Ways to remotely access gaming PC?

[Inception9269]

Not sure where this should be posted, since part of it could be considered troubleshooting, but idk.

 

As for the matter at hand, I'm trying to figure out how I can remote access my main PC that I game on from elsewhere in my house. Preferably on an Xbox Series X that I recently got. With my setup, I want to remote access a PC that I have in one of my rooms from my bedroom, but I'm having trouble doing so. I don't want to have to go out and spend a lot of money on additional hardware, since my living space is already cluttered as all hell. I'd like to be able to use the devices that I already have, and not have to go out and buy or build another PC.

 

As for the solutions that I know of, the first being GeForce Now, which can be accessed through the Edge browser on the Xbox. Imma pass on that, cause the free tier is kind of ass, especially with that one hour time limit. The first paid tier is better, but I'd be limited to 1080p @ 60 fps, and I want to properly take advantage of my 4K TV for the sake of getting my money's worth. As for the second paid tier, that ones neat and all but I don't want to pay that much, especially since I won't use it nearly enough to justify paying for it (I'm talking only an hour or so each night, maybe more on the weekends).

 

The second solution I found that I did my best at was by using Parsec to remotely access my main PC. I know LTT did a video on it back during Covid time, though they didn't really cover the ins and outs of it. But as for the service itself, I installed it on my gaming PC, for it to be used as the host, but I struggled to get things working. Whenever I would connect to it on the browser on the Xbox I would only get a black screen, though I would receive audio through it (I'm using a wired connection on both systems). I messed around with Parsec so much, but no matter what I did I couldn't get things to work right.

 

I do think I have an idea on what the problem is, I just got no clue about any solutions for it. I think the issue comes down entirely to the resolution of my displays. The monitor on my main PC is an ultrawide 3440 x 1440p monitor that uses the 21:9 aspect ratio, whereas the TV I'm using with my Xbox is 4K, 3840 x 2160 16:9. With Parsec you can select various options for resolutions, like keep host resolution or keep guest resolution, and neither one works. I think the problem is obviously the TV can't do the ultrawide resolution or aspect ratio, and my monitor isn't capable of doing the 4K resolution. The only time I'd ever get a video output was when my PC's monitor would switch all the way down to 720p after the higher resolutions fail to work.

 

One thing I tried in order to get around this was using the paid Parsec service (me using the trial), since that allows you to create virtual desktops through Parsec. As for the virtual desktop I still struggled to make it work, I think because of the way Windows utilizes additional displays. Windows presenting me with four options for the extra monitor, that being to extend the first display, duplicate it, or display only one or the other. None of those options worked in my case. I was able to get video output to the Parsec guest system with the extend option, but the problem is that functionality only really works if the displays are side by side, with me being unable to see anything that's open on the first monitor.

 

What would have been ideal is to have the first monitor duplicated onto the 2nd monitor, but that didn't want to work, with it changing the 4k resolution of the virtual display, upping it to 3440 x 1440 which results in a black screen on the guest system. Hypothetically the last two options, only displaying one at a time would probably work, but that'd be a horrible option since if I want to go and mess with my PC I'd manually have to go through my Xbox to change the setting through the browser.

 

So I don't suppose anyone knows of any tricks or software that would resolve that problem. Cause the only solution for me to use Parsec as is would be to replace the monitor on my main PC with a 4k monitor, so that I'm matching resolutions. I really do not want to do that, cause I just bought my ultra wide in the last couple of months, and I love that thing. It being an OLED (from Alienware, can't remember the model name but I know LTT did a video on it) and the image quality is absolutely gorgeous, especially with HDR. I spent a lot of money on it, and don't want that to go to waste.

 

I did try using the Steam Link. I've had that thing for many years now with it not being until just recently that I tried using it (only bought the thing cause Valve was selling them off many years ago for incredibly cheap). It's actually kind of interesting cause the Steam Link actually did display my entire ultrawide desktop, with it simply scaling the output to fit the TV screen. The problem i faced with this though was the screen was very faded, likely cause I don't think the Link supports HDR, also it would seem I'd be limited to 1080p @ 60. Also for whatever reason I was having a lot of latency with the Steam Link. If I had to guess why, maybe trying to cram that resolution onto the screen while also having my main PC displaying things in HDR.

[GuiltySpark_]

NGL I didn't read all of that but you might be trying to overcomplicate it. The primary ways to host games on the PC for streaming to another device is with Parsec (and then the Parsec client on another remote PC) or through something like Sunshine and then the Moonlight client on another device. Luckily, Moonlight works on a variety of devices. Your smart TV may have the ability to download the app, heck even a cheap Chromecast has support for the Moonlight client. 

 

Sunshine Server/Host (run on the PC): https://app.lizardbyte.dev/Sunshine/?lng=en-US

Moonlight: https://moonlight-stream.org/ 

 

The moonlight client supports a number of platforms. It looks like the Xbox client is in Beta but it seems to exist but you can run it on a bunch of other things, like the aforementioned Chromecast. Just pair a controller to the Chromecast. 

[lieutent]

44 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

NGL I didn't read all of that but you might be trying to overcomplicate it. The primary ways to host games on the PC for streaming to another device is with Parsec (and then the Parsec client on another remote PC) or through something like Sunshine and then the Moonlight client on another device. Luckily, Moonlight works on a variety of devices. Your smart TV may have the ability to download the app, heck even a cheap Chromecast has support for the Moonlight client. 

 

Sunshine Server/Host (run on the PC): https://app.lizardbyte.dev/Sunshine/?lng=en-US

Moonlight: https://moonlight-stream.org/ 

 

The moonlight client supports a number of platforms. It looks like the Xbox client is in Beta but it seems to exist but you can run it on a bunch of other things, like the aforementioned Chromecast. Just pair a controller to the Chromecast. 

Hmm... I know moonlight is a really good option, and that parsec uses p2p (which would make it comparable on the same network). But what are your thoughts on Steam? From the glance of it, it sounds like OP wants their gaming PC all over the house kind of like Linus does it but without running conduit with fibre display cables everywhere lol. The way we do things in our house like that is just using the Apple TV or webOS version of Steam Link and using that. It seems to work decently well for us. Is moonlight that much better for it being not so plug and play?

[Alex Atkin UK]

47 minutes ago, lieutent said:

Hmm... I know moonlight is a really good option, and that parsec uses p2p (which would make it comparable on the same network). But what are your thoughts on Steam? From the glance of it, it sounds like OP wants their gaming PC all over the house kind of like Linus does it but without running conduit with fibre display cables everywhere lol. The way we do things in our house like that is just using the Apple TV or webOS version of Steam Link and using that. It seems to work decently well for us. Is moonlight that much better for it being not so plug and play?

Last I checked, Steam tends to have worse latency and supports less clients.

 

Then again Xbox is not a great option as its the least power efficient client for this sort of thing.

[Lunar River]

Moonlight/Sunshine is the best option imo. My gaming pc is basically a headless server that I access from other devices when I want to game or need additional processing power.

 

Via Ethernet I get 2-5ms latency which is perfectly usable for 99% of what I do.