the main pc, what if its a "server" pc that hosts my games.

it would get rith of the comparability layer issues and also make all the games available on any machine on the network.

 

but how will it hold up? What would be the minimal needed hardware for the client? Will there be latency issues even on a 1gbit network? What is the pros and cons of streaming compared to a localy installed copy? I guess my gsync monitor looses it's purpose... 

 

[WereCatf]

8 minutes ago, Kieeps said:

What would be the minimal needed hardware for the client?

The client is basically just decoding a video-stream and not doing much of anything else, so it really doesn't require a lot. I have an absolutely fricking terrible laptop using the AMD E1-6015 APU, which is such a slow dual-core CPU that it literally cannot play even solitaire without lag, but.....it does have hardware-acceleration for decoding H.264-video and so Steam's Remote Play works perfectly well on it! I did test it just out of curiosity and it ran beautifully. You can also use Remote Play on a Raspberry Pi, which isn't even an x86 - device in the first place!

[manikyath]

dont really need a video for it, here you go:

 

steam in-home streaming is quite nice, as long as you're not doing fast paced games (shooters, fast pace platformers, etc.) with a gigabit ethernet line it's just about the same as running locally.

 

the downsides however:

- (mildly) increased latency, its not too bad, but it's there.

- you lose "local" graphics settings like windowed mode, gsync, etc.

- you defenately need a 'second way of access' to the remote pc, because in home streaming has its issues at times.

- support for odd / unexpected controllers may be more of a hassle than you'd expect.

 

22 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

You can also use Remote Play on a Raspberry Pi, which isn't even an x86 - device in the first place!

the raspberry pi client isnt as good as you'd expect, it's slightly laggy, and defenately buggy.

i hope that once things start rolling out for the pi 4 that steam also updates their thing, and it ends up defenately better than the pi3.

 

until then -- better off with a low power x86 mini pc, once you add in all the accessories to make a pi run properly the price is closer than you think.

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

steam in-home streaming is quite nice, as long as you're not doing fast paced games (shooters, fast pace platformers, etc.) with a gigabit ethernet line it's just about the same as running locally

I see no problem with playing even fast-paced games, as in my tests it only added like 16ms latency. Maybe if you're some sort of a "professional" player the 16ms might matter, but I find that a little hard to believe.

 

As for gigabit....Hell, my hubby and I were visiting his relatives on the other side of the country, 400km away, a couple of weeks back and we were using Remote Play just fine over a 4G-connection. That wouldn't have been particularly good for fast-paced twitch-shooters anymore, but it still only added about 60ms latency, so it was fine for Ass Creeds and whatnot. I was actually seriously impressed by how well it all worked and the hubby loved being able to play games his laptop wouldn't natively be able to handle.

[manikyath]

9 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

I see no problem with playing even fast-paced games, as in my tests it only added like 16ms latency. Maybe if you're some sort of a "professional" player the 16ms might matter, but I find that a little hard to believe.

 

As for gigabit....Hell, my hubby and I were visiting his relatives on the other side of the country, 400km away, a couple of weeks back and we were using Remote Play just fine over a 4G-connection. That wouldn't have been particularly good for fast-paced twitch-shooters anymore, but it still only added about 60ms latency, so it was fine for Ass Creeds and whatnot. I was actually seriously impressed by how well it all worked and the hubby loved being able to play games his laptop wouldn't natively be able to handle.

the biggest issue with very fast paced games is how many data there is to shove around, and how fast you're expecting it timing-wise.

 

as for the long distance stuff, i've dabbled with that, and its *VERY* situation-dependant, and obviously there's a reason why steam doesnt mention its even possible

[Bananasplit_00]

Steam has in home streaming and it works pretty well from my experience. I don't have the absolute best networking stuff and I can even on WiFi play games on my phone OK. Wouldn't play a shooter but things like MTGA work well

[Kieeps]

Anyone have any experience with none-steam streaming through the nvidia experience thingy? 

'Cus steam games will most likely work great natively anyway soon... But how about bnet games?

[rwncop]

1 hour ago, Kieeps said:

Anyone have any experience with none-steam streaming through the nvidia experience thingy? 

'Cus steam games will most likely work great natively anyway soon... But how about bnet games?

I've been using Nvidia Geforce Now for a few weeks. There are times when I forget that I'm actually streaming the game it's that good. I've never even noticed any latency issues. My speed is 150Mbps down. If Nvidia's platform is this good, I can't wait for what Stadia has to offer.

[Arika]

Steam does not currently support hardware decoding on Linux with current drivers until they update it to be able to use libva2. I tried for days to get hardware decoding to work, but had zero luck 

[Kisai]

22 hours ago, Kieeps said:

So.... Seeing how far linux gaming has come in the past year i'w really really considered doing the switch from windows. 

I'w always used linux for everything else in my house but the lack of gaming support always made me go back to windows. I'w tried dual booting, but i always end up in windows in the end anyway...

 

But here comes the point of the post, and if Anthony is up for it, a video on the subject would be great

 

Anyway... What if the next pc i buy isn't the main pc, what if its a "server" pc that hosts my games.

it would get rith of the comparability layer issues and also make all the games available on any machine on the network.

 

but how will it hold up? What would be the minimal needed hardware for the client? Will there be latency issues even on a 1gbit network? What is the pros and cons of streaming compared to a localy installed copy? I guess my gsync monitor looses it's purpose... 

 

 

Linux gaming is still not a thing. It will not be a thing until game devs make it a tier-1 support platform, and that won't happen as long as all the infighting with linux distros exist. There is no "one Linux" distro that any dev can rely on to have the necessary libraries and hardware support. 

 

The issue is that what you're asking is basically "dumb terminal for games". A locally installed Windows game is better than a streamed one. Period.

 

For example the nVidia Shield is basically an Android "dumb terminal" to other nVidia GPU computers. So the Shield is only being used as a video decoder. The PC doing the streaming is doing the encoding.

 

So there will be latency for encoding and for input. Streaming (eg Google Stadia) will be worse. 4K requires >25MBit, HD requires 16Mbit.

 

Streaming should be considered only a solution for noise. EG, the Shield/Tegra devices are quiet, but your PC sounds like a Jet engine, and is in a room somewhere where you don't hear it.