Steam in-home streaming released. (You can play any game on super low end PCs.)

[nk215]

This can be nice for a lot of reasons. My Main computer is a 6core i7 with 32GB of ram and 10.25TB of storage in an incredibly large case (even has wheels). It is basically my Data server, VM host, and gaming system. I like the idea of turning it into a gaming server and setting up a couple of $300 streamers around the house using some Pentiums or A4's. I wouldn't need to be at or move my computer to play elsewhere and I would be able to play games at full settings on all of these computers instead of being sad I didn't triple the price to make a halfway decent gaming computer.

Heck I could probably try to get esxi setup on that computer and try to get VT-D working in feeding my graphics card through and turn it completely into a server.

I don't think you need VT-d for video. My "server" uses 2 video card, a tesla and a quadro4000. I used the tesla to do computing when login remotely using RDP, CUDA is available under RDP with the tesla card.

I can remotely RDP onto my server and play 1080p blue ray video in mkv format using windows media classic and everything run smoothly. There's no need to "stream" anything. To get 1080p mkv to run smoothly, my client need to be ~ 1GH Pentium M; Thinkpad X40.

I can also remote RDP onto my server and edit video there using sony vegas with cuda/hardware acceleration.

As long as RemoteFX setup properly, I don't see why people just can't RDP into a faster computer to play game on it. There's no need to do any streaming.

 

[Red Storm]

This. If you live in a multi floor dwelling using a HDMI cable and a wireless controller isn't much of an option.

It also looks a lot uglier. I could connect my phone/tablet to my TV via cable, but I find sitting comfortably on the couch and sending stuff over wirelessly is a lot more convenient and elegant.

 

[5150Joker]

Right, and about a million PC gamers have been doing this for a decade with HDMI cables and wireless controllers, I play on my home theater setup (projector + home cinema 5.1) with a HDMI cable run from my gaming PC + PS3 controllers over blutooth and have done for many years.

Bluetooth USB dongle is about £3 and HDMI Cable is about £15

Do you know what the packet loss and lag on a HDMI cable is? (Hint: it's zero)

Way to miss the point. Millions of gamers don't drag their 40-50+ lb desktop PC and hook it up to their home theater. Unless you are trying to infer that a 30-50ft HDMI cable is somehow a feasible alternative? Let's hope not.

 

[TeknoBug]

I avoid cheap HDMI cables after having bought 2, then I went and bought a $40 one and noticed the difference using my laptop through HDMI to my TV, with the cheap one I couldn't get 1080p without severe flickering (maybe it was trying to do 1080i) so I had to settle with 1366x768, and now with the $40 HDMI (supposedly 1.4a) does beautiful 1080p with no issues.

 

[DeathReborn]

I would really like Valve to make a ARM compatible client so I can use a Jetson TK1 or similar system to play games on.

 

[Rinaun]

I swear this steam streaming is being underplayed. I've had so much fun figuring out all the different possibilities that can be done with this new awesome tool. Earlier today my friend and I played War Thunder; I sat at the main PC coaching him while he played right beside me on a old Q8200 HTPC. I helped show him like a coach how to shoot/pre-aim at planes with my controls and yet he could still control if he wanted to. It was like an instructor during a real fight; I would correct him and explain what I did, as well as correct his mistakes like running past 100% throttle and overheating the engine.


I cant wait to do this in other games!

 

[Crow550]

I avoid cheap HDMI cables after having bought 2, then I went and bought a $40 one and noticed the difference using my laptop through HDMI to my TV, with the cheap one I couldn't get 1080p without severe flickering (maybe it was trying to do 1080i) so I had to settle with 1366x768, and now with the $40 HDMI (supposedly 1.4a) does beautiful 1080p with no issues.

Weird.

I run a 50ft Ultra Slim Series RedMere HDMI cable from Monoprice from my PC to my room. 1080P, 3D and such. No issues. I got it for $54 around the end of September of 2012.

All of my other non-RedMere HDMI's from Monoprice still work excellent. Including the one I am using for this Monitor. I own two other RedMere's which are going strong too.

Maybe you happened to get two bad ones in bad batch? Wherever you got them from?

Anyways this Steam streaming is cool. I will have to test it with the PC in my Living room sometime.

 

[ViRGE]

Having played around with Steam In-Home Streaming I am both impressed with it and disappointed with it at the same time.

On the positive side, it does what it says on the tin. I was able to get 1080p streaming working from my desktop to my Ultrabook with no problems to speak of. The streaming quality was solid, with 30Mb mode proving to be suitable while 100Mb mode ("Unlimited") being attainable if I'm basically next to my router. I was only using it to watch a DOTA 2 replay, so I wasn't pushing the interactive angle, but it ended up being a simple and effective solution to being able to watch DOTA 2 matches on my TV via my Ultrabook.

