How close are we to pc game streaming?

[stuckinasquare3]

I've heard of the shield by nvidia and the steam box. What i'm wondering is, with all this work being put into devices that can stream, how long before I can use my gaming rig to stream all of my movies, games, even desktop, with good quality to a tiny media center pc in my living room that I already own? The htpc would just have a mouse and keyboard and gamepad usb inputs (which rules out things like chromecast).

 

[digitaldurandal]

Movies you can access via UNC pathing or sharing on your HTPC and run them on the HTPC to view. Gaming is getting there. The shield can use console mode. I am curious how much the lag issues are relieved when hooking it to a wired internet.

Desktop you are still having to use a Remote desktop tool. I don't really see this changing for security reasons.

So essentially - I think the only part that is going to get better, or really even needs to is game streaming. Media work fine over the network, There are already a lot of remote desktop choices, I am waiting for shield 2 which is supposedly already in development.

 

[stuckinasquare3]

I just mentioned Remote Desktop and media streaming for completeness. I recognize that there are viable solutions for this. I already have an htpc and gaming is my primary interest that has not quite been met.

 

[Childs]

Probably really close. I think you can already stream games now with Shield now, and in the latest Geforce Experience you can use Shadowplay to stream to Twitch.tv. Nvidia could probably do game streaming (playing the game, not just watching) PC to PC in 2014 if they wanted to. No reason AMD couldn't do it either. The only thing really missing now is remote input device support. Opening on socket to the source machine and accepting input should be fairly straightforward, and latency could be minimal over a GigE.

Not sure how much business sense it makes though, as both companies would probably rather have you buy two good video cards than one good card and one low end card.

 

[Sable]

ISn't this one of the major points of steam OS? normal Gaming PC with steam, stream your game to a weaker pc elsewhere which is running steam os.

 

[stuckinasquare3]

It's definitely one of the selling points for me but
1) it will only support steam games and
2) it will require me to use a different os

It begs the question though, if the technology exists for steam to do this, what is keeping me from doing it now?

 

[KentState]

I would say we are pretty much there. Shield can do it with Nvidia graphic cards, SteamOS should be able to and the PS4 running AMD processors can do it to the Vita. I've played over Verizon LTE and it wasn't too bad. It's really down to software that supports it at this point.

I also believe that Remote Desktop in Server 2008 support some form of DirectX.

 

[stuckinasquare3]

It seems like there are some proprietary ways to do it in a limited fashion with shield and steam os but not software that allows me to do it with my current setup

 

[PrincessFrosty]

We essentially have it already, the issue is latency over distance. OnLive was a fundamentally good idea, they got the latency down to 1ms for encode and decode of game video/audio/controller streams on a small and cheap piece of hardware.

The issues are:
1) Latency at a distance, streaming from a data center will never work as there is an inherent minimum latency involved over any given distance.
2) Bandwidth and data, for internet based apps streaming constantly for extended periods uses a lot of data, fine for someone like me on 120mbit fibre, but bad for a huge section of the population struggling on ADSL and over subscribed networks.

Inside the home it's a doddle, Nvidia shield will do it, steam box will allow streaming from your PC to a smaller living room device, over a LAN with no perceivable latency it's absolutely do-able although we currently lack a good array of options for it.

 

[stuckinasquare3]

I've heard that the technology for streaming in steam box is the same as what the shield does. Has anyone tried to implement this themselves?

 

[Borealis7]

i don't think we're that close to generic Game streaming. i won't join the bandwagon until i can have my frames rendered on a mega-server with 32xCSGQOMGBBQHAXORSSAA @ 120FPS and stream it over straight to my monitor.
i don't mind potential mouse lag issues, i play mostly RPGs and TBSs.

 

[Rezist]

I think some people are kind of missing the point. The OP is just going by being in the same house so say having a large dedicated gaming PC in the basement, but playing on the HTPC upstairs on the 50" when available.

VS having two larger gaming machines taking up space in the house.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

We're getting there.

http://steamdb.info/blog/36/