My latest Steam In-Home Streaming woes.

Hey everyone.

I managed to get most games running on my old laptop, but I can't seem to get Wasteland 2 working properly.

What happens is, the game loads fine, but the screen stays black on the client laptop. I get the performance info at the bottom left, and the cursor switches to the Wasteland 2 cursor, but no picture. The sound works fine and the game responds to my mouse input, and it also runs fine on the host laptop. For some reason, though, the client laptop's screen stays black.

Anyone have any idea what could fix this? I'm pretty much stumped here.

Let me try streaming it when I get home, and I'll get back to you.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Hey everyone.

I managed to get most games running on my old laptop, but I can't seem to get Wasteland 2 working properly.

What happens is, the game loads fine, but the screen stays black on the client laptop. I get the performance info at the bottom left, and the cursor switches to the Wasteland 2 cursor, but no picture. The sound works fine and the game responds to my mouse input, and it also runs fine on the host laptop. For some reason, though, the client laptop's screen stays black.

Anyone have any idea what could fix this? I'm pretty much stumped here.

Specs?

Host laptop:

i7 3630qm CPU, 7970m GPU, 8 GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit

Client laptop:

AMD Turion Dual Core CPU, Radeon 3100 Graphics, 3 GB RAM, Windows Vista 32-bit

Originally Posted by Fluent
Host laptop:

i7 3630qm CPU, 7970m GPU, 8 GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit

Client laptop:

AMD Turion Dual Core CPU, Radeon 3100 Graphics, 3 GB RAM, Windows Vista 32-bit

Hey, just tried streaming it - no issues.

I still have massive screen tearing, though. Better get around to testing that overrider thing.

Hmm. Maybe it's just the poor quality of my older laptop's GPU that's holding it back once again.

Soon as I get some more money I'm going to upgrade. Hopefully that solves things.

You sure are having a lot of problems. It just works here (tm). I also see no tearing but then again I don't know what it is as I never had it.

Well it's a miracle. I got the game at least running now on my laptop by disabling desktop composition (the client laptop was using Desktop DWM to encode). Now the game plays but it's capped at 20 FPS for some reason. I know it can handle more because even if I turn down every graphical setting, it still stays at 20. It's now using Desktop BitBit RGB encoding. The other games I've gotten to work have used OpenGL encoding. I wonder why Wasteland 2 is different than every other game…

Edit - I fixed it by typing "-force-d3d9" in launch options on the host. So I guess I have to play this in D9, which is a pity, but probably my only option at this point if I want to stream the game..

Works good now, by the way. Looks pretty darn nice on this 17" Dell XPS 1080p screen!

Original sin looks darn nice on my 24 inch 1200p screen

I remember someone here also had to use that option to get it working, maybe it was the nut

Nice!

Today's Wasteland 2 patch seems to fix the black screen issue I was having, as long as the desktop composition is disabled.

I can now stream Wasteland 2 in DirectX 11.

I love this nerdy computer stuff…

I solved my tearing problem by installing Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 7

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I solved my tearing problem by installing Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 7

Wow, that's weird. I didn't know the operating system had an effect on screen-tearing. Glad you got it sorted, though.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Wow, that's weird. I didn't know the operating system had an effect on screen-tearing. Glad you got it sorted, though.

Thanks

It was probably not the OS itself, but since I couldn't figure out what it was - I thought resetting everything and upgrading to Win8.1 might work, and I got lucky

It feels good to get lucky once in awhile

Even though the client laptop I'm using is not ideal, Wasteland 2 looks great on it and it runs pretty smoothly overall.

I'm sure with a more powerful GPU in the client, the framerate and stability would improve, but I'm pretty satisfied thus far (until I find a game that runs choppy on this setup.. )

Were both your host and client on WiFi ? I'm not so lucky in that regard, it's really not playable. I even thought of buying power line adapters for a while

Originally Posted by ilm
Were both your host and client on WiFi ? I'm not so lucky in that regard, it's really not playable. I even thought of buying power line adapters for a while

Sorry to hear it's not playable for you.

My host laptop is a wired connection and my client is wireless. The connection is a 150 Mb/s connection and I have the incoming bandwith on the client limited to 30 Mb/s. Works great for me, but there is the occasional hiccup here and there. If you move the mouse really quickly and pan the game camera quickly, sometimes it jerks a bit. But overall it's quite smooth and playable.

What type of laptop are you streaming to? I'd find one with a GPU that supports hardware decodinng. You can spend around $300 and find something decent enough.

I spent $300 for a 17" 1080p Dell XPS laptop with the 7950 GTX in it. It's still not ideal (the GPU is just a little too old to be used for hardware decoding), but it works well enough. If you're willing to settle for less than a 17" 1080p screen I'm sure you could find something with an even better GPU that would give you great performance.

I'm streaming to a 15 inch dell latitude e5500, intel graphics. However it is definitely the network. the problem is that the signal goes twice over WiFi n causing some interference I guess.

The audio stutters a little and I have a hiccup every 5 seconds or so. Changing bandwidth or streaming quality helps a little but not enough

Can you use a wired connection for either the host or client? That would probably help things. Just a thought though I don't really know what else to suggest.

Are you happy with your ISP and connection quality?

Not without laying a cable in the hallway. I have a decent router (netgear wndr3700) and good connections yes. I get about 3 mb/s. So 24mbps.

Hmm maybe I should limit the bandwidth much lower, i tested with 20mbps. 3 Mbps should still give a nice quality (Netflix HD is often 3 Mbps).

I also have a good ISP, but I don't know what that has to do with it Anyway, I don't expect any magic. WiFi inherently has a lot of interference and spikes.