On the negative side, Valve's support for hardware accelerated encoding is very limited. Apparently it's just Intel's QuickSync and nothing else. So it doesn't make use of the hardware encoders on AMD or NVIDIA cards, instead falling back to software. Not only is this a waste of a perfectly good hardware encoder, but it undoubtedly adds to the latency people are picking up on as the hardware encoders can encode faster and have dedicated paths to fetch frames with much less overhead. I can only imagine how much better the experience would be if hardware encoding was working, especially on CPU limited games.

Why is Nintendo's implementation of this on the Wii U flawless vs the others? It's using the same tech.

A dedicated H.264 encoder/decoder coupled with the exclusive use of a 5GHz channel with very tight tolerances on signal quality and range. Encoding and decoding is free and it basically gets 150Mbps to itself to transmit the stream; those constraints ensure that it's only allowed to perform well.

 

[TerryMathews]

lNot only is this a waste of a perfectly good hardware encoder, but it undoubtedly adds to the latency people are picking up on as the hardware encoders can encode faster and have dedicated paths to fetch frames with much less overhead.

Maybe this will be like Mantle and push Nvidia off its laurels. Nvidia has working technology, its just being artificially constricted to the Shield. No realistic reason why they can't launch a Windows GameStream client.

 

[blastingcap]

So this is like a beta version of Nvidia's GRID/SHIELD technology, but available for all Steam users?

 

[Aikouka]

On the negative side, Valve's support for hardware accelerated encoding is very limited. Apparently it's just Intel's QuickSync and nothing else. So it doesn't make use of the hardware encoders on AMD or NVIDIA cards, instead falling back to software. Not only is this a waste of a perfectly good hardware encoder, but it undoubtedly adds to the latency people are picking up on as the hardware encoders can encode faster and have dedicated paths to fetch frames with much less overhead. I can only imagine how much better the experience would be if hardware encoding was working, especially on CPU limited games.

While it's really more of a band-aid, you can enable QuickSync as long as you have an Intel CPU with it. I have an NVIDIA discrete GPU in my system, but I have QuickSync enabled for Handbrake encoding. That may be a reason why I've never had a problem with Steam streaming.

So this is like a beta version of Nvidia's GRID/SHIELD technology, but available for all Steam users?

Sort of. If what ViRGE is saying is correct, then you may not know if you have hardware encoding available. With SHIELD streaming, you know that you have hardware encoding since the feature is only available with NVIDIA GPUs, and it uses NVIDIA's NVENC encoder. I wonder if NVIDIA's solution might be slightly faster too, but a lot of that comes in how their hardware works. My thought is that if NVIDIA can tell their GPU to pass the frame to the frame buffer and encode it and pass it back to system memory, that's faster than having to grab the frame, put it in system memory, pass it to an encoder (even QuickSync) and then put it back in system memory.

 

[ViRGE]

Maybe this will be like Mantle and push Nvidia off its laurels. Nvidia has working technology, its just being artificially constricted to the Shield. No realistic reason why they can't launch a Windows GameStream client.

Considering that all GameStream can do is stream Steam games, it seems rather redundant now that Steam has its own streaming solution. I wouldn't mind a GameStream PC client, but it's hard to imagine NVIDIA doing it now that it's no longer strictly necessary.

As it stands Valve and NVIDIA just need to get Steam using NVIDIA's hardware encoder.

While it's really more of a band-aid, you can enable QuickSync as long as you have an Intel CPU with it. I have an NVIDIA discrete GPU in my system, but I have QuickSync enabled for Handbrake encoding. That may be a reason why I've never had a problem with Steam streaming.

My gaming machine is Sandy Bridge-E based, so it doesn't have QuickSync. Otherwise if I did have QuickSync I wouldn't be complaining. Though so long as you can efficiently pass frames to QuickSync, I don't consider QuickSync to be at all inferior to NVENC for this task, so it's a nice setup assuming it works with dGPUs.

 

[TerryMathews]

Considering that all GameStream can do is stream Steam games

Where did you get that idea? Its not true. It will stream any games supported by Nvidia Experience.

A large part of it is that they must support joystick profile - for the Shield. That limitation wouldn't exist for a PC client.

 

[desura]

pretty excited for this.

i hate the ergonomics of a pc. i play games for the experience/story now, and so would like to play those games in bed or lounging on a couch.

probably would have to upgrade the wireless router. what are the best models?

 

[TeknoBug]

Limelight for Android streams from Nvidia GFE but it still launches Steam, can't play non-Steam games with it.

 

[Aikouka]

Considering that all GameStream can do is stream Steam games

You sure about that? Because you have to specify any directory where GeForce Experience will find games, and the available games include plenty of Ubisoft titles like Assassin's Creed IV and Rayman Legends. I have a Shield, and loading up a game via streaming doesn't load Steam... it just loads the game. Although, there is an option to load Steam Big Picture mode, and all of my games (well, 99% of them) are through Steam.

