My latest Steam In-Home Streaming woes.

I mentioned ISP because maybe you wanted to upgrade to a faster connection or something.

I think I was limiting it to 3 Mb/s as well to start and it worked fine. I increased it just to see if I'd get even better performance but I haven't really tested it thoroughly yet at the new limit.

Hope you can get it working better. Maybe it's time to lay that cable in the hallway …

yes I wouldn't recommend a setup where both the server and the client are wireless. My setup is wired host/wireless client and it runs mostly ok, not perfect as it does get choppy every few minutes, but playable. Adding a double whammy of wireless traffic I don't think is doable without affecting quality a lot.

FWIW, both host and client are wired in my case.

Games still have a noticable input delay, but it's not a problem in most games. That said, I wouldn't recommend playing games that rely on a fast response in this way. As in, action-driven stuff like shooters won't work too well.

I haven't experimented with bandwidth limit and it's set to automatic. Maybe tweaking this will help? Hard to see why it would.

FYI:

You can add ANY game to Steam and stream it in this way, if you didn't already know. At least, every single non-Steam game I've added has worked, so far.

Of the games I've tried, the only one I definitely wouldn't play like this has been Metro Redux. The delay makes it unplayable for me, though I'm sure you could get used to it, if you're less anal.

I started out with the "Beautiful" streaming setting, but I've found that balanced works better for certain games. Lichdom, for instance, was not great on Beautiful - but on Balanced it's fully playable.

I don't really play fast-paced action games much, so I don't think that would be a problem for me.

But that said, Wasteland 2, Baldur's Gate EE 1 & 2, Last Remnant..all work fine, at least well enough that they can be played like this. There is a bit of jerkiness at times, a hiccup here or there, but for the most part they work well.

Again, I think when I pick up a laptop with a better GPU in it that can hardware decode, the performance will get even better.

Dart, what kind of GPU are you using in your client laptop again? Is it better than the 7950 GTX? Also, are you using hardware decoding? I'm thinking an upgrade to something like a 260m would be perfect for streaming games, but it's still a bit of trial-and-error to see what works best.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Dart, what kind of GPU are you using in your client laptop again? Is it better than the 7950 GTX? Also, are you using hardware decoding? I'm thinking an upgrade to something like a 260m would be perfect for streaming games, but it's still a bit of trial-and-error to see what works best.

My client laptop is an Alienware M11x from 2010. The GPU is a GeForce GT335M, which isn't very powerful.

I've enabled hardware encoding on the Host and decoding on the Client. I have no idea what's helping and what's not, but I think it's running about as smoothly as I can expect from this streaming technology. My gut feeling tells me that a more powerful client wouldn't make much difference, as streaming HD video is within its capabilities - and that's all it really needs to do.

As I said, the only problem I have is some input lag which isn't a big deal in most games. Considering the amount of polling required for accurate mouse movement, and the implication of transfering that across a LAN setup in real-time, I really don't think it's possible to have zero lag. Perhaps it would be slightly better with better networking hardware, but I doubt it.

Weird. I'm not experiencing any input lag at all. At least not enough to notice it.

My laptop can stream HD video but on certain games and videos in 1080p, it has trouble. I can't stream a gameplay video of Titanfall at 60 FPS, 1080p, for example. The screen simply freezes and no video plays.

If I had a laptop with hardware decoding, it would be able to handle stuff like that better.

The camera is slightly jerky in Last Remnant, and I also think hardware decoding would solve that as well.

I'll update when I get a better GPU. I have my eye on another laptop now and we'll see how it goes.

You don't need a good gpu. Just the right one. Integrated Intel graphics is enough with quicksync

Originally Posted by ilm
You don't need a good gpu. Just the right one.

Right. But a GPU that has hardware decoding will increase your performance. At least, that's what most people are saying who have been following Steam In-Home Streaming closely. Apparently, hardware decoding makes a huge difference in overall performance, so having a GPU that is capable of it is recommended.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
My client laptop is an Alienware M11x from 2010. The GPU is a GeForce GT335M, which isn't very powerful.

I've enabled hardware encoding on the Host and decoding on the Client. I have no idea what's helping and what's not, but I think it's running about as smoothly as I can expect from this streaming technology. My gut feeling tells me that a more powerful client wouldn't make much difference, as streaming HD video is within its capabilities - and that's all it really needs to do.

As I said, the only problem I have is some input lag which isn't a big deal in most games. Considering the amount of polling required for accurate mouse movement, and the implication of transfering that across a LAN setup in real-time, I really don't think it's possible to have zero lag. Perhaps it would be slightly better with better networking hardware, but I doubt it.

How fast is your network, and what are you limiting the bandwidth to?

As usual with computers, it seems everyone is getting different results.

Originally Posted by Fluent
How fast is your network, and what are you limiting the bandwidth to?

As usual with computers, it seems everyone is getting different results.

I have 100Mbit LAN speed - and I've set it to "AUTO" for bandwidth in Steam. I'll play around with limiting it, though.

But the input lag isn't that bad. I'm just really picky about such things.

FYI:

You can add ANY game to Steam and stream it in this way, if you didn't already know. At least, every single non-Steam game I've added has worked, so far.

Of the games I've tried, the only one I definitely wouldn't play like this has been Metro Redux. The delay makes it unplayable for me, though I'm sure you could get used to it, if you're less anal.

I started out with the "Beautiful" streaming setting, but I've found that balanced works better for certain games. Lichdom, for instance, was not great on Beautiful - but on Balanced it's fully playable.

Apparently yes. Just having bad luck, deponia and the eye of satesomething (tde) give a black screen.

I managed to get video decoding working on my Intel GPU but it doesn't result in less spikes.

As a last resort I have been thinking that my host's USB WiFi needs too many CPU cycles, together with the game and encoding it gets starved. I have yet to get ati vce working. It is supposed to be supported since sept. 3 in steam beta. In daydreaming here

Try disabling desktop composition for the games that give you a black screen. Wasteland 2 was giving me a black screen until I did that and now it works fine.