My gaming machine is Sandy Bridge-E based, so it doesn't have QuickSync. Otherwise if I did have QuickSync I wouldn't be complaining. Though so long as you can efficiently pass frames to QuickSync, I don't consider QuickSync to be at all inferior to NVENC for this task, so it's a nice setup assuming it works with dGPUs.

Well, I asked because you have to jump through a few hoops to get QuickSync enabled. It isn't available unless you have the iGPU turned on and a monitor (real or fake) attached to it. So, I get this awkward issue right now where if I put my mouse cursor to the bottom right of my second monitor, it can fall into nothingness as there's a fake monitor down there.

 

[ViRGE]

Where did you get that idea? Its not true. It will stream any games supported by Nvidia Experience

Interesting. I thought GameStream only worked with Steam games. My bad.

 

[ElFenix]

Well, I asked because you have to jump through a few hoops to get QuickSync enabled. It isn't available unless you have the iGPU turned on and a monitor (real or fake) attached to it. So, I get this awkward issue right now where if I put my mouse cursor to the bottom right of my second monitor, it can fall into nothingness as there's a fake monitor down there.

might be easier just to install virtu?

 

[Topweasel]

I don't think you need VT-d for video. My "server" uses 2 video card, a tesla and a quadro4000. I used the tesla to do computing when login remotely using RDP, CUDA is available under RDP with the tesla card.

I can remotely RDP onto my server and play 1080p blue ray video in mkv format using windows media classic and everything run smoothly. There's no need to "stream" anything. To get 1080p mkv to run smoothly, my client need to be ~ 1GH Pentium M; Thinkpad X40.

I can also remote RDP onto my server and edit video there using sony vegas with cuda/hardware acceleration.

As long as RemoteFX setup properly, I don't see why people just can't RDP into a faster computer to play game on it. There's no need to do any streaming.

VT-D is needed for PCI-E pass through usually to give a VM direct access to a raid array. But I know of some groups that have tried with some success to pass through a Video card.

My theory behind it would to turn it into an ESXI (or comparable) server where you have a low level hypervisor installed and then my gaming PC would just run as a VM on it and I could then just use it as a game streamer instead of actively doing any gaming at the PC.

 

[Lean L]

I don't think you need VT-d for video. My "server" uses 2 video card, a tesla and a quadro4000. I used the tesla to do computing when login remotely using RDP, CUDA is available under RDP with the tesla card.

I can remotely RDP onto my server and play 1080p blue ray video in mkv format using windows media classic and everything run smoothly. There's no need to "stream" anything. To get 1080p mkv to run smoothly, my client need to be ~ 1GH Pentium M; Thinkpad X40.

I can also remote RDP onto my server and edit video there using sony vegas with cuda/hardware acceleration.

As long as RemoteFX setup properly, I don't see why people just can't RDP into a faster computer to play game on it. There's no need to do any streaming.

He's talking about converting the computer to an ESXi host. VT-d is absolutely needed if he wants to use that video card.

I don't think you've tested your own solution yet in regards to RemoteFX. Video playback does not care about latency. Gaming does. I'll happily eat my words when you find anecdotes of it working well or have evidence of it yourself, but from what I have read, it's not really usable unless you go 800x600.

 

[TerryMathews]

Interesting. I thought GameStream only worked with Steam games. My bad.

Its OK. I know not many people bought into Shield. And I didn't for the streaming...

 

[BoberFett]

Seriously, sorry to sound negative, but to be able to stream you have to have a fairly competent gaming PC to begin with, which I assume would include a nice mouse/keyboard/large monitor. Why on earth would you want to stream that to an 8 inch tablet?

Overall, it is a nice feature, since it costs nothing, but I just see limited applications. Bottom line is you are tying up 2 PCs to play one game. Why not just go sit in front of the gaming PC and play there, or run a long cable from the gaming PC to whatever other display you want to use. I actually could see a better purpose to this for a console, which has a lot of games that are family friendly and can be played with 2 or 4 players on the same screen.

/thread

 

[Aikouka]

might be easier just to install virtu?

Mmm I think Virtu will provide too many downsides. The nice advantage of using QuickSync with a dedicated GPU is that you can encode a video and use your GPU at the same time. So, I can (and do) play a video game while encoding a video. However, if I used Virtu, the iGPU would need to touch every frame, and I'm not sure if encoding would cause problems with that. Also, Virtu induces a slight performance penalty.

Don't get me wrong... the fake monitor isn't that bad to use. It does introduce some oddities such as the cursor being able to go off into nothingness (as I mentioned above), a second mouse cursor at the top-left of my main display (it doesn't actually do anything though), and I cannot maximize Steam on my secondary display. For some reason, it extends about 200-300 pixels below the monitor.

 

[frowertr]

/thread

I'm not sure how many more times we can say that there are those of us that can't run an HDMI cable to another part of the house.

 

[TerryMathews]

/thread

Only if you're short-sighted, I suppose.